Doctor Aphra (2020) #37
FLESH RESOLVED
After Clone Wars-era Tagge prototype droids massacred the pirates who attempted to steal them, Domina Tagge assigned Doctor Aphra to check on the droids stored at another Tagge warehouse to see if they were malfunctioning as well.
When Doctor Aphra and Just Lucky went in to investigate, they came face-to-face with the scourged Tagge droids. Meanwhile, Leia Organa tasked Magna Tolvan and a team of Rebels to investigate a similar incident on a Rebel ship….
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artists: Minkyu Jung, Jethro Morales
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Cover artist: InHyuk Lee
Editor: Mark Paniccia
Publication date: October 25, 2023
Last issue, Leia Organa tasked Magna Tolvan and her team with investigating a ‘situation’ on a Rebel ship, and open this issue with Magna and co arriving at the Silver Arrow, adrift on the Outer Rim. The crew are long dead, but the droids are nowhere to be seen…until we see them sneaking up on the team, ready to attack as we cut to Tagge Space and the starship Casus Belli as Doctor Aphra and Just Lucky walk with Lapin Tagge. The ship is overwhelmingly run by droids, and as a mousedroid runs into her foot Aphra has an epiphany; it’s the droids, and we see Domina defending herself from droid attacks as she figures out the same, that the droids are controlled by some kind of virus.
Meanwhile back on the Silver Arrow, overwhelming numbers of droids swamp Tolvan and her team, eliminating the purely biological members but sparing those with mechanical parts as we head back to Tagge space as droids close in on Just Lucky and Aphra, their time looking short as the scourge tells them there’s nowhere to escape to as Domina appears, telling Aphra that she needs to open the doors to the control room immediately. She prevails, Domina and Chelli realising the ship is lost and the only option is to crash it into the nearby moon of Asheris.
Back in the Outer Rim and Magna Tolvan wakes, secured to a wall surrounded by droids as she hears Kelb scream. The scourge believes the hybroids are the answer to their dilema, and Tolvan hears the screams of her crewmate as back in Tagge space we see the Casus Belli enter the upper atmosphere of Asheris and hammer into the ground, everything onboard incinerated as an escape pod flies away. Inside the pod, Aphra speak to the decapitated head of a droid, a way to communicate with the scourge. She believes she’s speaking to the Spark Eternal, but this intelligence is something more than that, and while it has no interest in Aphra, we cut to its real target; Magna Tolvan, along with fellow cyborgs Lobot and Valance, and the final panel as Aphra sheepishly waits for a door to open, revealing none other than Han Solo’s former wife and Chelli’s ex, Sana Starros….
Perhaps better than any of the preceeding crossover events of the last few years, Dark Droids is not only expanding the storyline of the mini series within it’s spinoffs, but also allowing those crossover issues to maintain their own consistency and tell their own stories. Doctor Aphra does that better than most comics, the ongoing dramas of these fascinating characters very much the ‘A’ story as the growing threat of the scourge continues to develop. We’re approaching the two-thirds mark of Dark Droids, and it still very much holds my interest regarding how the galaxy is going to figure this out, but whatever the outcome Aphra seems sure to be a key part of it.
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Wong, Alyssa (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 23 Pages - 11/15/2023 (Publication Date) - Marvel (Publisher)
