Star Wars: Doutora Aphra, Vol. 7: Droides Sombrios

Star Wars: Doctor Aphra (2020)

by Alyssa Wong, Minkyu Jung, Jethro Morales

Luke Skywalker: amigo ou oponente? Aphra convence o ex-fazendeiro de umidade de que pode ajudá-lo a localizar segredos Jedi perdidos há muito tempo. A dupla então se coloca no caminho da descoberta de um grande e terrível poder selado num passado longínquo. Trata-se de uma medonha e arcaica criatura que ressoa com a Força… e está prestes a ser libertada! Mas que planos a arqueóloga realmente reservou para Luke? Mais tarde, aprisionada num depósito repleto de mortíferos robôs de batalha, nossa não-tão-boa doutora luta pela própria vida, num evento ligado à saga dos Droides Sombrios! E ela está prestes e ficar cara a cara com um inimigo que não esperava rever jamais! Ao passo que a Esquadra Tagge queima e a galáxia titubeia, Aphra se vê na mais completa solidão. Porém, em meio a ruínas ancestrais num planeta desolado, ela pode finalmente desvendar as respostas pelas quais procurou durante toda a sua existência!

Collecting STAR WARS: DOCTOR APHRA (2020) #32-40.

Genres: Star Wars, Comics, Graphic Novels, Marvel, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction

208 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2024

About the author

Alyssa Wong studies fiction in Raleigh, NC, and really, really likes crows. She was a finalist for the 2016 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her story, “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers,” won the 2015 Nebula Award for Best Short Story and the 2016 World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize, the Bram Stoker Award, the Locus Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. Her work has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, and Tor.com, among others.

Reviews

[ambyr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, you know I liked the run because I actually went out and bought the concluding volume instead of waiting for the library to acquire it. The art is great, and the characters remain charming despite their moral bankruptcy. I can't help but feel that the series would have been stronger if it had been given more space to breathe on its own separate from the relentless crossover arcs, though. And I guess I need to track down the Dark Droids core volume to make sense of what's happening off-screen. Fortunately, the library is my friend there

[emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

alyssa wong is kinda god’s greatest gift to comics

[Khurram · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book should not work. It is chaotic, and more often than not, the story gets a bit confused, but it does not matter. The book is just fun.

The first three issues/chapters Aphra has "enlisted" the help of Luke Skywalker. She needs someone "pure of heart, snd strong in the force." One of my favourite lines of the whole book is "a bit too pure of heart."

The rest of the book is over the background of the Dark Droid story. Of course, this storyline actually started with Aphra. On top of that, who is better than Aphra to take on the droids? Many double crosses and maybe some growth from Aphra?

An interesting development for the next chapter for Aphra. Though this is the end of the current series but I can't see Aphra not being hughly involved in the Star Wars universe. The book finishes with a varient cover gallery.

[Declan O'Keeffe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm more sad than I thought I'd be that this run is over. I'm not as attached to Aphra as other people are but I enjoyed this run more than bounty hunters (which I was glad was over)

This run was hit and miss for me and some characters I never cared for from the beginning but I always love Aphra, Sana and Magna antics. This was a great final issue and a great end to a good run.

"Doctor Aphra will return" and I'm excited to see it.

[ShamNoop · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really hope this series has a different writer when it eventually returns. I like these characters but this run hasn’t been all that great.

[Sam Bakos · Rating 5 out of 5]

probably the best dark droids volume out of all of them

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Geralmente eu acho as histórias em quadrinhos da Doutora Aphra muito legais, elas inovam bastante, são espertas, aventurescas, divertidas. Um dos méritos disso é que a personagem sempre passou quase incólume das grandes sagas de Star Wars. Este encadernado me pareceu menos interessante porque se relaciona com a grande saga de Star Wars, Droides Sombrios, em que os droides da galáxia são invadidos por uma entidade senciente maligna que quer a todos dominar. Este encadernado também é um dos maiores que já foram publicados da série, com mais de duzentas páginas. A primeira parte do encadernado mantém o mesmo teor e estilo dos encadernados anteriores, quando a Doutora Chelly Aphra faz um crossover com Luke Skywalker para explorar um tesouro escondido em um templo Jedi ancestral. A segunda parte, embora ajude a solidificar o relacionamento da Doutora com Sana Starros, ele me pareceu mais enrolado e mais forçado do que o normal, tendo que se adaptar à grande saga Star Wars Droides Sombrios. Ainda assim, a série continua boa e melhor que a grande maioria de quadrinhos Marvel e DC.

[Dakota Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alyssa Wong's Doctor Aphra runs ends in a bit Dark Droids crossover, which feels appropriate for this crossover-heavy era of Star Wars storytelling. It's not quite the smooth, pleasing send-off you'd hope for, but when has Doctor Aphra ever been smooth or pleasing? This is the endless series of hijinks and silly escapes.

I'll give Dark Droids one thing: it made me realize that there really are a ton of cyborgs in this corner of the Star Wars universe. Makes the whole crossover scheme seem pretty reasonable - this actually was an interesting area to delve into. Or, it should have been at least.

Dark Droids as a standalone Doctor Aphra volume is fine. Lots of chasing around after droids or whatever. There's a little more talking and thinking in this volume, which I appreciated. And the intro story, with Aphra kidnapping Luke to go after a Jedi relic, was silly fun, if eminently forgettable.

I'd tell Star Wars to maybe let Aphra sit on the sidelines for a while, but the end of this volume does tee up the next series, so... sigh.

[Shaun Stanley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Star Wars: Doctor Aphra Vol. 7 Dark Droids collects issues 32-40 of the Marvel Comics series written by Alyssa Wong, art by Minkyu Jung and Jethro Morales, and colors by Rachelle Rosenberg.

After kidnapping Luke Skywalker, the duo investigate an ancient and forgotten Jedi temple that is now the prison of a deadly creature. Later Aphra will dare a rescue mission in order to save former lover and friend Magna who has been possessed by The Scourge that has spread across the galaxy.

The actual event issues are pretty boring, but do advance Aphra’s redemption and healing journey. The three issue arc with Luke Skywalker was really good as we got back to Aphra’s root of archaeological thievery. This volume also serves as the final installment in the second Doctor Aphra series. Overall it was a pretty mixed bag, but Aphra continues to be one of my favorite Star Wars characters and I’m really curious to see where she pops up next.

[Matthew Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I didn’t enjoy the Dark Droids side of this trade, but the bookends that focused on Aphra were really good. Curious to see where we see her pop up next and what the future line of Star Wars books will be moving forward from this event.

[Bertazzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The end! Pretty hard to compare Alyssa's run with the first series by Gillen and Spurrier. They had more room and less interference to work. The second series is heavily affected by 3 different events. Aphra and co. had almost no room for their adventures.

[Andres Pasten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fin de la etapa Wong, demasiado interrumpida con tanto crossover

[Martijn Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

This final volume of 2020's Star Wars: Doctor Aphra is a blast. Picking up directly after VOl. 6 and crossing over the Dark Droids storyline.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

age of ultron if joss whedon was based

[Joey Nardinelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

So after tracking down a reading order for the Dark Droids series, I decided to dip into these volumes in what I found was a near-chronological ordering of the issues, with Dark Droids wrapping up shortly before Star Wars, Bounty Hunters, and Doctor Aphra (which all felt like epilogues to this in their own ways). As such, I'm going to have this review in EVERY Dark Droids TPB review to open with my thoughts on the series before then moving into the specific TPB in question.

The Dark Droids Series:
I have VERY mixed feelings about this run. I didn't think it was bad, really, outside of one particular TPB -- everything else received 3s and 4s from me. However, nothing really excelled or really excited me. I think one of the major reasons for this is the framing -- this is all meant to take place in between ESB and RotJ, and it just don't make sense that come RotJ, we don't see ANY fallout from a mass droid uprising and the deaths of what in the series looked like thousands but given the galaxy-wide spread, was likely BILLIONS and BILLIONS of lives lost. Also, RotJ doesn't feature an uptick in cyborgs or hybroids (I really didn't love that name either!) which leaves this series feel like it only has stakes for characters we don't see in RotJ. Unfortunately, there aren't really any major character deaths either -- and to top it all off, any side characters for this run were mostly relegated to such a background role that we don't know a ton of what happened to them (sorry, Magna's cool squad!).

This idea is a really cool one, and I do like how it spins (somewhat clearly) out of all the stuff that happened around the Spark Ascendant stuff from Hidden Empire. I honestly think keeping the scale smaller and maybe relegating this to one system with some convenient story contrivances (or hey, I dunno...maybe drag all the important characters back to No Space?) would help this to make more logical sense within the larger framework of the Star Wars stories.

Doctor Aphra, Vol 7:
So I have never liked Wong's run on this series as much as I did Gillen and Spurrier's run at the inception of this character's own series. I think I've largely been pretty mixed on them, feeling like the art is usually weak and the characters are sort of caught in repetitive cycles (and some of that plays out here until we finally get a possible evolution of Aphra from beyond needing to decide between Sana and Magna and maybe they're in a thruple situation now?) with no forward momentum TPB to TPB. I think the Spark Eternal or Spark Ascendant or whatever it was definitely didn't click for me with Aphra, and the ending of that run felt weak until Sana left. However in this run, it's been a lot more interesting getting to see Aphra emphasize the hero part of her anti-hero identity, even getting a mostly truly heroic finale before the epilogue to Wong's run. I also feel like Wong got saddled with such a weird run to be a writer for, where Charles Soule got to keep stepping in and taking swaths of Wong's narrative in the name of one crossover after another (War of the Bounty Hunters, Crimson Reign, and now Dark Droids). I like a crossover event, but I honestly think when the Star Wars runs bump into each other, it's a lot more fun if it's a crossover between two lines and not 5 or 6. In the same way the Marvel superhero comics often suffer from too many lines in a crossover event, you can see that happening a bit here too in Star Wars, though Soule seems to have the good sense to be pushing for issues to have re-imagined scenes (illustration-wise) with preserved dialogue to create continuity -- that seems neat.

I'll be back with whoever takes over Aphra next, and if it's Alyssa Wong still, I'll be there too. I like the character too much to not keep hoping her adventures will get back on the fun track again like they were 5-7 years ago.

[Ian · Rating 2 out of 5]

The seventh and (I believe) final book of this run of Aphra's adventures, tying-in to the Dark Droids crossover event.
After investigating a mysterious Jedi temple with Luke Skywalker, Aphra is hired by Domina Tagge to investigate a mystery surrounding some experimental Tagge droids. It soon becomes apparent that a mysterious entity is taking control of droids across the galaxy, a situation which becomes more personal for Aphra when her cyborg lover Magna is also infected.

This book has an ancient Jedi temple, a horrifying eldritch creature, hordes of marauding droids and enough body horror to satisfy the sickest weirdo.
I therefore found myself amazed that I was pretty much totally bored the whole way through.
It could, of course, be a me thing, but I definitely felt like this book should have engaged me in a way it never did. Perhaps it's just that, after seven volumes in this run, I've just run out of interest.

There were a couple of positive things here, with the first being Aphra's history with the Spark Eternal. Because the Spark is part of the Scourge (the malignant droid intelligence which is the baddie of Dark Droids) it meant that Aphra had a personal connection to the antagonist in a way that most of the other characters in the crossover didn't.
The other positive was that Aphra actually has a bit of emotional development as a character here towards the end. Even that was soured a little bit by the fact that this is almost exactly how the first run of Aphra stories ended, before immediately resetting the character back to where she started.

* More reviews here: https://fsfh-book-review2.webnode.page *

[ashlabooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Doktor Aphra: Dunkle Droiden

Nun ist es soweit. Der letzte Band der 2020 gestarteten Doktor-Aphra-Reihe ist auf dem Markt und bietet neben einer abgeschlossenen Handlung mit Luke Skywalker auch den Anschluss an das Event "Dunkle Droiden".

Die Handlung:

Zusammen mit Luke Skywalker ist Aphra auf der Suche nach einem kräftigen Macht-Artefakt, wobei sie in einem Jedi-Tempel auf einen gefährlichen Gegner treffen: einen Starweird!
Als die Plage nicht nur die Droiden der Tagge-Corporation bedroht, sondern auch Aphras Freundin Magna Tolvan begibt sich die Space-Archäologin auf eine risikoreiche Rettungsmission...

Meine Meinung:

Der erste Teil erinnert stark an die "Screaming Citadel" und besticht vor allem durch die humorvollen Dialoge zwischen Luke und Aphra. Zugleich können sich langjährige Star-Wars-Fans auf die Aufnahme eines spannenden Wesens in den aktuellen Kanon freuen. Die kleine Abwechslung von der laufenden Reihe ist gelungen. Im zweiten Teil dominiert auch die Action, wobei der Leser sich auch auf ein ruhiges und emotionales Finale freuen kann. Dieses fühlte sich für mich als Fan durchdacht und sinnvoll an und hat mir viel Freude bereitet. Die Zeichnungen sind kräftig und bieten eine bekannt breite Palette an Farben.

Fazit:

Das große Finale - für Spannung mit Herz ist gesorgt.

Werbung: Vielen lieben Dank an Panini für die Bereitstellung des Rezensionexemplares!

[Bernardo Martinho · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume presents two different stories: Ripple Effect and Dark Droids

The first three issues were my favorites, which compile the Ripple Effect arc. It features an exciting adventure with Luke (I wouldn't mind see more of their dynamic, they complement each other really well), some interesting elements from the prequels, as well as the introduction of the Starweird (which I loved).

The final issue of the run felt relatively calm, although it captured brilliantly Aphra's growth, how she finally understands the importance of being surrounded by loved ones, and it carried a more emotional message, emphasizing how sharing experiences with others makes life truly meaningful.
I really appreciated this deeper character development, which felt quite cathartic to me.

I felt that the volume lost some momentum during the Dark Droids story, even though it remained intriguing for the event, particularly through the connection between Aphra and the Spark Eternal (explored in past issues).

Although this wasn't my favorite run, it was still a lot of fun, with plenty of sad, romantic, action packed moments, and I would be delighted to read more adventures of this emotionally chaotic archaeologist

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

The series rebounds from its nadir in the previous handful of issues. It's not fully a fitting send off for the character that I've previously called the best new thing to come out of the Marvel Star Wars run, but it is at least able to tie things up with some dignity, albeit without flourish. It is a shame, though, that we never get a proper resolution to the character's relationship to Vader especially after it gets dredged up to little fanfare in the Hidden Empire crossover.

Ultimately, I think I prefer the 2015 Aphra run to this one, but both have merit in their own ways.

[Mark Layton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely the most effective (and most chilling) collection in the Dark Droids crossover, which is fitting because it was Aphra’s Spark Eternal plot that kicked the whole thing into motion.

Had not realised to the final pages that this is the end of the current, second, Aphra run. Hoping she gets a third outing sooner rather than later.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is actually a collection of several stories wrapping up the second era of Doctor Aphra stories, and it ends on a high note. I've been pleasantly surprised by almost all of the Dark Droids stories so far,it's been a fun little crossover.

[Stephen Hamilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

An odd conclusion to Aphra’s ongoing comic series. Why introduce Raslin Grace, a new bounty hunter, right at the death and leave us hanging? We all know we’re going to see more of Aphra; get on with it.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

3-4 ABY

This is the final collected volume for the Doctor Aphra 2020 series. It is a thick volume containing issues 32-40 as well asStar Wars: Revelations (2023). As the collection has a large number of issues, it has two different arcs going on within the collected whole. The first arc follows Aphra as she takes Luke to a Jedi temple. As Aphra always has ulterio motives, it's no surprise she seeks an ancient Jedi artifact, but something lurks in the temple that they do not expect. The second arc ties into the Dark Droids crossover, in which a number of Republic vessels and Tagge ships are being taken over by the dark droids. When Tolvan falls victim to the droids, Aphra seeks her formar passion, Sana, to help rescue her other ex! What a mess!

I thoroughly enjoy Dorctor Aphra and everything her story has to offer. She is such a dynamic character and it is hard to tell when she actually cares about something (other than herself). I enjoyed the relationship potential the reader is left off with. Doctor Aphra has been an enjoyably diverse addition to the Star Wars universe. The art is phenomenal, as usual, and the way the story ended sets up for a potentially exciting story AFTER Return of the Jedi. 

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The final volume of Doctor Aphra's adventures for now encompasses a team-up with Luke Skywalker, a battle with the Dark Droids, and one final caper to bring the series to a close.

It's easy with Aphra to fall into the trap of teaching her the same lesson over and over again - she keeps screwing people over, and eventually they all get sick of it. But it's a testament to her character and the writers that have handled her that she has a stable of characters that will keep coming back to help her, even when things to sideways. Aphra's history with the Scourge (or the Spark Eternal, as it was before) plays nicely into the book, which makes it feel like a proper tie-in, and the final issue of the volume is a lovely end-cap to the series.

[Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some solid issues and meh issues in this. I like that they put 9 issues into one TPB, though. My favorite ones were the first few featuring Luke. They were a lot of fun, had great art, and great dialogue and interactions between Luke and Aphra. The Dark Droids arc was alright. I felt like it should have explored Aphras previous history with the Spark Eternal in relation to the Scourge a bit more. I do think that the previous run overall was better.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story feels like it's trying to do too much. Seriously, what is the point of the issues with Luke Skywalker? And then it's on to the "dark droids" arc, which to be fair, did kind of start with Aphra. She comes up with a semi-solution, reunites with some old friends, and then...that's it. I guess this is the end of her story for now. The artwork was quite variable throughout this volume, some good, some not so much.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

An appropriate, and long overdue, death to the series.
After the short (and unexpectedly ok) arc that carried over from the last volume, the series quickly devolved back into offensive ridiculousness, entangled once again in a complete title-spanning crossover and having our lead used like a Bowery mattressback during Fleet Week.

[Sarospice · Rating 2 out of 5]

This ends the second go round for Doctor Aphra having a series. It wasn't as good as her original series and I don't really feel she needs another. A Dark Droids crossover and she's not reunited with Triple Zero? Lame.

[Will Plunkett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe placing DA among a larger storyline is why this collection is probably the best one I've read of hers: not just gratuitous action shots and self-aware looks to the side. Teaming up with Luke, Tagge, and other characters from her past still lets her be Aphra.

[Evan Lew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Last issue was good