Written by Simon Spurrier
Art by Wilton Santos, Caspar Wijngaard and Andrea Broccardo
Inks by Marc Deering and Walden Wong
Colors by Chris O’Halloran and Stephanie Paitreau
Lettering by Joe Caramanga
Cover by Ashley Witter
Edited by Mark Paniccia
Assistant Editor Tom Groneman

Last issue saw the eponymous Dr Aphra reunited with an old
acquaintance, Magna Tolvan. It came as something of a surprise to
Aphra. This issue picks up hot on the heels of that revelation with
Aphra brought within Tolvan’s current location and introduced to some high level officials in the Rebel Alliance. They have a task for Aphra, and it might come as something of a surprise. Certainly hit jobs don’t come much bigger than those the Rebel Alliance are thinking of.

The writing in this issue builds solidly on the platform that Spurrier developed in the last issue of this book. The foundation of the story here, as with last time, is Aphra’s relationship with her mother, and the lessons that she learned at her mother’s side as a child about taking a nuanced view of good and bad, light side and dark side, and right and wrong. From these lessons we see that Aphra has formed her guiding philosophy in life, and it explains the path she has taken to a certain extent.

The issue then uses this framework to show us how the Rebel Alliance too can treat people, use people, and deploy people without recourse to connections or personal feeling. The message is a slight alteration of the old adage that one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist (which is alluded to by Aphra in the book). Instead the point being made by Spurrier is that war makes good people make choices that they otherwise wouldn’t want to take, or that we assume they wouldn’t want to take. Aphra, as always has more than half an eye on her self preservation, a lesson learned at her mother’s knee.

This is another strong issue and there is a high level of sophistication in the storytelling here. The relationship with Tolvan
remains a little open ended and there is not as much interaction
between the two as one might have expected. Despite the large array of artistic talent the book maintains a subtle and unified style and matches the flow of the story well.

8/10