A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 140: Doctor Aphra Vol. 1 — Aphra

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

It's time to answer the question we've had for months: Does Aphra really have a doctorate, and if so, what type of doctor is she, really? In this episode, we learn a lot about her history, both academic and otherwise.  Next time: Star Wars: The Screaming Citadel (trade paperback) Support the show by going to Patreon.com/civilized! Show Notes     Hosted by Rob Zacny (robzacny.bsky.social) Featuring Alicia Acampora (ali-online.bsky.social), Austin Walker (austinwalker.bsky.social), and Natalie Watson (nataliewatson.bsky.social) Produced by Michael Hermes Music by Jack de Quidt (notquitereal.bsky.social Cover art by Xeecee (xeecee.bsky.social)    

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakeney, joined by Alia Kampora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by you, our listeners, by patreon.com slash civilized. So head over there if you'd like to support the show and get access to all our Q&A episodes. Before we get into today's show, Natalie, I know you've been traveling and also dealing with a loss in your family. And I know you wanted to say a few words about your uncle before we get into Afron. So I'll let you have the floor here. Thank you, Rob.

Yeah, I just wanted to start this episode by, one, thanking my co-host for taking on the Zero Company preview while I was out. If you haven't listened yet, definitely go and check it out. It's the most recent episode in our podcast feed, well, before this one. And it's really, really good. So give it a listen. And secondly, I wanted to give a little context for why that was that I, you know, missed out on that episode. So a few weeks ago, my Tio Sergio passed away unexpectedly. And my uncle was a very special person in my life for many reasons.

but most pertinent to this podcast, he was my very first introduction to the world that is nerd culture in fandom, and there was nothing he was a bigger fan of than Star Wars. So as you can imagine, I found it a little hard to talk about Star Wars in the immediate sort of days and weeks after his passing. But yeah, I'd just like to dedicate this episode to the original Star Wars super fan in my life, my Tio Sergio. And I have included a photo of him in the show notes from what I believe is maybe one of the original screenings of Phantom Menace at the Chinese Theater in Los Angeles and Hollywood.

He is very missed, and he, yeah, he is very missed. Yeah, he is very missed. Thank you. Thanks for that. And of course, our thoughts are and have been with you and your family. Now, for a very hard gear shift, I guess. Today we're exploring everyone's worst nightmare, discovering years after the fact. Your university degree is no good, and you have to start over. That's the situation in which Dr. Ather finds herself in this slacker dropout version of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.

With her lack of a diploma, killing her ability to trade, even on the gray market, after revisits for miserable time in graduate school and the way she ruined her sadistic and megalomaniacal thesis advisor. But here in the present, her archaeologist dad has resurfaced to help her by prescaying her into his quest to find the lost city of the Ordu. A mysterious group of force users rumored to have discovered the secret of immortality. before falling to the Jedi under mysterious circumstances. Their quest takes them to the temples of Yavin, where they find themselves pursued by a frankly awesome disgraced imperial officer, and then to the city itself where Afrin and her father find answers about the ordo

and about their relationship and the fractures that lay beneath it. Let's get into it. This is a good time, I would say. When we were deciding, do we keep? going with Afra? Yeah. This is basically what I wanted to keep going with. Yeah.

This is in terms of, I'm not, you know what I did last night? It happens to me once, once, twice a year. Last night at the grocery store, I bought four bottles, the tiny bottles of fever tree tonic water. And it happens like once or twice a year. And it's like, it's gin and tonic time. Yeah. And that is Dr. Afra.

Yeah. Where it's like, you know what? I don't need to pretend to myself. Like a little bit of lime, tonic, good gin. this is a party. And that's kind of how Afra goes down. Yeah. I completely agree.

We should note this is of course the 2016 Dr. Afra comic that Kieran Gillen picked up for at least the opening bits and then I think eventually another writer comes in on it. These opening issues have been, this whole opening arc was

penciled by Kev Walker and inked by Kev Walker and Mark Deering. And I think it's stylistically immediately you can feel the shift, I think, from where we were in the Vader comic. This is a really cartoony book. This is a book that's not afraid of like playing with character proportions in dramatic and funny ways. If it's like what's good for the panel, there are pages where Dr. Afro looks like, not literally looks like, but moves like Nancy in the comic strip, Nancy. it's a bright comic and it's a comedy like pretty openly not that there aren't like big narrative story beats

but you know it's it leans into all of that stuff good time before we get into it did anybody else dip into the one piece of missing afra content that we have not read previously um which is the arc in between the one the crossover vader down and then the final Vader arc that we read where she's in jail, where she's in rebel jail. The name of the arc is Star Wars Rebel Jail. They weren't get a chance to peek at this at all? I did not tragically, but I'll summarize it. I'm excited to hear you. Yeah. I'll just give you a quick summary. It's like not, I don't want to go beat by beat for it. But I do actually think, you know, I was pretty down on a lot of the Star Wars comic book stuff when we were when I dipped into it before.

I think this is the best arc of that that I'd read. It opens with an annual issue that is about one of the seven rebel agents on Corrassant getting a chance to, he's like sent on a mission to rescue some senators, basically, who are in a prison. And he finds out that Palpatine is coming to personally execute these senators. And so he has to send it up the line. And he's like, we have a chance to assassinate Palpatine. we have to take this chance. It feels like an episode of Aon flux. It kind of is like that because, of course, Palpatine is one step ahead and knows this is

going to happen and leverages this to get all seven of the spies in one place so that he can kill them, kill all the senators, blame it on the rebels, make it seem like their rebels assassinated, they're inside people and betrayed them. And this guy gets completely scarred up and like, but he escaped with his life. And then that goes into a sixth episode arc about Afra being in jail. in the rebel jail, that is primarily her, Leah, and that character, Sana, who I told you about one of Hans Solo's exes, who also seems to be an ex of Afra. And Sana and Leah are really split on the question of whether the rebels should just kill

all these people they've locked up. Leah is extremely like, if we killed all these people, we'd be just as bad as the empire. And Sana is like, that guy did genocide. We should kill that guy. Afra can't be trusted, we should kill her. And of course, the thing that happens, this is like, not in, of course, this is like a really out of nowhere,

I didn't expect this, it really got me, was a faceless guy in armor shows up with a bunch of war droids to kill all of the prisoners. Because he's like, you don't understand, the empire can't be beaten by like going high. You have to kill all these people before they get out and hurt us. And he turns out to be the spy from the annual, that annual issue,

who saw Palpatine and learned that he was a Sith Lord and is now like, there's no, you can't take the high ground with these guys anymore. In any case, she, Afris, Sana and Leah end up fighting to like save the day. And Leah sort of lets Afrig get away at the very end and kind of leaves her with like, not like you should go be good, but like a sort of like, you know, don't forget that like, the empire wouldn't have saved you here, basically, you know. I'm kind of massacring it a little bit there, but does send her back out into the world with a little bit of like, not doubt in the empire, but you kind of get her personal morality drawn a little more out here, which I think is worth saying because here in in the first arc of Dr. Afra, that's also a key thing that we kind of keep coming back to.

was like just how a moral is Dr. Afra, where does she draw the line between different types of being a bad guy, you know? But yeah, worth reading. I think, I think fun, fun in a very similar way to this. You know, campy, pulpy, really pulpy that story is. And a breezy read. And I really think like- I might read it before we go the next arc.

Yeah. Because the next arc, the cover is like her in Luke on, like, with a Jedi artifact that maybe Luke neither both this crystal and this girl are too much for you to deal with. I don't see this going well. Luke cannot hang. I got to tell you.

I can't wait. Luke and Hana also in that arc I'm talking about as like a B plot and it is the most sitcomy B plot you could imagine that they're that they get up to stuff. I actually think that stuff works pretty well. You're starting to sell me on the Star Wars comic. You know, it was going pretty I kind of enjoyed my read of it. So

So yeah, that's the only stuff we haven't seen from her that I know of up until now, worth a read. But I don't think nothing in there was like, oh, no, this is the secret to why she's like this in this first set of issues of her own comic from 2016. It's, there's also moments, too, where this feels so 40K coded, like just tombs full of, like a tomb is full of ancient evil robots, guys showing up dressed as what look like could be, well, the dude we meet here at the start could be from like an Imperial Guardsman from 40K or it could be a character from Killzone. We all remember Killzone. We all love Killzone.

Yeah. But like, you know, we were sort of starting off with just a little vignette of, oh, is Afra like raiding a tomb and it turns out it's just some patsy that she has beef with and he's gonna he's gonna get humbled here and it sort of establishes you know again that that question of what's the what's the morality this character follows by which is at the very least vengeful is is the way we we would put it right where everyone in the underworld is trying to get one over on each other but uh unlike in a lot of stuff where that you tried to screw me and we all go home friends or at least we go back to you know chasing each other in circles next week afra's like no i've you cross me like that i'm just going to kill you

that is that is the fate this guy is waiting for and really his only his only purpose here is to lose lose this artifact he escapes with uh so that africa can go try and fence it and fail miserably at doing so. Yeah. I'll say another big touchstone here, especially when you meet the guy she's going to fence this to. Or actually, she's not trying to fence it to him.

He's trying to collect a debt on her. This guy with the big hat is huge, feels really drawn from something like the incal by Jeterowski and Mobius. They have these characters in there called like, the techno priests that have a very similar, vibe to this guy. I believe it's the Technopriest.

Maybe it's the Meta Barrens. I think it's the Technopreece. But, like, really drawn from this kind of 70s big hat sci-fi. You know, this guy is, like, in all-black, everything, and then a big, tall hat. I almost call it the stovepipe hat, but not like that. It is. Yeah. It's very similar.

Yeah. Yeah, you're right. It's like an inverted. It has a flare at the top, yes. But then he has, like, the fur, like, coat or not the whole coat, but like the collar. And the ear flaps. Which again is very, which is very like Dickensian deadbeat type thing. The clothes are both fancy, but also deeply practical.

This guy works for Kenyon carboys, Rob. This guy's here to collect some old debts on behalf of some, you know, fallen lord, you know? He's so swaggy. I love him. Well, he has that shot on. Well, don't get too attached. Right. He does have that shit on, though.

You're right. He has that shit on. Like, he's fit. He's coming. Coming to collect fitted, and I respect that. Like, even if he's got his bangles on, he's got, you know, a little bit of some flare on the collar underneath the fur stole. Like, he's, he's swagging out. And that's exactly how he's going to leave this world.

None swagger than dying in a urinal. In a dive bar. Also, hang out, is this extra tragic because this guy is a Surian? A Chiadi movie? Oh, is he? He might be. I hadn't considered it that way he was. No, Triple Zero, he's one of the last of his kind.

He needs, he, the galaxy needs him to breed. Oh, no. He does have a tall ass head. When he dies, his hat falls off revealing he's got, it's not just a tall hat, it's a tall head. Yeah. I got to look this guy up. I got to figure out what his deal is. I hadn't, I had.

This is like, this is like a rare, like a rare tiger got killed stealing some CDs. Tiger, what are you doing trying to steal those CDs? Give those back. I think you're right. He's a Syrian. Yeah, he is. Wow. Rip.

What if he's like? Yeah. What if he's Kiadi Mundi's son? Oh, Sue Tatham. Mundy. It could be. That would be a shame. And after the death of his father, he fell into a bad way. Maybe he was always kind of, you know, like didn't get chosen for the Jedi life. So he always kind of had a tip on his shoulder. An inverse rod of the hut. Right. I'm not a Jedi like my father. I'm my own man. I'm a dealer in rare antiquities. That's right. What are, what's, what's up with these two guys that he is with him?

He's got these like, actually they say, they say, These fancy spaniels. Yeah. That's a very funny way to describe them. They're like, I thought that they were maybe like cyberwampus at first, but he calls them something else. What are they called? I've never seen them before.

But, but, Goren, G-I-G-O-R-A-N. Very fancy dogs. Goren. Like, this is the, The reference is literally somebody's dog, though. Like, this is brushed out, fresh from the groomer. And that's how you know, these are not real heavies. Right.

Because this is too, they're too groomed. Like, literally, like, what's wrong with a little self-care, Rob? You can't be, you know, intimidating and brushed and combed? this doesn't last long enough this look does not last long enough for you to be a convincing heavy you know what I mean?

Like this is a, they're starting every morning like on the groomers table and like getting getting clipped, getting brushed out like sitting in the dryer in the hair dryer.

What if they simply woke up like this? Yeah. Or it was wash day. You only see them like this once a month. That is possible. Exactly. Yeah. Okay, so you know what?

You know, then, you know what? Before we turn this page, uh, if you want to lay a bet on them versus Cresantin, uh, I'll give you some favorable odds. Like, you look at these guys and you're like, they're so sleek, so glossy. So strong and tough. Yeah. Go for it. Like, go put that money.

Go put that money down. I'm just saying the, the, the mega shih Tzu's look, look well, well groomed and, you know, and that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They do have the brain mask on. They bite. They're bitey.

Oh. Or they keep eating things off the ground. They really need not to eat off the ground. That's trash. Surian, it's like, no, God damn it. All right, we got to go back to the dot. Oh, you ate one, two? You have to do everything your brother does?

And now, you know, you're going broke. You're going broke. See, they kill this guy. and I guess like, you know, should we give like a really high level, like, short summary of what this is about? I guess you already did. You said the order, the order aspect do stuff. So I guess like, yeah, the next big thing is just she learns about her degree. And who was behind the removal of the legitimacy of her degree, but her own father?

shitty ang he does kind of have shitty ang energy he does wait you know who he is he's who's who's who's cora's first adversary in the first season he does look like that uh is that's heer yes yes yeah he does kind of have a zahir look going on right i think that's the first one maybe i'm wrong has no sauce. Like you come in, like, why are you beefing with your own kid, first of all? That is really crazy. Oh, yeah, one of the things that we get here is actually like a rerun on the story she tells. Back in that one issue of Vader, where she's talking to the dude she's been sent to kill, right?

The guy who knows about the wedding. Is that, am I remembering that right? The, yeah, or knows about Padmey's pregnancy. Those about the pregnancy. And she tells the story as far as it involves her mom, mostly. Yep. And just when, and I think that there's like a little bit of a, you know, what's the word I'm looking for here? The journalistic malpractice where you combine multiple stories into a single one.

And we go to the word I'm looking for here. composition what is the word anthology nope you know when you have a story when you interview five people then you act like it's one person you know the thing I'm talking about oh oh in any case yeah compositing she's we kind of there's a sort of compositing thing happening here right because do you remember how she describes her mom in that that moment back in fader

she describes her mom as being new agey And in fact, her father is a little new agey. Are they both just different flavors of new age? Maybe. Maybe. We visit this when they have their sort of heart to heart at the end of this arc. Yeah. Because my vibe is like, you know, we're so used to the story of like one hippie parent,

one extremely non-hippy parent, right? But there are different flavors of hippie. True. And like one can be a little bit more like religious and one could be a little more crystals. Well, which one is this? Which one is witch here? Because we know that is Crystal. No, this is the, this seems like much of the trip.

Actually, you know what? Right. He is crystals. He's a monk guy. But he is a monk guy. I guess her mom, the vibe is a little bit more like the sky is my cathedral. Right, right. Nothing bad will happen to us out here.

I thought with that vibe heavy, though. Well, that's the type of a new age mom you'll be, you know? Right. Less crystals more. more the sky's my cathedral. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Come on, kids.

Everyone come out for your morning grounding. Not grounding like you've been grounded, grounding like you're getting, you're touching. That's exactly my head went. It's starting the day this way? We all, we all touch grass. We all go barefoot. Actually, my mom is a, the sky is my cathedral. And when I got back for my trip was like, if you, you need to go.

go walk on the grass barefoot immediately so that the coppers ionize you and re-regulate you back to Is this the grass Los Angeles Times zone? Um I'm saying they've been deionized.

I'm saying I'm not going out barefoot in my own yard. I know what I know what's happening out there. It's not it's not happening. You know I feel you plenty grounded through these hiking boots. It's cool because I'm allergic to the grass here anyway, so I can't walk on it.

I'm going to read, just so we have it, I'm going to read what Afris said back in that issue of Vader. She's talking to this guy that we've talked about before. She says, when you were playing courtier on Nabu, I was trying to grow up and living in a galactic war. I had a mom who pretended we weren't. Homestead on the frontier, a brave spiritual life on a new world after a split from dad.

The thing with wars, if the war doesn't get you, all the scum opportunists, profiting from the chaos will. Raiders came in. Mom told me to run. I did. But I came back with this awesome cannon I found in a cave I was exploring and blew them all to pieces. I saved everyone. And dad came back and we all lived happily ever after. And now I spend my time wandering the galaxy, recovering awesome cannons. My mom definitely didn't die on a ditch in a dead end forest world that we only went to because she was so idealistic. And this is the like, he goes, I'm sorry. And she says, weren't she listening? There was a war going on.

Everyone has a sob story. Boo-hoo for everyone. Which is great. I'm so sorry to Afra, but as you were reading that out loud, the first thing I, the only thing I could think of was while you were doing drugs, I studied the blade, while you were engaged in premarital sex, I practiced the blade. Like, it's kind of giving, I studied the blade. I'm sorry.

Sorry to Afra. It is a little bit. Yeah. She does say here that mom's dead in a ditch. So, you know, it's not like that that's. That's kind of how her mom would have wanted it. Yeah, totally, seemingly. To the ditch I return.

So Afra finds out that, yeah, she doesn't have her degree. And that degree's primary utility is it allows her to deal in these antiquities. through semi-legitimate means. And if she doesn't have that option, then she's forced to deal through the worst fences. And so basically she's going to make nothing on the various goods she sells. And that is when, you know,

she confesses as she sort of monologuing to her friends. You know, obviously she cheated. But how did they find out about her, about cheating her way to her degree? And then off camera or out of frame, well, your questionable morality was always going to catch up with you eventually, beloved. So perhaps it's lucky that someone who loves you was the person who uncovered your ethical lapse. And now we can look to your spiritual salvation. And he is approaching dressed up like a monk.

Yeah. Like a worshipper, he's got sort of a cassock with a weird little hoop thing around his neck. And so he's certainly looking the part of like a religious devotee. This also seems a little bit. He is religiously devoted to a big question mark. He's like, I just think they're neat about the ordo. And we'll get to that in a minute. But first we have to go back to grad school.

He's in the scene where he first shows up. There are other people in the room with him that have the same outfit on that he does. Is he part of some religious or scholarly order? Or is this just him like this is though he gets close without her noticing him? Oh. There's a little bit of Gene Parmesan happening in a situation where. Well, it does sort of feel like... Dad!

it does sort of feel like, and I also understand Afra's why she ended up the way that she did, if she did, like, grow up at the Academy Bible school as, like, a very angry lesbian. Yeah. Right. Yeah. The trail from here to there to where we see her makes a lot more sense than it did before I read this. Yeah. Because, like you said, we get her in grad school.

or actually we don't even get her in grad school. We get her when she's grad school age, but she's in an undergrad seminar, projecting, I think, Mandalorian pornography onto the hollow projector that this teacher is teaching. And maybe she's also,

who is also her PhD, what's the word? Like advisor? Advisor, yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Not great. Not a great play.

She hates this guy. She... Yeah. Feeling's mutual, if it appears. Like, he genuinely seems to despise Afra. Like, on a personal level, it's... It's not just that she is, I don't know, like, a prankster, or maybe isn't as dedicated to her studies or whatever.

He explicitly tells her that he just hates her. Many such cases in grad school. All those years of mocking me, you never thought to ask why I selected you for my doctoral supervision because I was never going to let someone like you be a doctor, not because of my standards, not because your work is sloppy. be just because I hate you. Um, it seems like Afra really is of a, like represents an approach to archaeology that is at odds with this, this guy's philosophies.

Well, it's interesting because she's, she's giving Vankman and Ghostbusters to an extent. Um, and included down to the fact her, like, she's, she's screwing with this guy. during his lecture and her friend is like, I don't know if this is a good idea. And AFR's response is basically, I got my thesis is a lock because I'm going to do the Geraldo Rivera vault bit and in that vault is going to be findings

that are going to make my career and it won't matter how much this dude hates me or how much I've slacked off in class. I'm just going to be able to like publish on this immediately and I got the doctorate. she has the Geraldo Rivera vault outcome, which is there's absolutely nothing there. And that leaves her a sitting duck for this guy who then reveals he hates her, but he's also a mad scientist. Like it's, he's also well outside the lines.

Oh, yeah. Because it's more like he is archaeology's answer to Nouveau Vindy, where he's like, I'm a collector of things that if they ever wake up would destroy the galaxy. Basically, I'm like creating, I've got necrone eggs here that I'm just sitting, just sitting in a clutch of necrone eggs. And I know that nobody's supposed to have them, but I like them. So I just keep them. When it hits the sort of, the thing that she seems to have thought about him is that he's

like a do nothing, like lab academic and not a field academic. and she's like, I'm going to go out in the real world and find something while this guy hasn't done shit. And of course, the thing that you just said is true, which is he actually found some shit. He found some really bad stuff. He found like Amberson or Aberson symbiates, which, yeah, he describes as basically being, or maybe she describes them as like, if they reactivate, oh, do you know what they actually might be? I wonder if they are this. Are they the brain worms? because it sounds like they do the brain invader thing

of taking over people's brain stems and spreading that way from the Brain Invaders episode of Clone Wars. I wonder if they are the same thing. They don't look like that. They look too big for that. They look like big, weird, roly-poly, like, insect, giant insects in red tubes.

But she does describe them as like body snatchers almost, you know? Yeah, and there's a little bit of like a devil wears Prada situation here too where his real objection, he says, Afra, you are flash. Archaeology isn't about flash. This is the work of decades. Archaeology is about determination. And so there's this like an aesthetic objection more to an entire way of being. and yeah he like he is also an arch criminal yeah but the right kind um also you know my my my

brief time around grad school with people in my age cohort who went off to it I know at least two people who basically had a version of I just hate you and I'm never going to let you let you go this is very real you're going to sit here to you're going to you're going to you're stuck here. And so I know two cases out of not a huge sample size where, like, large amounts of resources across university departments were marshaled to stage interventions against basically power mad dictators of the study group, the, the, the, the, the, the, PIs group.

Yeah, I know, I know multiple people, obviously. I'm not in archaeology. It was in humanities, but like multiple people who, I guess, I don't know if archaeology counts as a humanities degree or not. I would assume it's a STEM degree, but maybe not. In any case, I know multiple people who had to effectively, who had stuck with advisors through like five or six year, you know, terms that like they eventually just had to switch advisors because their advisors just would not let them progress and were like constantly

shitting on their work. It definitely happens. Wait, I know three cases. I forgot that one of the cases, I was at a party for someone and it was like, who, what are we celebrating? Oh, we forced his advisor to give him his doctorate. And it's like what? And it's like, yeah, he's basically been indentured servant for the last two years. And then like every other professor in the department was like, you got to let this guy go. We can't. can't, you can't keep doing this to this kid. And I was like, it took two years to do that. And he's like, yeah, but we, now he's free. Isn't, woo, party. And I was like, huh, huh.

Up the champagne. Yeah. Nightmare. Nightmare. Also, I guess I do know that archaeology is humanities. I did a talk last year at Utah, the University of Utah and someone in the like group, which is a humanities group, was an archaeology professor there. So I think out there it was like anthropology and then archaeology is like under that. So shoutouts. Cool thing to do if what you're doing is not recovering brain stealing insects and then framing the, or I guess not framing, she's not framing her teacher. She in fact steals his brain bugs and then puts them in the empty place where she thought she'd find something, which was just like a secret vault on a farming planet, a farming planet where nothing has changed for thousands of

years and then pretends like she's found them, which then kicks off an entire like industrial archaeological. Yeah. Everyone's like, whoa, what was really going on here? Her best friend is like, I'm going to devote my entire career to researching how this happens. Oh, my God. So, this is, this is really what tells me that Afra is a villain because to live with the

guilt of sending hundreds. of people on a, you know, endless, bottomless quest to find absolutely nothing. Now, that is evil. That is truly evil. Threatening your father. I mean, that just happens, right? Yeah, I can speak to that. You have this guy.

What was your dad? I don't know. Yeah, he sucks. Where does burning his artifacts compare as evil things to do? Because when we cut back to the kind of flashback of when she moves back in with her dad as a kid, the thing she has done is, like, set some sort of tapestry on fire in his house. That's just teen stuff, you know? Yeah.

You know, who hasn't, like, broken a vase or... Yeah. Her broke your face as she rants at him. And then, oh, the psychologist says, I may have some issues. Fair to warn you. It's incredible. She is very baby. She is very baby.

And she is, I guess we have confirmation. Psychology exists in the world of Star Wars now. Oh my God. Yeah. Oh, my God. Hang on. I missed this because I've got this open in front of me. I hadn't internalized how funny the art is in this.

We see her as a little, little kid sternly sort of like chewing him out. Turn the page. Still looking like a child. all like gathered up, like gathered up her entire posture, clenching. What have you done, Dad? And look it on Black Cresantin's face, who has never looked anything other

than menacing throughout any of these comics. His eyes are bugged out and it's frightened dog. It is. It really is. I mean, this is where I'm talking about like there are times that it feels like a comic strip. They're not afraid to be over-exaggerated.

You know, she doesn't look. You can turn the page and she like her proportions and the coloring are just like a little bit different. And the pose she's in where she's like leaning her whole body forward from the waist up is so exaggerated in a way that's like, I'm surprised she doesn't have like anger bolts coming off of her head. You know what I mean? Like I don't think that's the strength of the issue is to, is to, or of the, of the comics

so far is that it's willing to play with things like posture and, uh, color to like emphasize things. know. Yeah, like her her facial expressions throughout like all of these issues are pretty inconsistent in the sense that like there are times where she doesn't necessarily look like herself or in other ways like you said are kind of more cartoony or exaggerated. But it it kind of all works within this context of like this, this more, I don't know how to describe it, but this more kind of popcorny.

That's not a bad word, yeah. Yeah, like, and I, you know, sometimes we use that as a pejorative, but I think here I mean it as a compliment in terms of like, like entertaining kind of expression, expression forward. Like it feels like a very extroverted comic in a way. But usually I feel like I would find that distracting to be like

where is the kind of consistency in art style or in like facial like kind of presentation between all these different ways of expressing emotion and stuff. but I find it to really work here. A good example for me or a good illustration of this is like in that panel where she's leaning forward and saying, what have you done, dad? She does not have lips. That is not a mistake. Her teeth are like on the top layer of her face.

If you turn the page, there are other sequences where she really clearly does have lips and panels where she doesn't. And it's just, and that's like a cartoony stylistic thing. Sometimes it's just, you know, you turn the page again. her pulling the gun out. It's just open like oval with teeth gritted. That is a cartooning style choice

and not like a, the artist didn't forget to draw lips. You know, it's like a way of communicating expression that you can get to if you're not restrained by an attempt at photorealism, which she would never have made some of these faces in this way

in the Vader comic, you know? Yeah. Her dad is drawn similar. Yes. Sorry, Allie. No, I mean, I was going to say, is it too rude to say to a microphone that, like, she gets to be a more expressive character if you're not tracing movie screenshots?

Ooh. That is what we're dealing with here. That is how it feels, for sure. You know? And I guess I'd say part of this actually, I think, also becomes clear if you look at the artist

here, Kevin Walker, Kevin Walker, Walker comes out of the kind of British comic scene, who since the 80s and 90s was working on things like Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper, which are over the top, I would say, in their stylistic language. They are not going, they've never really gone for that sort of, maybe I should be careful. I don't actually know never. Those comics have been running for a long time. I could imagine there being runs that went for photo realism.

But they're kind of like. But they're iconic styles. laid down on these foundations. Exactly right. Yeah. So I think that there's a little bit of, there's a little bit of work here that feels reminiscent of that stuff

and being able to be bold in that way. It goes a long way. It is a little bit like, gritty realism meets like the funny pages of the newspaper, like news strip. Because there is like a little bit of like Nancy in these,

in these scenes. Yeah. And again, her dad, like, I think, you know, some about, like, shitty ang, like, the way he sort of, like, confesses that the reason he did all this, he sort of, like, cringes at her and gives that, like, desperate little smile. It's the or do you aspect to, knowing that, like, this is the going to be a thing that pisses her off more than anything, is that he, he dimed her out for the sake of getting her help on the thing that's going to annoy the shit out of her the most, which is the order

to respect to a thing that he's been fixated with forever. And this is where she snaps and she's thinking about like having him straight up killed and then realizes, you know, even though she has a ship full of beings who would happily do it, she can't actually murder her dad. And so then it's like, all right, what's so goddamn important about the Ordu Aspect 2. And we get a very funny

series of possible versions of who these people were and what became of them. And his telling, the really idealistic one, is basically

like the Ordu Aspect 2 were all Kryptonian Jedi, basically. Like all, like long, like PC or PC gaming master race, all lowing, all flowing silver locks, white robes, and then bursting in on their, their little city as they're close to realizing their vision,

is the Jedi Order, except it's a Jedi Order showing up in very Sith-coded gear with red lightsabers. And they, you know, they sloth. the peaceful, nonviolent, enlightened order to aspect to, who, you know, detonate their lost city at the last minute and sort of throw the entire Jedi fleet back and, and keep their, keep their secret knowledge safe from the foul Jedi. And, you know, her response to that is,

that's a story, but we have no, there's no hard evidence. There's no archaeological record. We have nothing about these people. And she tells a version of the same. story where basically the Ordo Aspectu are doing full-on Horacee set in the, and like down to like huge like battlesuits, paldrons, collars. They are very sithy and it is the Jedi showing up to try and shut them down because their secret to immortality is going to suck the life force side of a bunch of paduan so we've kidnapped. I just found out something very funny speaking of Warhammer 40K, looking at these pages

made me go, I wonder if he did do any 40K stuff. And he in fact was the artist on a thing called Demonafuge, or DeMonnafuge, a graphic novel series from the, I don't know when this is, from 1999.

So literally, he'd been a 40K guy, which is very funny to see that cash out here with these. yeah the the Jedi in her or the Ordu set the Aspect Ordu the Aspect Ordu

in her telling truly are just you know Space Marines with lightsabers Well and then we get the A great throwaway gag of well If nobody knows anything then who's to say And then BD has a thought

About how it could have been Which is the order of spec You are a giant BD astrobeck droid Floating in space Just going BD at the approaching spaceships and heralding their doom.

Could be. Who knows? Who could say? A really good bit. Yeah. And off they go to investigate a little place called Yavin'4. Maybe you've heard of it. Because her dad sure hasn't. This is such a funny gag. They're headed to Yavin'4. He's like, how does it come up?

How does it come up that this was the rebel base? So he's wondering why there are rebels everywhere. He's like, this is an isolated, or why is their imperial occupation happening? Right, right. And he's like, this is an isolated moon. So why would the imperials be here? And she offhanded mentions, well, they're probably cleaning up after the rebels. That's what it is.

And that's when he says, seriously, I don't understand what I've missed. there was a rebel base on Yavin 4. I'm afraid I don't really follow current affairs. I don't follow current affairs. She says, the battle of Yavin, I'm afraid you've lost me. Death Star went boom, boom. The Death Star? I'm sorry, I thought that was just a story.

Yeah. And then the thing that she specifically kind of like zooms in on is like, wait, you bought the bullshit story about Jedda? Because remember in Rogue 1, the ancient Jedi, temples or whatever, the force order worshipping temple gets completely destroyed on Jeddah with like the test firing and he was like

no, losing the temple of Khyber in a senseless accident was a tragedy enough that it could have been done deliberately was unimaginable this fucking guy because it's like he's not an empire guy. He's not like a pro empire guy

he just has no skepticism in his brain at all. it's it's wild like i if this is your dad out there i don't know what his hyper fixation is but whatever it's like man you got a you got to tap in every once in a while the really funny like a thing that's kind of happening here right is like she's like millions return to dust and you just didn't notice which of course is a sort of like inverted echo of millions cried out at once, right? Like, here's this guy who's devoted himself to this hypothetical Jedi order,

and he doesn't give a fuck about real people. This is the way in which they're very similar in a way, right? It's like he just cares about his own thing he cares about. But I guess maybe what we're seeing here is even she cares more than he does about regular people, you know? And I think the idea that like he's studying. this thing or these people that are so that he could not be farther

away from tapping into in the sense that like this guy has absolutely zero connection to divorce obviously like he's he's totally oblivious he's totally unaware he's like he's

uncritical unsuspecting like willing to kind of accept whatever's given to him if it's, you know, outside of the pursuit of his what he actually cares about, which is just like, everything about him is completely antithetical to the Jedi, Jedi ideology and everything. So the idea that he's so obsessed in something that he couldn't be further away from connecting to is very funny. Yeah.

Well, and he's going to get to it later, but like the reason for this obsession is that he's looking at the universe is darkness. Yeah. And he's like, we need, like, basically for him, he's like, things are so bad in the galaxy that he's like, we need to return to an almost prelapsarian state of bliss. And the way to do that is through the, or do aspect to. And, but then you ask him any questions about like, yeah, telling me about the darkness of the galaxy.

And he's like, I don't really know. It just seems, just seems bad. And what's rough is many such cases Once again Like lots of people Who are like boy the world seems To be in really rough shape

Who could say why or how Time to really To really lean in on An occult belief system That I'm that I'm all in on And I like about it It's like it's an occult belief system And it's also a technological fix

Like it is an occult belief system But he's like if only we can unlock This technique that they have then we can fix everything. Like alchemy for happiness. Right. And you know who else thinks like that is the empire. The Death Star is the same thing in a real way.

It's like all we have to do is build the one big thing. We build a big enough gun, we win. And he's like, well, if we build a big enough healing belief system, we build immortality. The biggest fucking crystal you've ever seen. And guess what? It's a crystal the fucking Death Star too, as we know. So it's crystals all the way down on both sides.

of this. Well, and also because he has he has provoked Afra and she's doing like, again, there's very funny bits here where it's like no matter how old you are, there are certain conversations you can find yourself in with a parent.

And you feel like all at once you can be like 25 years of like growing and becoming a fully like realized adult an individual. It doesn't fucking matter. Like you're going to just go sliding. It's like shoots and ladders, snakes and ladders.

You're just sliding down back to who you were at age like eight or something. And you're talking like you did then, having the same argument, the same feelings. And so she kind of tips her hand where she's furious at him for not noticing how bad it's gotten out there for the fact that like billions are getting killed. And he's just like heading the clouds. and then that's when triple zero drops the real talk. Don't you support the Empire's steel glove clasping around the throat of the universe as the best way to protect people? I do believe that's an opinion I've heard you express.

And we get a great punchline. She's like, if I wanted to hear that, if I wanted to hear shit like that, I kept working for Vader. And you worked for Darth Vader? So more things keep sort of dropping on dropping on her dad's head. But there is a bit of triple zero noticing also like, which is the real Afra? Right. Right.

Like the traumatized child sort of telling your sob story on that rooftop. Is it the hardened, like, nihilist idealist? telling Vader that he's got to see it through that whatever it takes, he's got to be the one to sort of bring, you know, bring order back to the, to the galaxy. What's actually, what's going on here? What do you, what do you want? What I kind of like here is the implication is like, she really doesn't know. Like, this is, this is somebody who's been in sort of like wounded survival mode and adopts masks, but it's really hard to see what's happening underneath them. There's also the thing of like, you mean, you were just talking about this to like,

sometimes you get into an argument with a parent and you find yourself entering a mode that you haven't entered in 20 years. You go back to being a kid or feeling like that and responding in the way you would have then. I've definitely gotten into arguments with parents in my adulthood where I'm like, I would never have said the thing I just said to them to a friend or a boss or someone who reports to me in a job or just like a stranger because I'm not that person anymore. But in becoming that person in the conversation, I now responded in this way that I don't like sometimes. And there's a bit of this here where it's the thing you just said, which is who is she really, what she really believe in? Does she really believe in the stuff she told Vader in the Vader comics? But also is there like riled up, pushed back into this position, we're kind of getting the young Afra who hadn't yet become the nihilist.

yet. And this is how she gets there in some way, is dealing with a dad who doesn't care about the world. And that starts to impact the way she thinks about people. And from there, it's a short line from, you know, if you're imagining that this is the way people in the world are, imagine you're 12 years old and you have this dad, you're like, well, I guess this is what adults are like, if only someone would like kick my dad's ass and get him into gear and like make him care about something for real. Vader could be my father. Vader could be my father. I mean, yeah, there's easy way to map back from here to Vader as like, why did she have an affinity for him? Because he's like the opposite of this guy in terms of his like directness, his like focus on control,

his like all of the way he presents himself. He has very clear asks. He like gets shit done instead of just kind of floating around for 20 years, investigating some bullshit, you know. I could get and yet also very spiritual you know there's still a little bit of her dad wow real so you know it happens we then get to me the coolest looking character we've seen in these comics yet I think

and the character who when I saw her I was like oh we might need to read the Afra comics which is Captain Tolvan or Tolvin as soon as I saw a cover of her on one of the Afra issues I was like oh we might have to learn what her deal is. She seems like so and we would all get hyper-fixated on. Yeah, she rules.

The panel of her, like, stalking through the forest with the stormtroopers behind her, it works, it works. She moves like a stick bug sometimes. She is a motherfucking stick bug. Right? And again, a character who does not. From page to page, her proportions change in a way that doesn't feel unsettling.

I mean, it feels a little unsettling, but positive. It doesn't feel like a mistake. It feels like she moves in a way that, like, is characterful for her, but not wrong. She's got the... So, first of all, I think the implication is also these are, like, surgical prosthetics. There's somebody who's, like, grievous fucking wounds that she's been sort of stitched up by. But the effect is, her head is cradled in this. like metallic, like, ribbed neck sleeve.

Yeah. And it leaves you wondering, like, how long is that neck? It's so elegant, so giraffe-like. And in some shots, it's like craning forward. Like, again, this is the way, like, the, you know, characters like breaking rigging or things like that, right? Where it's like, this is a character who could just like, if that neck popped out like general grievous, like sort of like leaning down to

inspect someone, you'd be like, yeah, okay. Yeah, I believe it. happen. Yeah, totally. And I love that she seems to have been put here as punishment, right? Like, I don't remember where we get the full detail on this here, but it's, maybe it's a bit later, that she's basically been put on cleanup duty on the oven for because I've repeated mistakes of some sort. And I, you know, I love a failed daughter. What can I say? It's nice to have one again. It also hits me here too. Seamelessly, it turns into a G.I. Joe comic. does from that from that same era you're right we're like we are not in like judge dread

territory now we are fully in like classic g-i-jo comics where it's like all uh inspired by like newsreel footage of like vietnam and uh it's all very misty and like there's always since the environment like just sort of pressing down on these characters and then there's something out here in the jungle it's right it's black chrysanton who I'm getting angry and angrier you're telling me this motherfucker who basically is rambo from first blood where like every time we see him now he's doing the most awesome shit we've we've ever seen he's like what if what if chewy was the predator yeah and he just gets got in the book of boba fat no literally fuck book of boba fat

Like, I actually, it's actually crazy. Like, if we had read these before watching, imagine the conversations we would have had, if we had read the Dr. Afra comics before watching Book of Boba Fett, because Black Carzantin is maybe the greatest of all time. Like, there's, there's no one doing it. him at all. It's nice to be able to briefly do an aside to shit talk

Book of Boba Fett just because we're reading something that we like a lot instead of because we just remembered not having a good time. He is doing a one-man battle of Endor. Yeah. Like this is, and also he's funny. There's a scene

he's breaking a scout trooper's neck and making a little shh gesture at the scout trooper. Like the entire thing is just there's zero doubt. He's going to be fine. He can take on infinite stormtroopers in the jungle. That's cool.

We're going to cut back to him just dismantling this like imperial army attachment periodically while they go and like loot the Masasi temple. Uh-huh. By the way, another little detail from Chrysanan that kicked ass is when they were in the ship on their way in, her dad, after his dad is like, it's a lovely forest moon. This will be easy. And Chrisanton gets up from his chair to choke him for because he said it would be easy. And she's like, Chrisanton's a little superstitious dad.

And you just tempted fate. This guy rolls. Shout out to Chris Anton. And he wasn't funny. There was no fun with Chrysantin. And like, it was just like, what if there were a bad wookie? Yeah. And it's like, no, man.

This is a guy, again, like, Chrysanton is a character. there's there's parts of this that I know I've brought this up before but I'm going to refresh everyone's memory the Dortmunders books by Donald Westlake where they're like they're caper heists and you have regular recurring characters and that's kind of the world chrysanton like lives in too here right where it's like he's going to show up doing his chrysanin things and one of those things is he's like infinitely competent as a badass but then also kind of funny right Yeah. And he just wasn't funny and he wasn't scary when they, when they brought it, when they, when they booked him just to get got. Yeah, I don't think he really got to do anything fun in that show. I remember he beat up some trondotions in like a bar, but that wasn't like, I don't know. I don't know. One day I'll revisit that show and maybe I'll be kinder to it if I don't have to take notes and think about it. I don't know. Anyway, they find a bunch of fucking crystals. While Chrysanton is, I don't know, blowing up, he doesn't blow up the ATST, a big groundworm, a giant space worm does, but he does win that fight. And while he's doing that, Afra and her dad are in the temple looking for stuff, including crystals. I found it really funny when Triple Zero walks up to the Imperial Prob droid and says, oh, hello, ITO. Big fan of your work. It's very funny.

Like the idea that he has like droid faves, like he has like droid bias. Yeah. I'm really into that for him. Also again, we're getting some Afri can't stop like just dredging up the past because

they're having trouble finding what they're looking for and her dad says there must be something I missed. And she says yes there obviously was. what did you miss? Where to start, dad. Your wife falling out of love with you until she thought running away

to the outer rim was a good idea. If you loved living people half as much as you loved dead things, you'd probably be the best dad in the world. And he starts to wind up, Miss Chely Lona Afra. It wasn't like that. And she says, yes, it was.

That was another one of the things you missed. And as they're getting, as they're teeing off to have good-all family Donnybrook here. The light... I forget, what sets this out? What lights up the temple here? Outside there's...

So they've put the crystals into the place. They find, like, the... While they're having this conversation, they found a room with, like, a bunch of, like, orbits and, like, astronomical charts and stuff in the ground, and they've put the crystals in the right spots. And it turns out nothing happens in the room. but that's because outside this temple and a bunch of other ones like in the valley are all launching light into the sky in a certain place, which I guess gives them the coordinates they need to know where the Aspect Ordu base is, basically.

He scans it to determine it. But it's like these glowing beams of light from outside that BT picks up on. I mean, it's feeling that he doesn't pick up on it like it's a signal. It's just really bright and he reacts. and then they turn and look. But yeah, that back and forth, like, I definitely, you know, I thought it was going to, like, when he said, that's on how it wasn't like that. I was ready for him to, like, deliver some sort of counter speech.

And instead we get the yes, it was. That was another thing you missed. I was like, whew, goddamn. Like, it's deep in there. We're doing a really unhappy Indiana Jones and Last Crusade. We really are. This is basically, like, beat for beat, the conversation that Harrison Ford has with Sean Connery. in that movie, except in that movie, Sean Connery is given the last word where it's like,

you know, like mom did understand. Like, you're the one who, you're the one who didn't, but the implication, your mom who I neglected and abandoned totally understood why it went, went down that way. And in that, like, India is kind of chastened. That maybe hasn't been totally fair to his dad. We're not doing that here. Yeah. it's it's it's also interesting here you know going back to what we were talking about before

about how does she end up being the type of person she is and it's like she has a father who her her perspective on him as a kid was he doesn't love living people and but he pretends he does and that's kind of what makes him hypocritical and it's it's again kind of easy to imagine her arriving at well i know I just won't, I just actively won't care about living people. I'll just accept that it's stupid to care about living people instead of being the sort of hypocrite he was. And it's not like she, you know, again, having read that other Star Wars book, I didn't get into this specifically. I guess maybe I should have gotten at this point.

Her ex, Sana, who is also Hans Solo's ex, has a lot of beef with her because Africa had of abandoned her very specifically. And so it feels like she's adopted some of the you don't care about people that she sees in her father, but in a way that's like an active choice that she designates as part of her worldview and her personality, instead of being this sort of thing she just defaults to the way that she sees that happening in him. You know, it's like she agrees with him. It's more that like she wants, it feels like she's like, I'm not going to. to make someone count on me the way I was counting on you, you know? Many such cases, again. Yeah, they make their escape to go, you know, find these coordinates and find the lost city. And then

we learn a bit about what is happening with this, with this imperial officer. And we get a little cameo here from Admiral Azel. Oh, right. As he sort of, lays out, you know, the terms of Tolvon's exile and how, you know, she, you know, she's, she's lucky that, you know, she came to disgrace under, under Taj rather than Vader, because she, she would have been executed by now. And then, you know, everyone is off to the races to go find the last city. Yeah. That bit with Tolvan and Afra, um, like when they almost get captured, they almost get captured by a second as an ATAT pulls up on them.

There's the bit where Tovon is like, lower your weapons. This area is under direct imperial control. What are you doing here? And Afra says to her father, don't worry, I can handle this. We're lost.

Huge smile. And then Tolvan says open fire. Again, I just want to call this out as like, you never would have gotten this in the Vader comic. Styleized in this way. We might have gotten these exact events. We might have even gotten her saying, uh, we're lost with a little shrug.

But the like extra big smile, the sort of like the face she's making in the panel to the left of that with her like, she's like thinking of an excuse. We get this kind of weird chin squiggle to suggest her face is all scrunched up. Like, you know, I, I slowest out to talk about some of this stuff because it's important. It's like what sets the feeling you have when you're reading the comic? And I think it's, to go back, Rob, at the beginning you were like, it was a gin and tonic night for you.

This is a gin and tonic comic, you know, like you're having a little drink. Your, your little gremlin daughter, Afra is getting into trouble. You're, there's like a little Lupon the Third here.

You know what I mean? Like it's, it's a, it's a heist story and it has that sort of comedic, cartoony, heist energy specifically. So,

yeah. But I do like the Azel stuff that you were just talking about, too. And it's not like, can't throw in that space, right? Because in those scenes, we're getting this really dark room. She's lit by the hologram or like through the holograms. Everything is like blacks and blues. You know, instead of being this kind of like almost comedically out of proportion, stick buggy

version of herself, Tovon, and this scene is like very straight up and down. You can really see the mechanical parts around her neck and her face. Like all that stuff, you know, the comic has range, I guess, is what I, is what I would say. And the confidence to have these. things like live alongside each other. Yeah. Where a lot of, a lot of works don't trust themselves or trust their audience to sort of reconcile, like those extremes.

But, yeah, I'm thinking here about like a show we bring up sometimes Farscape, which is like one of the things that cements it in my mind is like one of the all-time greats is the saddest episode, the hardest watched in that series, is followed by their silliest episode that is like a tribute to roadrunner cartoons. interesting. I've not seen it at all. The two things go together surprisingly well, but the other thing is

the Roadrunner cartoon one also has some of the sad, like it is in dialogue with that incredibly sad episode you saw a moment ago. It is dealing with some of the same themes just from this like heightened completely comical aspect of it, but at no point, it's like you can be silly and still profound. You can you can be goofy and still tragic. And this is sort of able to to transition from, yeah, Tolvan is lonely, disgraced, you know, bearing this weight on her. And then also we're doing goofy tomb rating. But the tomb is scary as hell. It legitimately is that, you know, the characters are ridiculous.

But, you know, it is a dead city filled with, filled with desiccated skeletons in this, like, blast in the side of this asteroid. I also love, yeah, I love the design of this city. You know, we get there, it's an asteroid, but the asteroid almost, it's like an asteroid that has been blasted almost in half, almost like angularly. So you can almost think of it as like if a moon

had been blasted into two. You took half of the moon and then built a city into its kind of curved out center. I really love it in contrast to the very like, kind of, again, pulpy versions that we got in the earlier, imagined kind of versions from both Afra and her father. It's this kind of, you know, it feels Mediterranean almost, right?

These kind of like gray, white buildings with like big open air kind of windows. In fact, the whole place we learn is open air, even though it's on this asteroid because it has some sort of old, weird life support system. No one's like in helmets or anything like that. And yeah, filled with dead bodies, skeletal bodies. and not a very, it doesn't feel like they're stepping into the realm of an old epic. It feels like they're just walking through the corridors of the dead. Yeah, that it's a massacre.

That this is not, this is not sort of a resting place or a tomb. This is just, there are people here, they all died horribly. Right. And specifically they weren't giving funeral rights because I think he says that the Jedi, Jedi are typically cremated, which of course we know because we all saw Quigong get cremated. And so that's the fact that they're just bodies laying in the streets is not a great sign. And then she's looting. Oh, yeah.

Pick up some lightsabers, you know, flip those over at the vendor when you get back to base, you know. Those are some epic drops. I mean. Yeah, we played Cotor. You don't be just getting lightsaber. in the early game. This is issued five. You got to collect those, you know?

This is, yeah, this is the, in Cotor 2, when you find all of the ancient lifesavers from the comics that we read. Oh, that's right. Yes, from. Oh, God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ancient everything. It's like, holy hell, this is Ex-Arcoons jacket.

Yes, X-Arcoons. This is Ula Kaldroa's boots. Yeah. You know what? All that stuff should be re-canonized through Afro Comics. A hundred percent. And like not ever directly, you know what I mean? Not ever.

We should never get, maybe in a couple cases, okay, if we get like perfect answers. But it would be so sick to see her go to, uh, uh, Duxon, uh, the, the, like, Beast Moon of Duxin or whatever. Or is it Duxon and Anderan? where in the comics Anderan, we learned that it has like a secret Sith witch, like, queen or whatever. Like her poking around the palaces of Anderan would be so sick. Like kind of trying to piece together some stuff. And you get to play it for laughs in a way that would make all of it very funny.

Let Afra be the one who finds Kray's weird-ass, claw-shaped temple. God. Don't let her find the Star Forge, though. I think she would do bad things if she had the Star Forge. Oh, man. Or maybe not. Maybe that would be the thing. She'd sell it, unfortunately.

Yeah. Oh, man, what would she do with the Star Forge? And it's like, okay, now we need to take more pictures, the Star Forge. All right, one with the interface brought up. So you show what's working in good order. Yeah. Well, then she'd like sell it to a hut, like the coordinates to it. and the hut would keep them for himself,

and then the hut would get assassinated before he could ever go use it, and they'd be lost to all time again, you know? That way, do we have to worry about the fact that it's out there? Exactly. They dig deeper into this place, and as they do, they have to start spending their crystals.

It's like they're playing an adventure game, and because they fled Yavin IV so quickly, they left a bunch of their crystals behind. So they're having these conversations about, like, Okay, well, do we use the crystal to activate the force bridge so we can walk across to the thing? Which I'm glad like it didn't, it becomes like a plot point in one critical moment that gets resolved. But it's not like, we don't have to keep track of their crystals. They're not like, we only have two crystals left.

But it is a very funny concept to apply on top of this entire situation. It's, I enjoy thinking about them looking into their satchels and going, we only have seven crystals left, you know. It's especially funny I think following on the previous planet where when they get to the puzzle room she just says oh it's a puzzle She does say that

Yes I don't know what A gamer I believe Oh me too You know she and that friend That college friend of her were gaming They were up gaming for sure After shouldn't she be working on your paper

No don't worry about it I have a plan you know, let's do six more rounds of war zone. I actually, it's funny, like, I don't know why it works for me, because I've definitely encountered stuff recently even, where it leans into this sort of irreverent referential stuff that doesn't work. But her coming into a room and seeing the, you know, astronomical charts, the star maps of the galaxy as presented.

in Yavin Four Roons and going, oh, it's a puzzle. Does work for me. And maybe it's because I like Afra. Maybe it's a good illustration of the sort of like, you know, the thing that you learn about comedy or from stand-up comedians where it's like it's not the punchline that matters. It's like it's getting the room ready for the punchline and like the building out your set, building out like what comp or what jokes you tell in what order really matters because there's stuff that will kill once you have the room on your side.

And maybe this is like an example. of the comic getting the room on its side. So that by the time it's doing stuff that's like a little more outlandish or playing in spaces that would maybe annoy me if it were like that up front, here it's like, it's mostly landing for me. I'm not rolling my eyes the way I think I might be if I was frustrated by something else in the issue, you know, especially here where I think the art is good. I think that's the other thing.

It's just like the design, the character design and the character expressions just work for me in a way that brings me in instead of keeps me. me an arm length away. Actually, I think that is something, though, is sometimes self-reference and being arch goes hand in hand with, like, slightly schlocky, low production values. Yeah. Where it's like, oh, you can't be too mad at us because we're just a little, we're just a little Netflix show. We're just a little, we're just Marbles Agents of Shield. You know, we're doing this on a shoestring. And so sometimes it's grading because it's like, yeah, I can tell you're not like the other stuff.

Like it's like I know and you can kind of stop being so ingratiating about it Because you haven't like carved out in identity for yourself and here it looks like a million bucks It's it's just it's just kind of cool like you know the next the next frame the the moment where the droids bail on her As they see the stormtroopers coming out is this it's it's a page laid out with a series of like very wide aspect ratio letter boxes as they duck into an alley while this like troop of the snow troopers goes past. And that page is just awesome. Like it's a page that just sets up for why they're, why they're going to cut and run and leave her for dead.

And it's incredible. And so you're kind of, you're kind of all in on it because this can, this thing is operating at a high level. And so it doesn't feel like self-effacing when it, it throws those levers. Yeah, it's just so well balanced. Like, I think, like, it's, it knows when to deploy, like, funny beat,

then, like, somewhat serious, revealing character, you know, a history. Then, okay, cool new character we get with, um, this, you know, Imperial officer. What's her name? Tolvin, yeah. Tolvin, yeah. Then it's like funny expressionistic style. Then it's like beautiful, you know, page of panels depicting motion. And like it just like it moves through all of these different comic dynamics in a way that I think it's just so well balanced where you really get, you.

get to enjoy kind of like all of what this medium has to offer through this, without having to just choose one lane, it feels. Because I think, like, when Afra is being sincere about, like, you know, you weren't there for, you know, you missed all of this. And then you watch as, like, her father's attention just, like, gets just, over to the shiny new thing in the room and then there's like the funny beat like I just think it really knows how to

move on from a certain beat or bit or you know point and then change up the vibes like as needed kind of to keep from comic fatigue for any of these given you know kind of moods or things. Yeah, I think it's just like hugely part of the beauty of cartooning.

And it's like really great that they, that like, you know, that they, they were moving in this mode. Like, you know, I don't want to over compare to the Star Wars comic, the Darth Vader comics, because there were great moments in those and they did like dramatic paging and staging and lighting and all of that really well. But I think like, you know, I think of some comic artists I know who like will say to themselves like, you know, somebody is only going to spend 16 seconds looking at this image. You know, it's not like what is important about the page? What is important about what I'm communicating here? And it's not like are Afra's eyebrows completely unmodel here? Like is it communicating the thing that I want it to?

and if I can take those other moments like not as seriously I can have these sort of big like quote unquote art pages where I'm really letting my limit break off and I think that this sort of like camera changing to the droids and this like you know

the panel changes the the way that your eye moves over the page changes like to have that feel dynamic as you're going through it and the fact that like, you know, the punchline that you sit with, with Afra, you really only sitting with for a couple of seconds, whereas in a TV show or whatever, it's sort of like, I have to wait

for the camera to move, I have to wait for the actor to move, and I have to wait for the smirk. And like, you know, I love TV. I've heard this about here. Those are all bad things. But, like, there's something to how snappy and fluid comics can be that, like, reading this really feels like a celebration of it. And I think that's why it feels kind of like a breath of fresh air. And like especially when it's like so like the character designs are so on point with getting these motions across too. Like with Talvin being so like sharp and severe and like the only ways that she's changing over the panels is like she's either looking taller or longer or sharper until the moments where her hair is like out. Like that is really the only like quote unquote off model thing we see is like when her hair is fucked up as Afras like leaving the Gavin.

whereas Afra gets to be a loony tune. Like sometimes she's wider. Sometimes she's, she's grinning. Like, it just, like, it feels like these are the way that these characters move throughout the world. And the art gets to, like, communicate that about them really well. And I do, I think it's probably worth saying, again, I don't want to, like, shit on previous artists that we've encountered. But the fact that we haven't ever said these words about previous Star Wars comics we've been reading, I think is illustrative.

of the difference in stylistic ambition. And I don't mean that in terms of like ambition as in quality level. Like, oh, person A, didn't even care. This person did care. But I mean, like, the particular ambitions of this book are different than the old public books that we read, then the mall jail book that we read, the Mother Towson one, than any of the Vader stuff we read. The mall jail book.

Yeah, sorry to remind me. But, like, you know, Mother Toulouse. should be drawn like this because she is camp she is cartoon right like um she would do well in a style like this i think um and so and so i do think that it's like it's it's telling that none of the stuff we're saying is like oh wow comics never do this comics do this all the time but the ones we've read on the on the show i don't believe any of them have gotten here really in this way so yeah i think we've seen a lot of like a lot of beautiful stuff.

Like, I think when I think of, like, all of the, you know, ex-arc, like, that whole run of stuff, like, all of that was, like, very beautiful or, like, incredibly detailed or meticulous. And that was really fun to kind of live in a world that was, it felt so kind of fleshed out and material in that way and like fantastical. But it didn't really afford anything to like the pacing or the kind of emotional expression. Like it felt like very aesthetically driven in a way that I really enjoyed at the time. Like I remember, you know, loving the.

the aesthetics of a lot of those panels. But as someone who's not a particularly avid comic reader, I'm finding myself just really enjoying what the medium is offering in these comics here. It just needs to see this mode in Star Wars. I think the closest thing that we get to it normally is the animated stuff, right? Clone Wars and Rebels can kind of get here sometimes.

and they're certainly more like that than some of the live action stuff, you know, like, we're big Acolyte defenders. The Ackleite couldn't hit this mode. And I say Ackleite because we like that show. I didn't want to like just chin on Obi-Wan or Mandeur or Bacet. You know, and we like the early Mandalorian stuff too. And it, and in some ways, part of the charm of actually the early Mandalorian stuff is its range, Because sometimes it can get into, especially with the puppets, the cartoonish mode that works so well.

You know, I think about stuff like the little frog alien eating the eggs. Sorry, the frog alien was not eating the eggs. Grogu was eating the frog alien's eggs. Well, he's also a frog. I guess he's kind of a little frog. I guess two different types of little frogs. And like that stuff and some of the animation, not the animation, some of the puppeting there has that sort of play that some of those

this more cartoonish stuff can have. And it's just like, that is Star Wars. I think maybe that's the actual thing, especially we just watched the original trilogy. Like, there's a lot of moments where there's a little freak on screen and the more realistic style that we get sometimes doesn't really capture that essence of a little freak.

And sometimes the little freak is just a human. Sometimes a human is a little freak in Star Wars. And so it's nice to have Afrika to be a gremlin in this book. Yeah, I, I, I want to be careful to make it, not make it sound like what we're saying, or specifically what I'm saying, is like, this comic is doing it right and other comics were doing it wrong. Because, like, you know, the ex-arcoon stuff, like, pulling on, like, Rome and Golden Age and, like, Hercules type beat. Like, that was, like, really aesthetically great for the lane that they were in. The Darth Vader comic going for this, like, realism or, like, you know, your, you're painting.

or drawing Darth Vader as beautifully as you can and like having him fit these environments and like having the whole comic be about the gravity of like what is Darth Vader doing? What is he feeling? If he's on the page, I want to be thinking about what Darth Vader is doing. You know?

And like that was, I mean, I loved that when we were reading those comics. But like the Afra that she's able to be here compared to when I met her in Darth Vader and was like, is she doing a picture? Because, like, nobody in that comic had been doing bits yet, and she, like, dropped on her knees in front of Darth Vader was like, oh, I pledge myself to you. I was like, is that, what's going on to your opera?

So, like, you know, that this feels like it is appropriately an Afra comic feels really refreshing and makes the character so much easier to kind of swallow and enjoy. Yeah, agreed. I was just thinking that's something that Ali brought up where it sometimes feels like in some of this comics that the features almost seem traced from like the films. And I think what what leads that feeling, I think, is that the characters are much more wax than the actors ever are. Yes. And so that is why like they are two composed and action figure like in so many of those panels when you know Harrison Ford would have given you a bigger reaction in those moments, right? like you you you would have you would have seen you you would have seen uh like mark hamill

turn the big earnest eyes on you a little bit more and give you give you a little bit more than those get and here in this in this other mode the characters can be more expressive that like you can and and you can yeah just do do a lot more with like how the characters emote because they don't have to behave according to human, like, rules at all. They can just become an embodiment of the feeling that's sort of passing through them at that moment. Or in the same comic, they can be much more nuanced and realistic. And this just sort of is like playing fast and loose with how it goes about it. And that, the other thing is this.

I already brought up, like, sometimes it feels like they are changing stylistic modes from moment to moment. And I think it happens again here where we get the entire move through the lost city And that's done in this one style and then they get to the central terminal the big green room Where they find immortal rurrs remains Yeah And now the entire thing becomes reality breaking apart in this like monochrome green haze it is like is the way magic is often drawn in comics, right?

Where like the frame, the frame doesn't like seem to physically have like corporeal reality, right? Like things are sort of breaking, breaking through frames. Things are literally melting into the background. And the characters are stuck in here. And it just sort of like changes those modes again. Sort of it will. And I feel like in the previous run of comics, we looked at,

a book stayed in one mode. Like the look of that, the look of that issue was the look of that issue. You wouldn't see the style just like completely shift until you saw like an issue title page. That wasn't going to happen. And here it's like, no, now it's time to inhabit a different artistic space

for this mood. And it's, it's kind of intoxicating in this, in this run where it's like, yep, now we're doing a different scene. And we're going to draw it completely differently. Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of the Tartakovsky Star Wars stuff, right? Where obviously there are really big moments of that in that where like the Anakin learning the,

the backstory of the alien species with the like dark hand thing. You remember that, their invisible hand thing? But even throughout it in general, I think about like Anakin fighting ventrists on the top of the Yavinfor. Mount or the Yavnfor pyramids, there's some stuff that was happening there stylistically that was like distinct from bits of what was happening with the clone troopers. And I think that it's like really cool to see that here. I think that's like to go back to Allie what you were saying before of the like, I'm not saying the other stuff was always bad. I am saying some of it was bad. I do think that the stuff that's like explicitly traced does not look good. And that's like

a known thing with with some of those artists or with Laraca at least. And I'm not, I know that a lot of comic artists do some tracing and I think that there's probably a way to do some of it that works. That stuff didn't work for me. But it is more the like, it's a breadth of fresh air to see the range that's here. And like you said, Rob, the willingness to shift inside of a single issue to where the story needs it, which it does here

because they have encountered, they've solved the dilemma. They figured out what was up with these immoral chasing, the immortality chasing Jedi sect um guy put himself in a computer didn't he well he didn't even actually do that guy made a copy of his mind and put it in a computer oh damn it's like a fucked up colista situation it is wow when we're back to the EU yet again uh but it's not even what if colista was evil uh he's in there but the version of him in there immediately believes that the version that put him in there is a fake evil clone version of him.

And so the computer lore RR, RUR, ROR, ROR, ROR, ROR, ROR, yeah, exactly. Which I believe this was a little, this is a little science fiction joke.

The word robot comes from a book called RUR, Rossum's Universal Robots. That's like where the word comes from. So I think the whole time you should have been like, oh, his name is Rur, like the Russian science fiction novel. And it turns out that the robotic brain kills the real version of him. And then basically begins to execute everybody else who is alive in the Ordu city,

which is why they were all gunned down in the streets the way they were. We got a real like drone. this also has a kind of 40K thing a little bit, right? Of like the robotic mind is super dangerous. It like spreads. It's like contagious almost.

It starts taking over. I think we see it take over non-or-do like robots, droids. No, again, this feels so Necron tomb world to me. Yeah, it does. Where it's like it is turn on one machine and suddenly all the machines are on. And all hell's breaking loose.

But also, again, they are machines. They do not look like droids. They do not look like Star Wars droids. They're twisted. They're sickly looking. They're like they look corrupted by the magic that is powering them. Even though they're black and green like necrone stuff is I'm going to post a necrone image for, for Allie and Nally, just in case you've never encountered a necron before. The necrons are one of the main.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Bionicle. Yeah, they're a little bit like evil biographical. They're so cool. They're pretty cool. They're pretty cool. The palette is even the same, but like deep green and black sometimes.

Yeah. Well, you got two 40K guys on this. The same artist, right? So you got Gillen, who was written 40K stuff and is a huge 40K player. And then you have someone who has done art for games workshop on this stuff. and we get some very good homage here. Yeah. Also, I've been saying the Aspect Ordu.

I'm sorry, it's the Ordu Aspectu. Very different. Apologies. Yeah, but I wanted to see if either of them have talked about it before. I wonder if anyone just straight up said, yeah, we love the Necron so much. We love. It is freaky to see how, yeah, to see the kind of, um like hive mind resurrect uh across the citadel and uh in front of uh tord tollvin herself is

is really freaky and cool um i love a i love a hive mind moment really good agreed and they begin to yeah go ahead i like her bargaining with with rur the evil droid where he's like just kill you and she's like, but then I won't tell you what you missed. And he's like, well, I could torture it out of you. That would take time or you could just let or you just tell me what's up here. And then I'll then I'll fill you in. And, you know,

then he reveals he's a complete asshole because once he realizes how much time has passed, he's, he's pissed because he had plans for galactic domination. That all that's, all that's a dead letter now. I love waste. Yeah, I do love when he wakes up.

He's like, when is it? When is it? All the different robots he's taken over are all saying, when is it? Because, yeah, it's like his plan doesn't work anymore. The galaxy has moved on, you know? All of his contacts are gone. That's so sad. Strategies are wasted.

Imagine you sleep through your own domination, like, L. L. Big Al. Also, wait, do we skip, like, like, two of the best Afro moments here, which is when... Okay, first she's like, don't be naive to her father. Like, don't... Okay, I'm going to go to the page.

Please. Don't be naive. If you remove the gun from my head, I may be tempted to stab you. And he says, you wouldn't. And she says, you don't know me at all, dad, while the panel is like a zoom in on her eyes. And then also her revealing that she, like, had a crystal the entire time to turn this on, but was like just hiding it from him the entire time.

Just sort of rub it in his face that like you came all the way here and you fucked up. It's very good. It's like, you know, there's, this is the part of it where I'm like, I'm surprised that this is working as well as it does because it's one thing to like jump between I'm a serious comic and I'm a serious, like, I'm Looney Tunes. But it's another thing to be like, okay, we're going to. to keep stopping and having this like deep family conversation. It's like the like Carth wants to talk to you vibe. Oh my God.

Oh my God. Yeah. It's a deeply hated aspect of that game. And Afra is really pulling that here. Yeah. But it's fine. She's earned it. Yeah. It's funny because, you know, I don't know if you remember this, but when we first read the Vader comic, I read a little interview with Gillen who was saying, that Afra was there because the Vader book needed comic relief. And Vader can't do that, really. He can be dry sometimes. And you can kind of laugh at the way he handles a situation, but he can't like crack jokes. And so coming into this comic, I was very much like, I wonder how

it's going to be balanced. Like, I wonder where we're going to get our serious moments from if Afra maintains her kind of comedic center. And she is still funny. but she can, I mean, one, we have other characters. I think the Tollivan stuff gives us a little bit of the imperial, dry, you know, personal stuff going on. But like, she can also do it. Afra's relationship with her father is the heart of this arc that we read. The big conversation that they have here about whether or not he was a good dad and whether or not her mom really did say that she hated him and stuff like, like, All that does just work.

I think pacing goes a long way to that. It's the right blend of adventure, comedy, serious beat, and finding that balance is really hard, but none of it ever overstays its welcome. And the creative team finds the right place to pivot between modes, you know. It's not important that we learn, I think a worst version of the comic would have had the Yavinfour crystal puzzle scene be about solving the crystal puzzle. It doesn't even fuck about how they solve the crystal puzzle.

What's important is that they have an activity to do while they're talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The fact that they're just, they just put the crystals in the place. That's right. We don't need to, like, math it out. Exactly. Like, I really respect the fact that Afra is is truly like a three-dimensional character here.

Like she's not, it's interesting when you brought up the fact that Afro was needed as like this comic relief in Vader where she really, you know, she kind of only had that lane to play in. You know, I think we got glimpses at her moving outside of that. But she really gets to be, she doesn't have to do one bit here she gets to kind of move between different modes and I think that

uh works so well in like I said earlier like I mean avoiding fatigue of of the characters themselves of the tone of you know like it just it it really does move through things in a way that keeps the reader engaged and entertained, maybe most importantly. Yeah. Yeah, I do think there's also something in that it gets to be interpersonal. It gets to be something that another character is either defending themselves or has their own opinions on Afra in the situation, whereas when she hit this beat in the Vader comics, it really felt like she was just monologuing towards the camera because it was

like, oh, this is the moment we're going to learn about Affra's backstory or whatever. And the other characters and me as a reader just sort of had to sit there and listen to it. And sometimes barely even reacted. Like, you know, the headmaid doctor

guy, we were talking about four, you know, gets to say, I'm sorry, but then she just sort of moves on from that. Vader kind of didn't give a fuck when she was saying that she did him. And like, you know, he's Vader. You know, I care about what Vader cares about. you know what I mean?

So it just like, I don't know, it just like feels better. Yeah, I think, you know, if we work through some of the like specific stuff that's happening here, I kind of blew past it. But in that conversation you've both been talking about, here's the bit where he specifically talks about why he's been obsessed with them. because she's kind of hit him with the like, so dad, like, now that you know you'll never know what happened with them, like, how's it feel, you know? And he says, I was trying to bring light back to the universe. She says, you wanted to save the universe? You have no idea how scary the universe is. I know I've never been able to forget.

And he says, I knew. That's why I chased the ordu, Chelly. Because again, her name is Chelly, Chelly Lona, Afra. When the Jedi died, he says, we all saw what came next and we had to try and find a way out. I always loved the ordo, but it was only when the galaxy burned that I actively chased them. I was one man. I was no warrior. What difference could I make?

I could bring back the ordu. Then we'd have a galaxy safe for my daughter to grow up in. Lona, your mother didn't agree. She thought we should live without fear and damn the consequences. make a home out in the middle of nowhere and live. It wasn't about me. It was never about me. Did she ever say she hated me?

No. She just thought you were wrong, says Afra. Any kind of sighs. That's Lona. She lived her life without compromise. Neither of us could deal with the idea that we were both wrong about what was best for you. I'm sorry. You were caught in the middle.

We were so scared of being bad parents that we were the worst parents. I'm still doing it now. I forced you to come here. The Sava, the Sava, was. which is the Sava is like the rank of the professor, basically, in her archaeology school. The Sava you stole the symbiates from died last month. He had no desire for his posterity to be undermined by just publishing everything you've done. But he sent me the details.

He knew you hated me and presumed the reverse was true. I leaked some of it. If you get out of here, it's easy to get your doctorate back. All you have to do, and this is where she says the bit that you talked about before. No, don't tell me. yet, don't be naive. If you remove the gun from my head, I may be tempted to stab you. And you read the rest of this.

But the idea of like, there's so much there. And like so much going back to what we keep talking about, the kind of parental child relationship here of like the way he saw the situation when the empire came to power was, if only I go find and resurrect the ancient Jedi order, then my daughter can live a happy life. because I'm just one guy. And Star Wars is so much about like, what can you do if you're just one guy? And the answer is like you've got to work with everybody else who's just one guy to win and him not doing that.

And then her growing up to be this incredibly, this loner who pushes people away. There's a real like you hate your parents and then like adopt some of their, some of the reasons you hate them into your own personality thing here. but then seeing her do the bit of like, and this kind of goes back to like what she really believe about the world at the complexity of that. Like, hey, don't help me because then I won't have a reason to. Don't help me yet. You need to keep a gun on my head.

You need to keep blackmailing me in order to get me to help you because otherwise I won't. But I'm going to tell you that because I know I actually want to help you. But the way I move through the world is such that if you took that away, it would push me to act in a way that I kind of don't want to act in, but I'll feel as necessary. It's interesting, you know? She's not the first character in Star Wars who kind of moves like that. Lando moves like that sometimes.

Han can move like that sometimes, though not as brutally. And it's, it's, with a really interesting beat to turn the page and read that position, said so clearly of like, you're forcing me to be a good person. I want to be a good person. Keep forcing me. don't, I'll stop being one. Mm-hmm. Good.

She's pretty good. I like her. Yeah, and then they summon this evil robot ghost. And then they... But takes up the whole screen or the whole page with a big gaseous green cloud. I... One more thing on the art here is I love the fact that previous to this, the... Like, both of them, they're in like this, like, this, like, free...

freezing cold place and both of them as they talk they have you know the the kind of condensation of their breath forming like little clouds in front of them and they're hard hard outlined like they remain within the kind of

drawing style as we've seen so far which makes seeing this actual gasses or this other gaseous thing like this you know maybe not gaseous, maybe just immaterial of some sort. Very cool.

Like, I just think the fact that there's such an emphasis on kind of maintaining the drawing styles in the, like, clouds of breath in front of them. And then you get to see, oh, like, they didn't have to do that. Like, they would allow themselves to go outside of that to depict something, you know, otherworldly or. kind of out of this, out of this rule of, I don't know, existence, I guess. I don't know. It's cool.

Yeah. And then it's the Imperials are caught up in all this as they make their escape with the big fuck off crystal. And close call. We got Tolvin off the collapsing bridge. Doesn't look like we got the stormtroopers, but they're not shown following their death, but I assume they're dead, right? I'd assume they're dead. They're gone. Yeah, these robot droid things kind of tear them apart, it looks like.

They're not, they're at the very least not up to the fight. Yeah. And then they're making their skateboarder the shuttle. Yeah. I have to shout out the direction here to include Afra, like putting her hair up in a ponytail to when she fucking means business and is about to like get this shit done. It was

so funny but so good. And she pulls out one of the lightsabers to destroy the kind of crystal that's powering this whole thing. Yeah. In some way, which shoutouts to the fact that African wield a

lightsaber. Pretty cool stuff. Yeah. I think when you're wielding it to indiscreet destroy the big robot power core, you know? You just get that job done. Yeah, it's not, it's not, it's not, oh, Afra could be a Jedi. She's going to get the job done with whatever she's got around her, which I like.

It's, it's, it's not like Afra has a connection to the force reveal. It's, he's going to take care of this in with whatever tool she has at her disposal, which. The former I would be a little bit more, less excited about, I guess. Yeah, especially knowing that the next cover has Luke on it. I would not be like, oh, finally, Afra gets the Jedi training she needs. Oh, God.

Go ahead, Allie. I also just love, had, like, the hair-up transition almost looks like a second character. It's like a real Clark Kent Superman situation. Oh, really. Her face is so much more severe. Like, she is not joking around anymore. Like, it even sort of like, she, she, she has this sort of like harsh, I am suddenly

an Aon Flux character throughout these, these panels. And then it's almost like that effect on her character starts to melt when her hair starts to get undone once they're finally on the shuttle. Like she becomes rounder. Her eyes are bigger again. And like, it's so, it's very well done. It's like the, the spell, the ultimate only lasts as long as like, the more strands that are bound up. But as they break loose, you're right, like she was losing the potency.

Yeah. Until she's getting beat up by this droid, uh, who she's saved by the city explodes. And the droid loses the reprogramming from Rur the immortal and apologizes. I'm sorry. I was not clear to strangle you. And then there's one last little bit of a showdown here with Tolvin who pulls a gun on Afra and makes quite the impression before her dad stabs her in the back with a lightsaber. And then the last thing we see is Talvin being dropped off having been put in a sling. Yeah.

And Afra notes that she should probably kill her, but she's cute. She's cute She's cute Good reason to let her live Yeah There's like There's such a good Like meat cute

Almost vibe in the panels of like Afra is seen Down the barrel of Tolvin's gotten Like it is taking up just as much of the panel as she is And she's like This sort of wide innocent expression And then it cuts the Tulvin Who's like pointing the gun

And like glaring and like Just like they look really good And their characters are so... They're so blue. They're so blue. It's really... And she stops snarling. Because when she first pulls the gun on the previous panel, her mouth is huge and her teeth are out.

She goes, who are you? And that's when after her, I'm... Well, I'm... And also, Allie, to your point, hair back down at this point. She, like, literally takes her hair down and is then... She's a baby. She's baby. Yeah, exactly.

Even Tolvin's sort of, like, fluffy, I'm stressed is. starting to go down too. Like there's a lot of hair work here. She's like when a cat's hair stands on end and then it like slowly settles again. You know? Yes. It's so good. It's so good.

And then yeah, let's her live. It steals the imperial shuttle that they've escaped on. Her dad says, you have very bad taste in women. And she says, well, dad, I hear that runs in the family. And then they're off to, uh, there's a, there's a switcheroo. And she's held out of the real crystal. Yeah. And she wants to do a deal with Chris Ant.

who left her, right? Right. Who abandoned her on the city because he was like, I'm getting out of here. You owe me money. I'm not staying around. I'll take the ship. So funny.

I love this flexibility to the life debt. He's not taking it as seriously as chewy does. He's going to get the fuck out of there. Is there a life debt? I thought that there was. I thought that's why he hangs out with her. I thought she's a raily. She just owes him money.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's one of those great... I think that's the debt. Yes. The debt is her debt to him, actually. It's literal. Yeah. I think it's one of those things...

Literal money debt. The thing that he... The thing that happens earlier... Oh, maybe this didn't happen in this... Was it this comic or was this the Star Wars one I read? There's a bit where... There's a bit where someone offers to pay off Chrysanon. Maybe it's...

Maybe it's one of the big head guys. in this. Is that in this? And she's like, oh, no, no, no. I owe him so much more money that he's invested in me staying alive and being on my, because I owe him so much. Like, I'm an investment at this point for him that has to pay off. And so he's going to keep me alive and, like, not betray me for that reason, which is very funny. So it's not a life debt in the, she saved his life sense. It's a life debt in, as in, it's like, it's like how a bank would want you to live so you can pay them back. You know?

It's a life debt in that he will live for life. That's right. That's right. Exactly. Now we also get her in a like a leather jacket look here at the very end, which is pretty good. It's so good.

Yeah. And she gets bangs and a bob. Like she like gets a whole new. She sold those lightsabers, you know? She feels like, if she feels like refresh. She's got some more layers of some sort. Sort of, but also she looks pretty hard up in that bar. I think it's going well.

Yeah, things are also pretty dire. This kind of feels like a, the way things end with the arc with her dad is like very vulnerable. Like I'm still, we're still family. We still care about each other. And like it ends with her sort of feeling small a little bit and like younger. Yeah. And the next place we see her kind of seems like a reaction to that where it's like, I'm hard as hell.

What do you mean? I'm not, I'm not, I'm not soft. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a badass. Don't fuck with me. I bought this bike or jacket. I'm sad. I'm about to start crying into this drink in this, in this bar. Oh my God.

I have no money and no, no prospects. And I mean, so when Chrysanin shows up, he's even got kind of a like, again, dog senses you're sad and cautiously approaches. His face. Because he knows he did a bad. Oh, I hadn't noticed his face before in this, in this picture. Yeah. No, like, Chrysanin is considerably more dog in this, in this arc of comics. And like, again, way funnier. Yeah.

Cute, funny. Yeah. I do love that they drop off the fake rur crystal to specifically the part. place she stole BT's consciousness from back in the Vader comics. That's like the quarantined. I forget what the exact name of the place was, but it's like a world where they keep dangerous artifact, you know, ancient technologies that can't be trusted out in the world. I don't know how she got one over on them with this fake crystal, but maybe they just put it

in the vault. Yeah, how did she get that fabricated? No, she's got ways. Let her cook. And that's her first Afra comic. I really liked it. I'm excited for more. I'm sorry to tell you that we have to read more Star Wars comic next

because we're back in a crossover event. Just like Vader Down, we have a back and forth here. And I know we've been talking about the traced comic. Oh, we're not tracing Luke anymore. I just turned a couple pages. Well, we're not tracing Luke in this issue because this issue is the, well, Yeah. Oh my God. Afra is so...

Yeah, what's happening here? We'll get there. She's giving Goth Padma? She is giving Goth Padma at it? At this point, Laraca, who was the Vader artist, has taken over Star Wars. And so we're back to some of his art in this next one. And we'll see how it goes. We will be reading.

I'll just read the particular issues out. You can get this as The Screaming Citadel is like a trade paperback. which, by the way, someone wrote it to note that their library's digital thing, Libby, has all of the digital editions of all of these books. Oh, it's crazy. So did mine. Yeah, well, there we go. So keep that in mind. And you can get them that way.

Star Wars the Screaming Citadel collects the following issues. The Screaming Citadel won. Star Wars 31. Dr. Afra 2016-7. Star Wars, 2015-32, and Dr. Afra 8. If you're reading those

in individual comics, that's what you do. But this is just fully collected in the Afra Omnipus. This is fully collected in the Star Wars, the Screaming Citadel trade paperback.

You can find that, again, in the library or in digital copies online, or in an individual, like, floppy, not floppy, but a soft paperback trade. Those seem to be available,

used pretty pretty readily. And I'll note, I think we're going into, maybe the name gives it away, but I think we're going into like horror mode for this one. This originally came out as a sort of Halloween, an October release. So, yeah. This is the pumpkin races pieces are hitting.

That's right. That's right. Yes. Perfect timing. Yeah. Wait. Pumpkin, Reese's pieces? Or Reese's, Reese's cups?

New shape. Well, no, because new shape dropped because they have like, you know how they have the like bags of candy now that are like uncovered? It's like tiny versions of candy, but it's just in a big bag. I don't know what you're talking about. No, no, no, no. This is a revolution for topping like ice cream and shit. They make tiny little versions of the candy all loose in a bag and not individually

and not wrapped. seeing you just like, right? It's sort of like shake it out like serial. You're talking about the really tiny ones that are individually wrapped. I see. I didn't know about these. Because I once bought a bag of things that I thought was going to be that, but then it was individually wrapped Kit Katz.

Not the fun size Kit Katz. I mean somebody took one like one like rail of a Kit Kat, cut it in half and then put plastic wrapper around it. So you'd unwrap one bite of a KitKet. It was one of those sadistic things that were seen. Single bar, not the double bar? One little, Austin. It sounds like half bar.

It was break it in half and then cut the bar in half and wrap it. No. That's not a kid cat. It was fucked up. It was fucked up. That's not even a kit. That's a K. That's a key. It was one of the most infuriating mistakes I have made at the grocery store.

I ate those so sullenly Fucked up Yeah Just absolutely hateful Anyway I gotta get to this bottom of this Pumpkin Reese's Situation that's the first I'm hearing

Do they have these last year? This is this new product I think this is new I feel like this is a shrinkation Sort of why not Oh wait wait are they like tricking us They're like taking away like are we getting less Reese's cup

would never. But they're shaped like a pumpkin, pumpkin hewool piggies. The pumpkin Reese's cups in the, like, cardboard thing are still available. Okay. But you could also get mini pumpkins unwrapped, which I have now shared. Can I just say that the large pumpkin is too much? It's a lot. The balance is a little off.

Yeah. It's too much. And so this seems perfect, actually. Oh. Because I want to be. in the Halloween spirit, but a whole pumpkin, Reese's, is a lot.

I can do it. I can do it. Okay. You know what? If you don't like them, mail them my way. I'll send them over to you. I will.

You get out of mine. Yep. All recipes out of their, Andrea Lobis tried them last year when they first debuted, and the pumpkins quickly became a household favorite. Reese, quote, Reese's mini pumpkins are the perfect balance of chocolate

and peanut butter for me. And the smaller size makes them so snackable. They're almost too good. Almost. My whole family couldn't stop eating them. You ever think we're in the wrong business? You ever think that we should be out here reviewing Reese's pumpkins? Every time I see someone on Instagram getting like a mailed like a big box full of like pasta jars.

Yeah. Like sauce and like a specialty like influencer food. I'm like, what the fuck is. I am haunted by this forever. I only saw it once and there were like three boxes of it left. I only grabbed one. It was Mexican hot chocolate flavored cinnamon toast crunch. Oh, that sounds like.

And it was the greatest cereal I have ever had. And I was like, where is the rest of it? And it's gone. Yeah. It's all gone. Wow. That's a shame. That sounds really good.

Yeah, it's limited edition right here. It shouldn't be. You should write them. letter. Yeah. Yeah. Out of stock. Change.org right now petition to bring back Mexican hot chocolate. Abolish ice.

Abolish ice. Mexican hot chocolate. Cinnamon toast crunch for all. Yeah. God. Just gonna. That's how we're bringing America back, folks. That's going to bring us all together.

Finally, something we can all unite around. Yeah. Just be like this is how we, And this is how we're going to make peace with the racists who put us in this position. It's like, oh, I don't think your racism will be any match for this Mexican-not chocolate-flavored cinnamon toast crunch. It's the Pepsi ad. The Americans love breakfast cereal. The Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad, except for you with the Severance, yeah.

One person will have the milk, the other person will have the cereal, and you bring it together. American breakfast together at the table at home. You just created the political ad of 2026. That's it. This is how we're getting out of us.

Oh, like 40 years from now. It'll be like an answer on Jeopardy. This cereal ad started the Great American Renaissance. What is American breakfast? That's correct. All right, well, that will do it for this edition, Dr. Afra. This next one, I'm in a mistake of, like, leafing forward a few pages.

Yeah. Like, bro, it's crazy. I don't know what's happening. And also, like, this is like anime, Luke. This is anime, Luke. No, everyone is, is sex, sexily, uh, is, is, is sexually sexified? Yes. Yep.

Restily boobly. Yes. This is, I believe, an artist we have not actually encountered yet. This first issue is Marco Chiquetto, who we have not run into yet. So we will see his distinctive style before we get back to Laraca and continue with Kev Walker, I believe, for the rest of them. Oh, my God. Yeah, I looked ahead and saw Luke in an outfit that is unbelievable. Holy shit.

I thought these things only happened in fanfathers. fiction. But no, they're happening in the comics, folks. And that's, and that's why I'm hooked. All right. Well, until next time, uh, please rate and view us on your podcast platform of choice. And remember, there's no problem in your relationship that is so severe that it couldn't be fixed by resurrecting the or two aspect.