A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 141: Star Wars / Doctor Aphra: The Screaming Citadel

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

What if Doctor Aphra had to team up with Luke Skywalker and they both had to dress good as hell? And what if they had to go to a gothic planet run by sexy vampiric queen and her coterie of stylish and evil thralls? And what if two of the most interesting parts of the last arc of Aphra was here, too? Sounds pretty cool, huh? Well, what if I told you that a premise this fun hasn't been undercut by the limits of an artistic style since the earliest days of Clone Wars? What if I told you that the nature of the comic book crossover haunts this book more than any supernatural force does? What if I told you that the most horrific faces in this book don't belong zombified aliens but to heroes we know and love, traced by a hand driven to a sort of malicious indifference normally reserved for otherwordly nightmare beings.  Ah well, there's always next time. Support the show by going to Patreon.com/civilized! Next Time: Star Wars: Doctor Aphra Vol. 2: Doctor Aphra and the Enormous Profit Show Notes https://x.com/SW_Moment/status/1584521456977063936   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 Zakini, 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 and various other special editions. So before we convene the court in the matter of AMCA versus Sal Laraca, I'm just going to say this about the screaming said,

You can't win them all. Yeah. Yeah. Here's the thing. I like when there's ideas. Mm. Mm-hmm. I like when there's like new ideas that are not what we've been doing.

Uh-huh. And that's about where I'm at. With this art. Here. There's stuff here. There's stuff here. There's stuff here. It's mostly the visual experience.

Yeah. Because sometimes, sometimes I'm like, we've got some cool effects going on. We've got some cool weather stuff. Yeah. Luke, Luke, standing there, had to do it to him at one point. He had to do it to him. And by due to him, you mean turn into tuxedo mask? Yeah.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Perhaps. I don't know that we've ever read. an arc in any of these comics that starts so high and then like it doesn't end so low but it just fizzles a little bit about

yeah yeah I mean it fizzles in a lot of ways it fizzles visually maybe most importantly but also it abandons I think yeah I had read the first few pages when we last did this I was like oh we're in for a tree because he was getting his he was getting

his uh evening evening wear together he was he was getting fancy going and he was getting bullied by numerous women and I was like this is great it's going to be Luke at like a dark high society suarez and there's going to be like and then like three pages past where I read it's like sware over everyone out yeah story that that part is done and I was like oh I wonder what'll happen next and the answer is nothing as interesting as what was being set up and it goes into more like standard adventure fair in ways that, yeah, like, I think might feel a little repetitive and just don't have quite the,

doesn't have the, uh, enough interest in the text. I would say there's not a lot you can draw from the way this adventure plays out. There's not a like character work that's happening, like changes your relationship to these people or complicates it. And so it's like Luke and Africa go a place and they do a few things. Yeah. And the gang shows up. doesn't have to get them out of a jam.

I think it's the second part where it all falls apart. And in a way, I think this is such a great illustration of the epic highs and lows of the comic book crossover. Epic high. Wow, it's fun to have farm boy Luke get kind of bullied by Dr. Afra. This is a Clark Kent and Lois Lane pairing if ever I have fucking seen one. You have the farm boy with the heart of gold and you have the worldly well-educated woman who knows that things are not as similar.

as the farm boy thinks they are, and they meet in the middle, and one of them, the woman bullies him a lot, and it's fun. And then the epic lows of the comic book crossover is, we got to get all these characters in here. The whole cast has to be here.

And that means that we lose page count to them and need to tie them into, like, the moral of the crossover in some way. And we now, Leia has to have an arc in this. And again, it's a crossover. It is the Star Wars comic and the Dr. Afrocomic crossing over. I get it, but I like...

Does everyone need to come? Does everyone need to come through? I just, I... If this was just a Dr. Afro arc, I bet it would have been better because you didn't... If only Luke crossed over, we would be in heaven. But instead, we also get the Han stuff and the Sana stuff, who I don't think y'all have even met before this moment,

if I'm remembering right, if you haven't gone back and read any of the Star Wars stuff. This is the woman who used to go around saying that she was Sana Solo. because she and Han used to have a thing. And then the Leah and Han stuff in here. Your old boo's last name is your last name. They faked being married, is the thing. They got fake married, so she was Sona Solo for a little while.

It's a whole thing. Anyway. Yeah, and some of that might also just be, it's not just the crossover thing, it's that sometimes the structure of a lot of Star Wars of U stuff that is dealing with the classic universe has crossover feelings because, well, if the movies, always had stuff for

Han, Leah, and Luke to all be off doing things in separate spaces. Then every story has to sort of mirror that. Right. Like, again, Timothy Zahn, like, obeys that scrupulously in the Air of the Empire Trilogy, right? But he finds interesting arcs that are specific

to the characters for each of these people to go off and do so that you get, like, Luke being off alone with his thoughts or being off with, like, Mara and Card. And you have, like, Leia being a diplomat with the no-gree and dealing with, like, expectant parenthood. And you get Han trying to, like, you know, recapture the last drags of his glory days as a smuggler, if they ever were.

Those are all, like, good things, and they're all specific to the characters. And they're brought together for key moments in the stories, but you can only do that. Those books play out a little more like the movies, where it's like when they come back together for big, like, day new-mah type events. And this is just like an adventure of the week. And you don't need the whole gang to just roll up in the mystery mobile when really it's like, you know, Shaggy was having a moment here. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

We talked about this very briefly round before we hit the record button. And I said, this is the most. It's felt like watching Clone Wars in a long time where we down to you get through episode one, you through the first issue. And you're like, are we about to experience peak? And then you're to the end of it. And you're like, I can't wait to do something else. But even Clone Wars had the moments where it's like, this is a Padmei arc. We're going to spend a bunch of time with Padmay.

And this is going to be Padmay's time. She's going to learn about poverty. Right. Or we're just explaining that to a friend who's playing zero company. Oh, my God, that's, yeah, we sure were. Sorry, getting asked about lore and then 20 minutes later, a bunch of people telling Jack to play Kotor was pretty telling. No, but like, if they had just let Luke be here the way that Clone Wars is able to do, it would have been fine. But the Luke, yeah, the, the, the, the, the, like, when this broke bad for me is when they revealed the queen and she just looked like Harley Quinn.

And I can say, I can point to the page that I was like, oh, I'm not having fun anymore. That's issue one. You didn't even get through the first issue then. Well, yeah, I mean, the line could have gone back up after that, but it didn't. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, there's, and I feel like it's clearly like the Red Queen Alice and Wonderland type vibes. There's times like the style echoes like dark fairy tale visions, but the stuff, well, you know what? I'm getting into, we'll present our facts to the case, to the court in a moment.

But just brought out what this is. Yeah, thank you. Okay. So remember last, remember last week when we had that perfect little arc with Afrinardadad and they go and they get, they find the lost city of the ordo. And they get master Ruhr's crystal, which, you know, we learned that Roer basically created a AI version of, he created an AI agent of himself that went berserk and killed everybody. But in the meantime, though, at least he had the data core in this crystal that had

like all his knowledge and wisdom. But how do we get it out? Because this isn't a hologron. It's just, it's just a crystal. And so we cut to you this, this, this, this arc. And Afra and Luke have paired up to go and, uh, meet the queen of the, of the, of the screaming citadel, uh, a person who has lived for hundreds or thousands of years. and may have firsthand knowledge of how to make a crystal like this speak. They kind of brush over how disturbing that statement is and what it implies. But this is the person who can get you get the crystal to work. But they have to go during her sui where people must present things to delight and amuse her.

Now, anyone who's watched Emma is familiar with this dynamic and has seen it break bad because sometimes things get a little too real when you're trying to make Miss. Woodhouse laugh. And indeed, something similar happens here, where the way that she decides that Luke is her interesting thing that delights and amuses her is Luke gets baited into using his force powers to attack someone. She realizes, oh, there's a baby Jedi here. And she dismisses everyone.

And now she's locked in on this. She will unlock the crystal. but she needs to spend some time with Luke Afrin, Luke, go and they have a formal dinner with the queen, but it's all fucked up and weird and creepy. And then she reveals that actually what she's here to do is, well, it's kind of two things. Before this, we've seen implications that she's a vampire

some sort, like she's sucking the power out of the people of the planet around her. But then also, she makes Luke, she wants to see him She wants to see him demonstrate his force abilities to lift the cover off a gold serving dish. But what's this? Underneath that cover are brain invader crab things like prawns, but like for hijacking your brain. From the last arc. Yep.

The ones her, the afra's old professor had. And they're very, they're very shrimp like. And so, you know, this is, these things are incredibly dangerous. They want to take over Luke. The queen wants to sort of get him to join, join their hive. Afra and Luke take off running, trying to fight for their lives in the Citadel. Meanwhile, back at the rebel base, Sana as filling in the rest of the crew, Han Leia, about where Luke is and what he's up to.

They go off on a rescue mission. They arrive just in time. for Afra to kind of bond with Luke, but then immediately betray him. And then the queen uses her psychic takeover powers to abduct Luke and in short order also turn Han into a thrall of hers. You know, meanwhile, Black Cresanthin was there. Triple Zero gets the idea to help Sana and lay a carve a path to their friends, they will put one of the symbiates in black grissantin,

and it turns them into a wear beast version of a wookie, and he just starts like wrecking house and carving a bloody swath through the Citadel. Luke... Cool thing to do to your friend. I don't think they're friends. I don't think anyone on that team is a friend.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's all rancid. Meanwhile, Luke and the queen are facing off, and Rur's crystal begins speaking to him because the queen filled her part of the bargain and unlocked it, and now the crystal's speaking to Luke and telling him, use the power of the symbiate, take it over, and then make the queen bow to you.

And you can use all this power for yourself. And Luke is like, that's not the Jedi way. Luke higs up on him after like 30 seconds phone call. Yep. I was like, here we go, here we go. And then Luke simply wins. Luke simply wins decides not to do that. Let's let's his symbiont be destroyed.

And then watches as the other symbiants turn on each other, turn on the queen. Han is during a after the queen's control over them is broken um

Han is still sort of in the hive but now he's Han in control of the hive and he starts like telling the underlings to lay down their weapons blah blah blah

they lay waste the screaming citadel queen is dead the citadel is destroyed uh afra has had a change of heart she does try to help out Luke and the gang when the chips are down

but the bridge is burned. Luke is like badly done afra. I never want to deal with you. Yeah, badly done. Very much and Afra looks utterly gutted. Triple zero pours a lot of salt in those wounds and then everyone flies off and the last thing we see is one of the local peasants sifting through the ruins of the screaming

citadel looking for something to help them start their new lives and uh-oh, what's that? It's a symbion and she, the last thing she says, as she's being taken over by the symbiont is Skywalker. And then she tells her husband, we do need to leave this planet immediately. Our lives lie elsewhere. For Wikipedia, this character never comes back. So, I believe. I believe in less, you know what, maybe this character is like different than the one, different than the queen.

Because she is technically not the queen. She's the symbiont or whatever, right? So I guess maybe I'm wrong, but as far as I can tell, is the end of all this. That's a little seed they planted for a follow-up to rise of Skywalker. Oh, my God. On a loose thread out there. I'm just holding onto it for another spooky spooky. Yeah.

We should have waited to read just this one until Halloween, you know, clearly. Could have been spookier. It's one of many things. And I think that fundamentally, it's kind of adventure they go into a haunted castle. Person who owns the haunted castle turns out to be, yep, it's a vampire of sorts. And then they have to burn down the castle and then the evil lives on. I think already this was going to be kind of a tough self for us just in terms of what is happening here for the stuff that we tend to care about. You know, like characters inner conflicts.

their whole like what is the essence of these characters how do we complicate that picture but it is all made harder by the fact that the art style is all over the map through this arc and then there's times that it is jarringly it it's only put it it it's jarringly traced yeah we have to have the conversation about savonaradaraca at this point probably I want to say Just before we get to there, I was ready to have a good fucking time. Like, I know I have high expectations of stuff, and I'm like everyone else on the podcast, loves it when we go deep on big things. There's that shot at the end, or that panel at the end of the first issue where it's just like the black silhouettes of the Queen's court with like her cool main three dudes and her out on the balcony. And it's like they're fully black silhouettes with like the red like scarves and cage.

and stuff, and it's just like, oh, okay, like, we're going to do one of these. We're going to go like, we're going to go a little goth with it. I'm down between that and the Luke Afro relationship stuff, not relationships, but, you know, their interactions, they're, you know, her pushing him and his naivness, her pushing her and her cynicism. I was completely down for a version of this to happen and was ready to just have a good time. And then I will say you're, to some real degree, the art is a big. part of what took me out and made me less sympathetic.

Three pencilers worked on this arc, which again occurs across two books. There's both the Star Wars book and the Dr. Afra book. The pencilers are Andrea Ricardo, Marco Chichetto or Chichetto, I believe Chichetto, and Salvador Laraca. They also did the inking for this, and then there is the color. are Edgar Delgado, Antonio Fabella, and Andres Mossa. Andres Mossa. And the whole thing is not done by La Raca, but two of the issues are, maybe three of the issues are. And I will say just outright, we like held back on our La Raca disses last week, your last episode, to the degree

that like, as soon as we hung up, I sent a Reddit post to everybody to be like, we are not making this up. Like this is not our, we're not wrong. This is like so clearly traced. We had not hit the worst of it yet. The stuff here, Rob, that you were just talking about is, it's upsetting to look at. Yes. And it's strange because he does some stuff and it's fine. I don't under. So this is, this for me is the thing that really kills it. So sometimes when it's going from the trace, you'd say like, when, when, the panels are at their most trace, you'd also say it's going for the most, like, realistic style that you're going to see.

That can be kind of controversial. Like, I quite like sort of a classic Superman series, Kingdom Come. Uh, where that is all, that is all, like, using models for reference, and it's, like, grounded in sort of realistic presentation of superheroes as they sort of aged past their prime. It's, it's a cool book. And the art style is part of, like, what sets it apart from a lot of the comic universes that it's drawing from. But it's consistent. Like, it commits to this vision. And like, that is, that is what that, that is what that, that is what that is what that is how that story is told.

This will change gears, not just between issues. Right. We're talking like on the same page. Yes. You will have a panel that is very sketched, like sketched like sketchwork. And then the next panel will be a hyper detailed tracing of, like, one of one of the characters that's, like, clearly inspired, but, like, this is a free term like Mark Hamill somewhere in the movies. The other problem you run into there, though, is you are taking, you're not using this as reference so much. Again, like, this is, like, you're just bringing this. you're clipping this and putting it into the comic, but it's a moment from something else that doesn't totally match,

like doesn't match the scene. And so the characters don't, at many key moments in the story, they're making very odd expressions for what is happening. And then they fall into an uncanny valley of this isn't like someone just did an oil painting based on like a series of like reference photos and it like goes to hyperrealism.

It's we came very close to just doing a still photo in like pencil and ink, but we didn't get there. And now we're in the Enkandy Valley and it looks fucked up. It doesn't help that the backgrounds are never in the photo realistic mode. The droids are never in the photo realistic mode. Aliens are never in the photo realistic mode. And so you'll have a page like, there are pages where he'll do, there's like the parasit parasitically controlled aliens towards the end of that second issue where there's like the gungin and the there's like a two-headed,

oh my God, I can't believe we're getting their names again. The hammer, not the hammerhead. The Thorians. The Thorians. Thank you. There's like a two-headed authoritarian. and they look like fine. That drawing of like the zombie version of those creatures all looks like pretty good.

You know, Triple Zero always looks basically fine. I think his proportions aren't always perfect. Then you literally turn the page to the last page of the screaming set ofel part two. And it's Sana'a, Han, and Leah looking like it's a... Busted. Yeah, Busted is right. It's unlike anything I've seen

I think the proportions are all wrong It feels like he like took photos of these characters Resized them and tried to place them on bodies that were not in the right scale Or in the right pose and it just really is it's It pulls me completely out And yeah go ahead Alongside that

Because we don't have An established actor that is like a recognizable actor that is the face reference for Afra and Sana here, they look so inconsistent from panel to panel where I can't even really get a sense of what they're meant to look like. Like it feels like there's like multiple references or even, I mean, the queen is pretty standard, but I think like... Well, the queen has the white face, right?

Non-fleshy, like, face color allows her to, like, kind of her character kind of gets away within this style. But anyone that has, like, any range of, like, human flesh tone, the shading is just, is so bizarre. It's, like, the light source makes, doesn't make a lot of sense. Like, it's in this hyper exaggeration. I don't know. It's very hard to parse. It's so funny you mentioned, it was really quick.

It's so funny you mentioned the Afra thing. There's no set Afra image because this is one of the... Yeah, because he just uses a bunch of different random Asian women. This is one of the most famous Laraca pieces of evidence. I'm just going to hit send for you here and you can take a look at yourself. This is a... Oh, no. prized Asian girl eating spaghetti.

I had this to copy and paste too. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, good. No, I'm glad we brought it up because it's like, it's, it's outright. Like, if, if, if this was a, like, a drawing style that he was really attached to and he felt like, oh, you know, Hanley and Luke are so iconic that they have these face actors, like, let me go find an actress I really like. So I can at least sort of import the same sort of art style to. to face cast, quote unquote, Dr. Avra, I think it would be one thing. I think it would still have this sort of like uncanny Valley.

Sometimes their heads are big enough. Like, it's not the way that I would do it. But the fact that he can't like, I mean, that he didn't choose to, to, that he thinks that there's enough like, it isn't important to him enough to be like, oh, these different women have these different features. and I should not just, like, it's very bizarre to be. For me, the thing I just, I come back, I finally don't understand it. Because I sent an image over where like, it's just that it's them getting on the falcon with Sana. And it looks, it looks okay.

It's still a little too like face inspired in places. Chewy looks a little wonky in one frame. But like, by and large, there's throughout a lot of this comic run, I think the color is, is, is, gorgeous, like the use of color, like frequently the inking is often great. But then in the middle of this, like, just pretty, it seems a decent, effective, like, comics compositions, uh, you know, some wonky character or whatever. There is Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford in the Falcon in a shot that I think is listed from Empire as he's doing the, the Falcon startup sequence. And it's like hyper real. And there's Sana sort of pasted in.

the frame, but it's like it's completely out of nowhere where it's like, and there are the two actors, uh, just like now we've, now we've done a scan of the movie and we've dropped it into an issue that doesn't look like this. Yeah. And it's a bizarre thing because you go to the, back to the start of this arc where Luke meets Afra in a bar and a bar bra and she, shows up. And is Luke a little like face tuned and like a little bit like is this a little bit like fan cam Luke a little bit. Yeah.

But by and large, I think a lot of the stuff here looks cool. This is a different afro than we've seen. But like it's pretty consistent throughout this, this first series of scenes. She is a little more of your femphital like angular bomb. like all like all hero shots she's all like long lines curves angles and it's all very dramatic and then we don't see these characters again like for the rest of the run like the style kind of disappears the it no longer looks like this and the the style holds together up through like them going to the screaming citadel and going to the ball and you see all the the the

monsters ball that they're having all this stuff like looks kind of cool And so there's a weird thing here where it's like, it'd be one thing if you just say, this dude's a fucking hack, he sucks. But there's places where I'm like, it's not always too my style, but there's places where I'm like, no, there's. Well, sorry, Rob, that whole first issue is not him. Okay. That's my point.

This is what I'm saying is every, there are six issues here. And there are three artists spread across those issues. No one, they're not spread across it inside of any issue. There are Laraca issues and there are non-Loraka issues. And there are non-larocca. issues and the non-Laraca issues are the ones where they don't look like this. Like this is so... Sorry, I was busy.

When you're talking about that, I was talking about, like, is it partly a pace of release issue? Because, like, famously, the Metfraction, David, Asia, Hawkeye, yeah. They attempted to do, I think it was like a monthly issue. One artist, one writer. There's a reason they tag in multiple artists for these runs because you can't do it. they couldn't. They were not able to sustain that piece,

but for a while there, they made one of the, like probably the definitive Hawkeye run. But like, they fell out of their schedule and they eventually had to sort of curtail what they were attempting. So I was like,

is this partly just a pace of release issue where is La Raca doing basically what they're asking with the timelines he's being handed? And the answer is no. It's part two. and part four that he did, right? Yep.

And I believe that Chiquetto only did the first one, which is the one that has this particular look with the very gussied up, you know, a yassified Luke. And I was like here for it, because I think that's the character he's playing. This is it.

This is the run for me. I was like, this has a style. Right. And it plays into who their two characters are. Totally. I would totally have been with it if that had been to look all the way through. Allie, to your point, like, these are different women. These three screenshots of Afra. And I have to tell you, like, now that I've done the deep dive, it's like so much worse than we, you could even imagine. It gets so bad.

I maybe even showed you this before, but I don't think we clicked that that's who it was. Do you remember the end of the first Vader comic that ends with Vader, first Vader arc where he learns about Luke from Boba Fett. That same thing happens in the LaRaca drawn Star Wars comic, that same like set of panels. I mean, I've told you that before, but this is what it looks like over there. And I don't know how this hits public.

Like, I don't know how you publish this Luke Skywalker. I don't understand it. It doesn't stop there. And I can only tell you that I, laughed as hard as I could when I learned that he did the official comic interpretation of the Obi-Wan Kenobi TV show

which featured pages like this one. No! No! No! Hell no. No. They wouldn't even let this run in Max Payne won.

They would not. That is what it looks like, kind of, isn't it? Why did they face app smile Hayden Richardson dog this is brought bro and also like I'm sorry

the thick the thick outlines around the characters who are you wrongly give we ran this through Photoshop and just like this is just a photo

yeah dude yeah oh my God it's so rough oh my God oh my God it's the adaption it deserves I guess I'm dying I can't

this is bad and like this to me I want to be very clear this to me reads like dude we'll pay you x dollars to just turn it around are you happy putting your name on this just trace the outlines just fucking trace the outlines for us please we're just trying to move product like I cannot imagine that this the obi one uh thing was his creative choice I can't imagine or rather if it was then it's only editor who's like yeah we'll do that for this whole comic thumbs up man I don't understand how it gets there otherwise, you know? It's, yeah, I mean, it can't be overset, like, how difficult it is to make a comic and how, like, you know, underpaid and overworked every comic artist and writer and editor

and color, like, you know, it's bad the whole way down. But, like, it's also a question of integrity, right? Like, yeah. I mean Yeah, I Oh, that's what I have to say about that. I had like, I kind of wanted to avoid this like last time we, we, this, we talk around this because it's like, I know people kind of hate, like, have knives out for this dude. And it's like I don't, didn't want to be like, we're just bagging on this dude and like, hopping on the, the memetic train of like, yeah, this dude's art sucks.

But it is such a part of this issue. And this issue was already going to be. kind of, this run was already kind of be a tough sell because I'm not entirely sure. I don't think it's, it's plotted out in a way that does a ton of interesting things with, with the premise either. So it's going to live and die by like, how is this, this action adventure story going to be presented? Yeah. And every page, you're, you're having moments where it's like, that doesn't look good. And sometimes they actually prove it, like, stray up ick factor. That's really, where it's not like looking at this panel. I don't like looking at some of these characters. Yeah, like it is upsetting,

genuinely. And, and, you know, again, I, Allie, the thing you just said, 100%, it's so hard to do this. And this is why, if I were an artist who's part of the Screaming Citadel, and I was in the issues that he did not draw, I would be so frustrated because I would know that if someone's buying this and trade paperback or an omnibus, they're going to read an issue that fully takes them out of it because of some of this art before they get to my art, which I did not trace fundamental, you know, who knows, I guess I can't say for sure that other people aren't just tracing better than

he is, but then at the very least they're tracing better than he is. I'm sorry, I can't. Yeah. Like, my, like, yeah, there's like a percentage of a beef with the artist himself, as we've said. But I guess my

bigger beef is on this on the, on what you said earlier, also, like, is, on the people who were like, yep, and we're selling that for $7.99 or however much this, you know, like, I think that's actually the more egregious thing to me because to be, like, it plays into a, I don't know what the right way to describe this is, but it plays into like the idea of the Disney machine or like kind of, as long as we have, you know, the faces of the guys of the guys that everyone loves,

then that's enough to sell this. Like, there's like a cheapening quality that feels like almost like a mass production lack of attention or that the audience is good with this. Like that the audience, that this is enough for. the audience, that this is like, hits their kind of minimum bar of satisfaction that, like, just to get to see their, their, you know, meow meows in photo realistic form will be, like, ooh and awe enough factor to sell them on the, you know, the comic itself. Like, I think that is my actual beef is to have that.

that in between some genuinely, like, I think the first issue of this run, I really, really love because I'm like, oh, it's my chemical romance meet Star Wars, the comic. Like that, I'm having a good time here. It feels like there is music on the page, like the way that there's these particle effects around the queen of the screaming citadel. There's like, you described earlier, Austin, that like silhouetted and everything. It feels so cool. And then to have the very next thing be this like,

and don't worry, your, like, Harrison Ford as Han Solo is here too, Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia, like Mark Hamill, like they, those guys themselves are here. That's where I feel extremely frustrated because I don't need the actors from, the movies to be on the pages here. A thing I think about a lot. It was an interview when the Ray Charles Biopic came out.

And it was an interview, I think it was fresh air and Terry Gross was interviewing Jimmy Fox. And she talks about like how he approaches roles where like you're doing an impression for an entire movie. And Fox's response was, no, no, no, no, no. Impressions are something you do for like sketches. and you can't sustain an oppression for long. You can't do a performance while doing an impression.

He's like, what I try to do is I'm channeling a person. I'm channeling a character. And the distinction is meaningful, right? It's like it's sort of a trust that whatever you are choosing to do with interpreting this really well-known person, this character, you can make it read as authentic. By you are a different person, you can't be Ray Charles.

but you can do a performance as Ray Charles. And you can bring to it like this is what like Ray Charles would be like if like I were able to bring him through. And like he were just like using me in this moment. And it's similar thing happens with Art 2 where it's like it doesn't need to look like Luke or Han in these stories. It needs to feel like Luke or Han in these stories. And that's a different thing. Um, but frequently it looks like in these Star Wars books, they, they get hung up on this, like, it's got to be, it's got to be a close likeness. And it, it really doesn't. Well, that's what's weird is you get to the third issue in this arc, which is three, three, Dr. Afra seven, which is Ricardo's art. And it's clear that it's like supposed to be Harrison Ford and Harry Fisher. But like, the lay here, I mean, none of it's photorealistic at that point, right? None of it's for photorealism because it's a different artist.

And the Leia is even like in her own different space. I don't even know that I think she looks great all of the time. But like if you look at the, this issue, she's doing something that isn't just Carrie Fisher tracing, like, or sorry, the artist, he is doing something with her that is not just tracing over her. And he's doing something with Sana that's like, I mean, Sana's hair looks completely different in this arc or in this issue in the arc than anywhere else. Because he's giving him these like big voluble.

luminous, puffy curls that are really fun at like the expressions that, and I don't even, again, I don't even think this looks fantastic, but it looks consistent throughout the thing and it's not just traced. So it's like, I think the thing that it reads like to me, and I will add that these three artists are, are all international artists. I think they're all European artists, which is a thing that American comic companies sometimes do in order to save money, is that they use international artists who they pay less. not that comics artists are fundamentally paid a lot as it is but this is like a common tactic or at least it was the last time I was paying attention to comics and it makes me feel like

the whole process is disposable it makes me feel like this to your point Natalie the thing of like the audience will just eat it up anyway they're the bar is so low just put something in their bowl you know

and it makes it feel like they don't care about the because there's a version of this that feels like Oh, let's give them a little buffet of different styles. If this, if Kev Walker, who is the artist in the first arc, was in here, and then it was, it was Kev Walker and then the other two artists who are not Laraca, I bet we would leave this going. It was an inconsistent style, but at the very least, we got to see three artists take their swings at Afra and the screaming Citadel, the Queen, the Queen of the Screaming Citadel and all these other creatures and characters. We never, I wouldn't have been pulled out to the way.

way that the two LaRocca issues did. And it's just, I just, for the listener who has not looked at them, you should like go look up some of this stuff and imagine that you've just read up an okay issue and you've turned the page and you're like, whoa, what is happening? Because that is the actual feeling of it for me. But yeah, we don't want to do two hours on this guy sucking. Like I, I, especially because we've already, I think, not of that, the structural reasons behind some of it or the potential structural reasons behind it.

been a while since we saw one of these shots of Afra though man oh I didn't pick up on that one where is that at I didn't see that yeah what page what page is that one on that's just it's the next page after the one I sent where we have the worst looking Luke in history regarding the serving platter and the next one there's an explosion they're diving away from the table

and yeah we get um oh okay jail yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah I really love Walker's Luke though He looks so fluffy

He's like a Bishonan and it just like works Who's the first artist is Oh no Kevin Walker is from the last arc The current first artist for this one Is either There's so many here What is the one? It's either Chiquetto or it's Picardo

I would have to I'd have to dig around a little bit. I don't have just the issues in front of me in that way. They really need to bring them back those fucking tile pages. Like, the fact they do not have the artist. How do they not have title pages? Like, credits on these. You could, in the omnibus, you would turn to the back and find them all, but they're not.

That's not how they exist with the issues. It's insane. It's crazy. Yeah, Chichetto. Like, who gets credited is such a comic thing that, like, it's just a nightmare all the time. This is Chichetto is the one who's, Luke, you're saying you like the fluffy one. Yeah, Chichita's Luke I like. I mean, like even Dr. Afra

looking like a gothic Disney princess at it is really fun to me. But yeah, it's just like, I look at that and I'm like, yeah, that's Luke Skywalker, but it doesn't have to be Mark Hamel and yeah. Well, especially because this approach to rendering Luke is actually pretty

integral to this entire arc, such as it is. It is that he is at his most farm boy. He exists in this story. to be a mirror to Afra and for him to just transmit with those searchlight blue eyes and like again

farm boy looks and innocence and sweetness all the things that she lacks and Mark Hamill is not going to get you there well it's what it does in the movies too but like in the comics we've got to turn up to 11 He's got to, because we're not following it. This is an Afrocomic.

So it's got to be every time she is dealing with him, it has got to be at the most like, oh, your beautiful sweet golden retriever. Oh, my goodness. I just wanted to grab your beautiful head and scitch your jaw and like behind your ears. And oh my goodness, look at you. You're so sweet. You're so trusting. And I am leading you into a trap.

Yes. And so that's a great example. Like, is this really look like Luke? Well, it doesn't look like Mark Hamel. But for the purpose of this story, this is Luke. It is an idea of Luke. And that's kind of, you know, what I was kind of getting at, right? Like, what is the idea of the character you're trying to bring across?

And this art does that. And after it's bringing across something else too, where it's like, if he's all wide-eyed innocence, again, she is all like dangerous angles. Yes. And jockeying for, in all their scenes, there's a power dynamic basically in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the frames with them in it, right? One is up, one is down. There's there's consistently sort of a jockeying for position and advantage who is who is, who is utilizing who in, uh, in this story. And so that is the, that's the juxtaposition is, uh, who can be trusted who's, who's in charge here. And, and I wish I, I wish that was the arc, right? Like this is what, what, what they're said. up here is sort of this this this dangerous alliance between them he knows she's kind of bad news she she does the classic like her various deaths and bad reputation are catching up with her the second he he meets her um he has he knows all his friends despise her and and and thinks she's think she's

bad news but he's he's going anyway and when they get to the citadel she is realizing that one liability here is that he can't turn off his innocence and his his sort of gormlessness and wide-eyed naivete about the universe. And so he is just not he's not cut out to attend the monster's ball. He's really in over his head. And so there's a bit of her trying to get him minimum viable product for like his debutante ball, but also to keep him. And so to keep him away from like giving away the store. Yeah. For,

for, for, for being like an easy mark in this setting. And all of that, that really works. And it's, and unfortunately, it's a plot that doesn't need the other characters.

Like this, this whole thing could have been Afra and, and Luke on this adventure in sort of the shark-infested waters that she is used to swimming in. And he's in there saying, well, we don't have to, we don't have to operate that way.

We can operate. a different way. And that tension, that would have been a great arc. When I talk about the crossover con of this, the big negative of it being like, well, we've got to get everybody else here. It feels like that pressure is part of why everything at the screaming Citadel has to explode instead of simmer. A version of this where she doesn't dismiss all the other guests and they have to continue to be in sullery mode for another issue or two, you know, there's great stuff in this first issue where he's like talking to some random alien who's like with the gift of the queen will finally be able

to rise up and overthrow the empire. And he's like, oh, awesome. Yeah, like I know some people in the rebellion I can hook you up with. And the guy is like, and then the dominion of the Azara will spread across the stars or whatever. And he's like, oh, boy, it's been great meeting you. I got to go. Like more in those sorts of interactions are very fun.

And all of them get cut off once the first issue kind of comes to its close because it's like, oh, she's locked in on Luke. now it's going to go into like just Luke and Afri in on the inside of the queen's thing and then we need to like literally make that all explode so that we can spend three issues of the six total or whatever being in combat mode being in fighting through so that the outsiders have something to do when they get here right because again for me the most and also because it's a Star Wars book so like of course something's an explode of course the lightsaber is going to come out like there are there are those kind of conditions to working inside of IP like this all the time.

But I really think that you could feel a version of this that's just an Afro book where you're in this space. You have them talking about the people they've met here. You have them talking about the queen's role and is she oppressive or is she? Because they touch on some of this stuff, right? Where they're like, oh, they have different opinions about the empire. Luke is like, oh, I thought you were a good person. How could you like the empire? and she's like the empire produces stability for regular people.

And you can imagine those big ideas being played out inside of the microcosm of the oppressive tyrannical vampire queen. But instead all those ideas just get three panels and they're like okay beats in some cases. But there's no room for them to breathe or live in other sorts of relationships or in other sorts of examples. Instead, we get some very strange take on this. maybe I see where it's coming from broadly, but we get triple zero trying to apply, like the same idea of Afra is bad and Luke is good, but Afra kind of has a good heart,

and Afra has, you know, she believes in the stability of the empire because it protects normal people and Luke believes that the empire hurts normal people because he's a normal person who's been hurt by them. All that kind of then needs to get mirrored in the other plot somehow. And so the way it happens, or one of the ways it happens, is that AAA orders people around a lot,

and AAA calls her on it. And it's like, ugh, you don't you realize you treat your friends like tools too, just like AFRA does? And like none of that really lands. And it would have been better to use those pages to dig into the interesting Luke and Afra stuff or mirror it in the situation they were in,

instead of trying to mirror it in the Lhanna and Sana story, because it just doesn't work over there, you know? It doesn't work. And it, I also feel like we have, the first issue introduces us to enough characters to sustain a full arc, like the queen's like three minions, as it were. Like, she's got the cool-ass glowing night guy,

she's got freaky warlock, and she has also freaky assassin girl. And like that, by the way, nothing happens with them. Like, they just die, essentially. But they're set up to be, I don't know, it's just, we already have an interesting cast here.

And I think you're so right, Austin, that we don't gain anything, like seeing Han, zomified Han confront Lay. and like tell her like you're not a like sorry princess but she's my queen like what what am I supposed to get from this experience out of the year just like that that Jedi value freedom and so like that's like at the end of the day Jedi are free above everything else then that's kind of mirrored into Han because Han wants to be free more than anything and so Han can slip out from control of the...

It's all very... I don't know. It's all... I can feel some of the whiteboarding. Also, having... I've done so many seasons of the clone wars and... Jedi are some of the least free fucking people.

What are we talking about, man? I guess he hasn't really gotten his real Jedi training, so it's more like... I'll bet those guys were free as how. This is Farboy being like, man, better than being a Jedi just doing what you want like hanging out in the galaxy bouncing around yeah no one can tell you what to do you know yeah he he meets I the only thing

I like here that feels like proto Jedi of him that feels like he's intuitive something true about about when the when things talk about the force and the Jedi in a way that's like evocative is when he's like no you have to like be being a Jedi means being that's what it means. I don't like the feeling free stuff. The Jedi feel free is insane. But him being like, you're not a Jedi. You just know what a Jedi knows. That's not enough. Knowing isn't enough. Being a Jedi is about being. That I like. I think that's really good. I like that I just wanted us to like have some time to get to there. Like the idea that the whole reason that they're here is to unlock this crystal for Luke.

And then Luke is consumed or is possessed by the parasite, but his will is pretty strong. So not all the way yet. So he's kind of communing in like a 1v1 with the parasite that's in the queen, Christian Christian mark. And like the parasites are like symbolically going at like going at each other. And then Afra gives him a rur buff and, like, gives him the crystal so that the crystal can also help him. And then he's just like, no, I'm good.

I'm just going to win now because I'm free. It would be so good if there had been a whole issue of him with Roar. Yes. And Roar being like whispering sweet nothings, basically being what's his face from the Thron trilogy. uh... Sabio. Temts him. Yeah,

Saiboth. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Sabiath. Yeah, exactly. Jeruse. Let's see some temptation. And I guess maybe you can't.

Because he has to not know anything by the time he meets Yoda and we're fucking back here again. Oh my God. It's... The, the curse. The gift and the curse. What brought to mind was, um, because I was like, we should probably be doing

more with this. Here's a, here's a voice that in his head that could like access different things. I've been watching the Malcolm in the middle, like, sequel series. All right. How is it? Pretty good. It's, it does some funny things about they find some really interesting.

It is the series is basically about you think you're going to be the cycle breaker. And you've actually perpetuated the cycle, but in different ways. Because you were so convinced that, like, well, I'm doing completely different shit. But actually, you've done the exact. that same stuff just with a different rapper on it. It's a very smart series. It's pretty good. But there's a sequence where

they're leaning into the fact that um, uh, sorry, the, the fucking actor's name. Brian Munson. Brian Krantzden. Brian Krantzden is the

now at this point, like clearly the best dramatic actor on that on that cast. Yeah. There's a thing where he takes a bunch of, hallucinogens and ends up in conversation with his suppressed selves. Like, he spends most of the episode doing like talk therapy with different versions of himself. And it goes some really interesting places and it gets to things about that character

that are interesting, but fundamentally don't change anything. Like we go right back to we're going to pick up the threads. It's going to be like none of this stuff. ever happened. But it's like you at least, if you're going to put a voice in a character's head, you want them to have something to say. You want them to challenge each other in, in some meaningful way. And Rurr kind of doesn't. Rur is just like you should use your Jedi powers and become strong. It's sort of a basic temptation type thing. And there's no,

I guess you're right. It's because he can't know anything when he meets Yoda. but there is no real pushing here of, let's think about what kind of Jedi you want to be. Yeah, yeah. And that's the part that's missing is like, in the, in the Malcolm of the Middle version, it's like, Hal meets a character that is like, this is the best version.

Like, if I imagine myself as like the best version of who I could be, this is him. What's the difference between my idealized self and then who I am in my daily life? Yeah. And that's an interesting space to explore. And Luke is always looking for, like, who is going to be my ideal of a Jedi? Like, who's going to, like, fill in the gaps around what I think it means to be a Jedi.

And it's why Yoda is so frustrating for Luke, because he's mostly exploding all of Luke's dreams when they meet. But Rur here doesn't have, you might as well not. shown up. Yeah. Like he, Natalie said earlier, he just hangs up the phone. And that's,

that, that is kind, like, you've done multiple issues getting this crystal to talk. And, also that's fucking rur. Like,

he's pretty powerful, pretty persuasive. Like, I feel like, does he just not have it like that anymore? Luke is, Luke hasn't even been to Yoda. I know.

But they, but there's, I think the worst moment in this for me is the Afra, the force is strong with him moment. Where she says like, she sits down, the queen is going to like do the mind control fight with Luke. And the queen is like very confident that she's going to be able to take over his mind because she puts the parasite in him.

And Afra says, and I know you're pretty impressive and all. I know you're pretty impressive in all your highness, but guess what? The force is very, is pretty strong with this one. And I really don't like that for two reasons. One is like, it's bad comedy. Like, I just don't, it's, we know, we don't like the quotes. Here, no more quotes, please.

I know what's going to happen at Star Wars, but like every time it happens, it frustrates us. I know we're not the ideal audience or whatever, but like, that's true. But two, why the fuck is he this strong? And the answer is because he's Luke Skywalker. He was Luke Skywalker before Yoda trained him. He's still the guy who blew up the Death Star. They have a great conversation early about how she's like, I know you're strong in the Force because you blow up the Death Star.

No one can do that. Like, that's the force. Trust me. But like, it's a little bit of Princess Leia in the Obi-One Canobi show of like she has to already be fully formed. And it's like, even though this is not Return of the Jedi, Luke yet, he still has to be so naturally gifted in the Force that whatever weird hive mind parasite brain thing is going on here

his force you know adeptness untrained is stronger than this vampire queen who's been using them for question question mark question mark number of years right like he just is naturally gifted in that way enough to where he can win this fight or at least be on her even playing field enough

to where he can eventually disconnect himself from the parasite network and then cut her in half right I it's frustrating that he can't just be kind of the farm boy the whole way through he has to end up being superhero Luke Skywalker already and I yeah it's just it's a bummer that's where we get to in contrast to earlier in the Star Wars comic where he fights Boba fat which I already didn't love but the fact that at least he wins that kind of by luck is like oh okay like who it's a good thing he has Luke Skywalker's luck whereas this is like I'm fucking Lou Skywalker you can't mind control me, much less interesting to me.

And as compared to earlier in this run, when he like proves himself, or first, he reveals himself as a Jedi to the queen and everyone there, because he's like dismissed or he's like attacked or something. And he uses the force to push someone away from him. And everyone's like, like silence hits the room she's like everyone leave this is my guy you're all rejected and I'm going with him for my special one-on-one dinner which I only do once a year I guess um and then

when they're at dinner she's like well lift this plate lift this plate and see what happens and he I guess he's not maybe he's not doing it because he senses there's something amiss underneath the plate cover which is the parasites themselves I think he's struggling but is it that the force is

you know working it's the same thing he actually says the same thing twice right he says don't push me both times and that's what triggers it both times in the queen's court the guy pushes him he says don't push me and he force pushes him back and then doesn't help

that at this moment, the art is super static. Yes. And Luke mostly looks like he's trying not to shit himself at the table, having had some bad seafood at the Queen's dinner. Because, again, the panel I submitted earlier, that is a dude who's like, I go to the bathroom, but I can't stand up. That is the expression on his face,

which is not necessarily what I was. associate with my superpowers have not come into themselves and I can't control this thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not even really clear necessarily what's happening, which is the assassin lady has like her knife up to his throat and she's pushing him forward

down towards the table in order to like get him to do something. And that's the thing that triggers him to force pull the cloche and the plate onto into her face. And it's like I don't know. Which would suggest, which would suggest to me that, like, his, currently, his ability to access his force powers is dependent on feeling threatened.

So it's, it's retaliatory, right? It's like, it's like a method of survival or, you know, instinct. Like, like, instinct, like defensive reaction. It's very reactionary. Whereas he's so, like, chilled out. He's jettied out at the end of this art. He's jettied down, like in this, in this later arc when he's, you know, 1V1 meditation parasite battle with the screaming queen.

Yeah. And I will just all say, and I know we're just like bagging on this now. And I know that there is a part of the listenership that doesn't like it when you just bag on things. But like, I think it's productive for us to talk to why something doesn't work. and productive to compare it to stuff we have liked. This is not the first time we've seen an arc about brain-controlling parasites. One of our favorite arcs in Clone Wars is the brain-controlling parasite arc coming after the geonosis arc where it's not even a whole arc, it's just the one episode called Brain Parasites,

where Barrasofi and Asoka are on the ship with the clones and everybody gets brain-parasited by, what's her face? I keep going to say Afra now, which is Adventress. Ventris puts the brain parasites on everybody. We love that episode. That's 22 minutes. It's simple. It's straightforward, but it goes places around what's naturally in the minds of the clones. We ran off of that conversation for years. We talked for years about the implications of that episode. And part of the reason why that worked for me was it's a fairly simple premise that then produces depth through its kind of like combination. It's combinatorics, right?

Like, oh, brain parasite. What happens when a brain parasite goes into somebody? Okay, like, is the brain, we're told the brain parasite can only get you to do certain things, but what's that mean for a clone who has been, for you trained to do X, Y, Zs? Is this a thing that the clones were already trained for? Oh, what's it mean for Barris Offie for when a Jedi gets this? How does that interact with her Patawan training? And we could, like, go forever on that.

I think the parasite stuff here is a fucking mess. I think that it looks pretty bad. And I think it's conceptually really tangled. I like, okay, so you have these, we were introduced to these brain parasites before and we were told that they're so dangerous that the empire has quarantined them. She reiterates that here. These things are so bad, the empire won't even weaponize them. I get that they're bad. I don't think that they fumble on that necessarily.

But I do think that it's not a very crisp illustration of what they are or how long. they work. Here's how I understand it. Tell me if I'm wrong. The queen has a parasite. The queen's body is a host to a parasite. Correct. Correct. That parasite is connected to a hive of other parasites. Correct. Yes. Yes. Those parasites have been implanted in everyone who lives in the queen's court and in the nearby village, like the town underneath a vampire's castle. Correct. Correct. She is using those.

The host is using, I actually don't know if this is true. The host is feeding on the members of her nearby town every night. She goes out onto the porch. She goes out on the balcony and like brain sucks them all while they're sleeping. We get like one page of that. Yeah. Correct. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know if that's tied to the parasites or not. I truly don't have a clue if that's tied to that or tied to her natural abilities. I don't know if she's gaining better abilities through the parasites or not. We know that Black Cresantin as a Wookie does. We skipped this part, but Wookies get superpowers. We didn't really. Wookies get superpowers when they get parasited for some reason.

The parasites don't like them. They don't like that. They don't like that. I guess. And I think that eventually, I think it's insinuated that eventually the Wookie overcomes the parasite. that wookie is too strong for the parasite is kind of what we're told.

That's why the parasites don't like them. Question mark. Again, that's more lack of clarity, Allie. This is why I'm walking through all of this. The parasites have a monarchist structure despite being a hive mind that has been described as being stable. They have, like, I guess, like a beehive.

There's a queen. They like the most powerful person. They like the most powerful person. Okay. So the queen is the most powerful. Like a strong horse. and the weak horse. That's right.

And Luke enters into the hive, and now he is debatably the strongest horse. And so now the two, the king and the queen have to fight over who's in charge. Now, while they're fighting, the next tier over or under is in charge of the hive, question mark? Right, Han. Well, it's Han or it's those two other people who get killed quickly. unceremoniously, right? Because it's Han, the assassin, and the warlock who don't have names. But not Chrysanton.

But not Chrysanton commands no one but himself. And the two of them decide to team up to go kill Han because they don't want him to be the leader. They want to be the leaders. But they're only going to be the leaders for as long as the queen is fighting Luke, correct? Right. Right. And how does the blue juice?

How does the blue juice that makes you smoke out of your eyes? I forgot about the... I forgot about the... I forgot about the... So on top of eating the brain juices of her villagers just through the air, I guess. And through her and through sucking out of her minions, don't forget. Right, because I had to do it. We've got to get a little sexy suck going.

She also has a hookah that's tied up to Luke's big CPAP machine. They put Luke on the CPAP machine. I can say it. I got it right back there. I got the ResMed 7 right back there. Listen, I'm allowed. They put him on the fucking CPAP And then she has a little hookah tube

And she's breathing in the force juice from him And the blue... And then feeding it to Han also He gets stabbed by parasite Yeah, you're right She does feed him the blue juice In addition to the parasite

This is a mess The brain invader was a worm The worm went into you into your brain and then you were brain invaded. And I like a complex science fictional element, but this is a mess. You don't have the pages for this. You don't have the pages for this.

This level of complexity, it needs to be a whole trade paperback. Do you know what I mean? Because then you can start playing with, ooh, there's different tiers of power. And there's different... The power dynamics, when the disorder is the top,

now they all start infighting ones themselves and are we replicating like the empire and microcosms? Yes. And then you're touching on... And then you're touching on... The shit, man. Yep.

It's, yeah. also you can't take anyone seriously who's vaping like I'm sorry to people who vape but like it's just you can't make someone cool when they're just like suck suck burble burble um their vapor you can say it Austin can talk about the CPAP machine I can I can talk about making fun of people who vape

can't you can't have your your super villain here like verbally fencing with Afra and then be like, pardon me. But it's but it's, but it's, it's helped by the fact that she, uh, blow smoke out of her eyeballs. That helps it a little bit, like 5%. Yeah, that helps. I, the thing that's wild to me.

If I'm going in the silly, if I'm going down, we're already in, Hans going to be a zombie guy, I guess. Like, I'll take the smoking hookah eyes. That's where I'm at. We saw her feeding off of her three lieutenants at the end of the first issue where she's doing to like feed me and like clutching the woman by her throat and the woman's like joyously letting the, it's not blood. It's like energy crystals up into her mouth. So like we have a visual that is like vampiric and meant to be like, you know, like a little sexy, a little risque. And that's just gone and replaced with the blue juice hook. No, it doesn't come back.

And like, why did we abandon it? And who brought us the blue juice hookah? Is it Laraca? Yes. I don't know. I'm just kidding. I don't know if it's a moment. And it might have been Gillen.

The stuff I'm complaining about at this point. And I like, I really liked Kieran Gillen's stuff. Actually, I don't know who plotted this out. I know that Gillen wrote the, the Afra parts of this. But I should have said this outright that like these crossover events are actually co-written because Jordan or sorry, Jason Aaron. is writing Star Wars at the time with the Laraca art. And so that stuff is all being written by Jason Aaron, not by Kieran Gillen.

So I don't know who plotted out all of this or who decided Blue Juice Huka. But I just, I think it messes up a very clear visual metaphor. And again, it can come from needing to share that sort of planning with somebody else, you know? It's tough. I don't know. Yeah, maybe it was a situation where there was like, here's like what happens. in, you know, like things are being developed at the same time. Like there's, you know, um, it's, it's something.

Yeah. Um, the, the other thing that gets fumbled here, because again, we're, we're just having too many pieces thrown into the blunder here. Um, there is the ruins of Afra's relationship with Sana, um, sort of the, the guilt and embarrassment she feels because like Sana for all her, Sana is more. but a traditional like scoundrel like Han really in a lot of ways. Like has a code. You know,

person's got to have a code. And or be it's that after maybe doesn't. And that's the thing that's kind of intolerable between them. And so you have that. But that's kind of thrown in there. Again, because there's just 20 pieces happening. You could have actually had a good juxtaposition here where one of the other things

that's running through here is Afra realizing that Luke likes her. Like, it's sort of adopted her as like brought her into the fold. He stands up for her when his friends show up and pull a blaster on her. And without question, just sort of says as he's standing between her and his friends, like Afra's my friend. And we get the shot of her looking at him, kind of like stunned at the fact that he considers her a friend. when against his against his other friends. And this is probably the last issue of this that really worked for me,

or at least I had a moment that really really clicked for me, because Afra and Luke go through the complex, and they end up talking through, this is where she's making the case for, man, like people don't give a shit about the empire. Like, people just don't, you know what's better than, you know what's worse than the empire? Chaos, the chaos of like a collapsed government.

like after the clone wars. And so she starts talking about, basically she levels of him the charges of, you don't know hardship. You are a sheltered little farm boy. And there's a nasty galaxy out there and nasty things happen to people in it. And you can't understand what we've gone through

and you're naive. And this is all academic for you because you're a powerful Jedi and you are, which was another interesting thing, right? That like you're not even one of us anymore. Like you are, you, you were a farm boy, but now you're, now you're one of the heroes of this galaxy. The ship that's going to roll down on everyone else in this setting isn't going to hit you. But that's where he sort of fires back at her with the like, he, one, he sort of sees through the facade,

uh, that there's, there's a lot of fronting with Afra, um, that she's nowhere near as hard and cynical as she is, she's making herself out to be. But also, you know, he points out that, you know, the thing that hits her, right as she's about to literally open the door and betray him to the queen is he says, everyone on my farm was slaughtered by the empire. And you see that moment, like, hit for him as she realizes, like, she's kind of talking about it. She's, she's shown her old ass in this conversation.

Like, there were a lot of assumptions, and they were unfair. And worse, that maybe her backstory and Luke's are almost one to one. that like they went through most of the same stuff and Luke is still Luke and as long as she can have it be oh he's just this embodiment of good he's just dudley fucking do right and that's just all he is because he hasn't faced the universe in the way I've had to that's one thing but the second he reveals that a lot of the same stuff happened uh it it really it really cracks her in a lot of ways and then the betrayal happens and she sort of throws him you know to to the queen. But I like this, this dynamic where, one, just, just Luke and Afra again through this,

if this has just been an adventure with the two of them and like, how real can their friendship be to what degree she's manipulating versus manipulating him and like drawing him closer to further gain his trust versus like she actually does kind of like this kid. That's good in itself. The, even the introduction of the sauna angle still, kind of works because it's the person that like through weight of experience and a relationship has seen you at your worst has justly drawn the most brutal conclusions about you and you can never escape them you can never you can never start over with this person they're always going to see all the things about you that you that you hate and and they're right to um and so if and

if they're around it changes who you can't be in that moment that you can't you can't kind of escape that that that part of yourself and then having that juxtaposed with Luke who doesn't have this context and even when he sees her be kind of shitty extends that grace that like other people don't give her that there's that forgiveness there's interesting stuff here to be drawn out about like Afra and how she feels about herself her relationships with other people to what degree does she actually just want a fresh start and escape all this versus to what degree is she kind of a rotten selfish prick who justifies a lot of that rot with her tragic backstory.

All good stuff. And that's kind of all you needed. Like the Lucan Aftherstuff could have been the issue by itself. Sonna could have shown up. It becomes a story about like two different relationships and like the capacity to start over and like turn the page with different people and like be involved with different kinds of like friendships. It invites that.

But again, they don't have the page count. We can't stay on it because no sooner has this happened. And we've built to, this is so overstuffed. This to me feels like it probably should be and is like the emotional, not necessarily the climax, but it's like the big fracturing point of the story. Like it hinges here, her betrayal of Luke. But it kind of doesn't land because a page later it's got to be about Han getting brainjacked. And now it's funny the way it handled.

This is some very good visual storytelling. It's a very funny series of panels where he's like, I've got a blaster. And he steps out to blast her. And you see his eyes go red and he goes, oh. Yeah. And the next thing we get is an Ivind, Earl ass like the dark queen sort of taking her supplicant into her service. All that's good.

But like, hey, we were really cooking with Afra and Luke and, you know, how. how much responsibility she should take and to what degree is she already regret this betrayal she's done and now that stuff's kind of back on the shelf and for the rest of this arc it's going to be a lot of and then this happened and then

this happened and then Han is like I will be the king you're you're what would I want with a princess when I'm the king and that which is another part about these stories where people have like you know the

madness is a couple come upon them or their their brand has been taken over it's always a stand in for questions of like when people take on shitty roles and do shitty things is that mean to some degree that they were that was in there the entire time it's also a very direct analog to like mental illness and to what degree some of the horrific things people say and do under under influence like a revelation of some stuff that was always there under the surface versus like it was just the external symptom of something else happening. But this doesn't meet that criteria because it's just not... It's not really saying anything substantial in a way that...

Yeah, there's no truth to it. And it's also like, it's not speaking to her really, her character. Like, yeah, you're expecting it to fall into the trope of like, oh, he's going to say something that, you know, he really... really means but would never have said if he hadn't been like inhibited in this way to say, you know, this like truth that he was holding on to. Um, which I think like you said,

Rob is a shitty trope and isn't really representative. Um, but it's, it's not even really doing that because there's nothing, there's nothing to like, for him to kind of address really with like, and then he's very easily persuaded once, you know, the other two power figures, I guess, are taken out. When he realizes he's the boss, he's like, yeah, I can be the boss.

And then all it takes is son is saying, don't you hate telling people what to do? And he's like, oh, you're right. Never mind, everyone, parasite out. and then everyone on the on the planet is free or in this, you know, region is free. Everyone hangs up on the Zoom call. Yeah. That's, it's a little too goofy. It's like this is the comedy twist at the end, right?

But Han, you don't want to be the boss. Oh, that's right. I don't. It's so, arc ended. It's rough. It's rough. Yeah, I don't know. I will add some context here that I talked about last time,

but Sana is coming off of an arc where she, And she and Leah were in a prison that was being attacked by someone who was like virulently anti-empirate empire was trying to like slaughter all the prisoners that the rebels had taken from the Imperials. And Sana's whole thing there was like, we should just kill Afra. Afra needs to fucking die. She's like, it's impossible to rehabilitate her. And I'm furious at her. And like we're wasting our time.

And Leah is like, no, she can be forgiven. So you could have put, to go back to Robert you're saying 10 minutes ago, whatever, like, you could, you could have put Sonnet into here, basically coming right off of that arc, not that long ago. Yeah. That would have been, you know, again, not immediately off of that arc. There have been other issues in between, but not that longer. I think maybe a year before this comes out, something like that, maybe.

Maybe it's worth that. But, you know, it's not long. Like, the last time the two characters were together was that. And that would have, I think, built really nicely. And you could have just had her as the third, as, like, the third extent, like, the third extreme on the spectrum. with Luke on one side and Sana on the other in terms of like, can Afra be saved?

And yeah, I don't know. Is there anything else here that we like feel pretty positively about? I have one. Please. I felt positively when RRer was trying to teach Luke the Fallout for targeting system, when you can do that. The fax system. VATs, VATs, VATs, yes.

VATs, bats, yeah, bats. Not facts. VATs. Yeah, VAT system for killing the parasite. I thought that was a highlight for me. Yeah. Yeah, there's a sequence where Roar is like, lock on here, here, and here.

Which is very funny. Oh, I should shout out, by the way. Some folks reached out to be like to correct me on something, which is I said that RUR, R-U-R-R-R-R-R-R- Not Rossum. maybe it is Rossum's universal robots it's not Rossum it's something else it's looking it up I was right Rossum's universal robots

was I said that it was a Russian novel and of course was a check play so I was like I get half credit it was the invention of the word robot though so correction there also somehow we were wrong about something that happened in the book of Boba Fett Horsanton does

not survive the book of Boba Fett and he's even rewarded with a melioran fruit. And black grisantin, who did not die. Did not die. So those are, that's a correction. You there. What day is today?

It's Boone to Eve, sir. It's a new dimeo day, sir. It's new daimio day, sir. I can't believe they caught him the daimio. Picillas. Polone needs to be stopped. Lon needs to be stopped. My last positive thing is that I really did enjoy

the first issue of this run. Like I think back to us, you know, whenever we last recorded and at the very end of the episode, we're like, ooh, we just skipped a couple pages ahead and what is this? And we're so excited. And I really thought, like, doing kind of a music video arc for the Afras Star Wars crossover horror edition here, I was very here for it. It didn't, you know, I didn't need it to do something deep and meaningful with regards to, I don't know, it's a Luke as a judge. I just, I was here for something kind of fun, and I would have loved to have seen what the first comic setup of this run seen throughout.

But, you know, I look at it. forward to hopefully getting to see another or read another comic penciled by that artist, I hope. Or, yeah, penciled. Yeah. Penciled in ink. Yeah. Marco. Marco, Chichetto. I was drinking Italian. What do you

have to share with this in the positivity corner? The one thing that is positive for me is when Luke had that chad on. That's right. That's in that first comic. There's that like full half panel shot of him.

Looks really good He never gets to wear that past the first issue, does he? I don't think so knows. He goes back to yellow jacket. Everything about this is tragic. Because there's pictures of him in the yellow jacket. Yeah. Fuck, dude.

And it's him saying, oh my God, I just have to, I have to screencap this one for safekeeping for later. It's, the panel is him saying, I'm not just a farm boy. It's awesome. It's literally awesome.

It's fucking awesome, dude. Do you know how bad you have to fumble, like, Han Solo and Leah, like, pre-relationship? Like, what are we doing? For me to not be like, well, that was kind of fun. Yeah. But nothing happened. You don't like it when she, like, boops his lips at the end, when Leia boops on lips for some reason? I don't really know about that.

I don't know. I missed his lip boop. You missed it. That was her little reward. So remember the arc here is that Triple Zero has been like, you like to use your friends just like, you know, as tools just like Mistress Afra does. And Leah is like, no, I don't. No, I don't.

No, I don't. And then at the end, she ends up being like, I'm so grateful I have you guys as my friends. She says, Han, you're okay. And then I'm just glad you're in one piece, Han. And he's like, hey, it's on me. Thought it was a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, but turns out, well, it's not. This one time, anyway, maybe I was a little overconfident. And she goes, shush, it's okay, you're you.

And puts her pinky finger? No, index finger on her left hand. Index finger. But she's, no, wait a second. Uh-oh. She's, okay. I want you to stand the way she's standing. So she's standing.

It's her left hand. It's her left hand. So she's up. She's reaching her elbow into her waist. running the yeah the index her left index finger across his lips but from like a very odd angle I don't

I don't really read it but yeah and she's saying shush you're you just a moment I'm being grateful for you guys don't worry it won't last ha ha ha ha ha ha also again yeah you can't go too far with moments like that because it's like they're going to figure it out before

empire at this rate the look she's giving him is not we're not going to able to give voice to things until the asteroid feels. No. That's what she says, don't work. That's like,

get one drink into her. Yes. Don't worry. It won't last. Empire Strikes Back hasn't happened yet. Han. I can't do more than this. Well,

I mean, now we know what he was talking about when he was like, you're different when you're alone. Damn. You know, there we go. But,

true. Yeah. I just red-eyed Han Solo is not doing it. for me very much unfortunately. I think one of the problems was that was it being the scary version was our first look at him was hyper-realistic Han. Like maybe if we would have gotten like more

cartoon-y Han first, but hyper-realistic evil Han was too much, I think. It's pretty bad. Yeah. And I mean, you're, you know, you know, there's something to be said about art style and character development and expression and the way that you can make things kind of lift off the page a little bit if you're willing to stretch the expression of the characters in a way that buys you into the character. And like if I felt like Leo was actually really afraid or if I felt like Han was, you know, really,

it wasn't just Harrison Ford's face with his eyes turning red and it really like felt uncanny or if I felt like scared at any time it would have gone differently but that is not

I did feel scared of this comic but not in a different way quick thing so Austin just had a drink to live in the middle of this but with the background blurring yeah I thought for some reason you were being handed

the slave one model because the straw was lying across an iced tea or an iced like a berry drink it's like a rose lichy is what it looks like it is. It sounds right. It's fucking delicious.

I don't know what's going on here. But it looks great. It looked so much like a fire spray in the background blur I wish. It was and here's Boba Fed ship. This is what this is, you know what this Mark needed. Sorry, I've got a visual aid here. It needed more fire spray.

I'm going to say my favorite La Raca page, and I actually meet it, and this isn't a joke. Same. Okay. That's a great, this is a great thing to do. Yes, go ahead. Tell us. It's the last page of four here, where it reveals for the first, we see Luke with a symbiata for the first time. and he's like biting his lower lip and it looks like he's crying because the red eye hasn't like taken over him fully, I guess, or something that's going on there.

I think that that went off. I think that this is a great illustration. Can you send a screenshot of it because I'm looking for it now? Sure. Yes, I shall do that. It's a 401. Oh, I see.

This is a great illustration. Okay, I see it. It's where he says, bow, before you're king? I think that this is one of the... pages where the emotional expression of the character matches what is happening

and is communicating something about the situation I have one actually hold on somebody else go okay great I think Laraca continues to be good at the thing he was good at

in the Vader comic which is drawing spaceships and droids and I actually think he does a really good job drawing some aliens. And so I think I will shout out the panel I already mentioned once, which is the page with all of the zomified aliens and then it's BT and triple zero. There are moments of this where I was like, man, this is very health incoded. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. In ways that are cool. Like, and that's got cool art. And Rob 40K again, that alien in the first in the party who's like the, the, whatever Dominion is going to da da da da da da that's a 40k type type beat we could have gotten we could have had a whole arc of that he's also kind of wearing Griffith's armor when he becomes femtoe he is kind of yes he kind of is he kind of is you can't see my griff from this perspective but he's back there also wait you keep a Griffith in your it would see it's both of boy that's the reddest flag

I've ever seen oh that's good it's good if it was a red flag no one would have brought me a Rose-Licchy delicious drink. Not everyone knows who Griffith is. Sometimes, like, that's a cool anime. Who's she? Yeah, well. Who's standing in the big silhouette of guts? This is, it's great.

I'll shout out, this is, if people go to Alex Cyple. dot big cartel.com, Cyple, sip-L-E, you can see the Golden Age poster and blanket slash tapestry there. It's really good. It's, it's, it's, talk about good art. Let's talk about some good art.

Alex Seiple's stuff is fantastic. So. I like the page where, um, Luke is trying to, uh, attack the screaming queen with his lightsaber and she disappears into particles. Yes. And then she kind of like reappears in particles.

I thought that was cool and called back to, the particles I love so much in the first. The particles are cool. Yeah. The particles are cool. Like, it's cool to imagine her kind of reassembling in front of him. Like, I see her kind of like, she's not wholly there, but she's, you know, moving around. So that I liked.

It does get interrupted by Afra blowing up a hole in the wall. so that's the explosion on the bottom bottom panel there. But I liked that effect. That was cool. Rob, did you give us a panel? It has to be a Laraca panel. Yeah. Yes.

You know what? You picked some really good ones. Okay. And I think you picked mine. So I think, you know, it's a big night guy. if he did a whole BT and evil R2D2 comic I can't remember I'm very sorry

BT is evil R2 C3 Sorry triple zero is Sorry I'm trying to be good I'm trying to be positive here And then there's one where like Han looks like a Trump meme I yeah It's got the red eyes Ah yes how may I serve you my queen

But it's very like Oh I have a really good one I actually have a genuinely super good one I actually think this is like a really good run of pages So you had the bad one, and I'm just bad to start with the bad one. There's the one where it's the center of a triptych or not a triptych, whatever, a three panel page with Han Leia and Sana in the interior of the Millennium Falcon. That's bad.

You talked about that, how bad it was. But then you turn the page, and it's three or four pages in a row where there's none of the photo realistic style, and instead it's kind of like exploring the screaming Citadel, and you kind of get its architecture. you get the big weird night, you get some aliens, you get some guys with Embo hats on, and you get this really good page of the spiral staircase looking down into...

I was just looking at this photo. It's the opposite one where Chris Anand is sitting alone in the cell. Totally, yes, exactly. These are, yeah, these are two. Those are genuinely really good. And then you turn the page again, and it's photo realistic Luke and some lady, who I guess is Dr. Afra now,

and it's, we're back in hell. But, like, I mean, the rest of that page is pretty good with the billowing curtains and stuff. you know and listen if you told me that this was also traced if the environments were traced too I guess I would believe you but I think if they are

they are more evocative they're more interesting than the way he's doing these photo realistic faces Allie what were you going to say well just like a full chrysanthemum no that's a that's an herb but that's a flower

chrysanit but like a full comic just on that character a full comic just on BTE it would be great and I would love to see LaRocca do that and I think that he would do a fantastic job I loved so much of the Darth Vader work

it's not it's not it's not it's not it's not it's not it here I'm sorry to say people should send us the best Salvador La Raca art yeah I would love to see like where does he shine I would love to see

I mean I think the stuff that you've pointed out like some of these environments the droids and the in some of the, you know, different aliens and stuff work well. So I'd love to see more of that. Yeah. No faces, please. Or if you does face is really good, I'd love to know that, actually.

Or if you have one that you really are like, wow-za, send me that one, too. Like, wowza, like, in a negative way, but you just want to see how... I just want to see what are people's, like, pocket, like, Damn. Oh, this is going to be solid since he's apparently on, we already talked about Matt Fraction earlier, but he was on Matt Fraction's Invincible Iron Man from 2008 to 2012, which won an Eisner for Best New Series. And that actually makes a lot of sense of a book that he'd do great with because of all

the Iron Man suits, right? We know he does mechanical stuff pretty well. I'm looking at the stuff. I think it looks perfectly fine. think it looks anywhere near as bad as this stuff does. I don't know if he had different timelines, different whatever. I mean, 2012, Ironman, you know they were giving it time to cook, you know, because that was like key Avengers build up time. So, yeah, let us know if there's other stuff here that you think is good. Wait, Tony Stark marries Emma Frost? You know, lots of stuff happens in the comics.

What the heck? I don't know anything about Marvel. I'm excited for the next run. Me too. Me too. Do we want to just, yeah, do you want to close up and talk about what's coming next? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

The next arc of Dr. Afra is called the Enormous Profit. We will be reading that arc. Profit, P-R-O-F-I-T, like, you know, you got a lot of profit. but I don't know. Maybe it's a pun. Maybe there'll be a big profit also, you know. I will say I'm looking at the cover of the trade paperback, and this is making me think that there's a little bit of a pun going on, and maybe there's also a profit here. I think we're going to get more roar, which is exciting. We'll see. I will add, so we're reading the trade paperback of the enormous profit, Dr. Afro book three, the enormous profit. But because we're reading through the omnibus, actually, that also includes Dr. Afro. annual one, which I think for us, that's where it starts. We do annual one and then we read the enormous profit. So if you just like turn the page after the peasant queen, it just says Star Wars Dr. Afra annual one.

That's if you're reading with the Omnibus, that's where we're starting. That's on page 423 of the Omnibus, I think. But if you're reading trade paperbacks, you should be reading the Dr. Afra enormous profit to trade paperback. And I think that's, I don't think the annual is in there, I think. But so you might just have to find that somewhere else. But in the in the omnibus, the annual issue is first. And there should be like some trandotions.

I'm excited to see some trondotions. So. Yeah. Let's do that. All right. All right. So that say goodbye to the screaming citadel and our shattered dreams of Luke out on the town at his first high society ball.

Yeah. We got a couple pages, but we didn't. We didn't get our dreams. No. Until next time, please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. And remember to leave a TripAdvisor review for the Screaming Citadel. It's so important for businesses like that. And your feedback is going to help them show guests a better time when the Screaming Citadel reopens.