A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - AMCA 142: Doctor Aphra Vol. 2 — Doctor Aphra and the Enormous Profit

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

Not only is Doctor Aphra back... she's BACK. This week we get a joyous arc that frankly feels like a re-take on some of the best ideas of the big crossover. No, there aren't any Hot Topic vampires this time, but there is a huge soiree, a really fun rogues gallery, an exploration of Aphra's moral center, and the return of a major character from the Star Wars universe. Only this time... it all just sort of works. Lucky us. Support the show by going to Patreon.com/civilized! Next Time: Star Wars: Doctor Aphra Vol. 3: Remastered 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 of Star Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakini, joined by Ali Akampora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by you are listeners via 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. We return to Dr. Bafra this week. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I have important information. What?

Okay. And I'm going to read the byline, and you're going to have some questions, Rob. I don't know if this is what he's busy doing right now. It says right here. It says, Scrap Star Wars, the Acolyte Season 2 plans revealed, exclusive.

This is from, let's see here, it says Caleb Williams at Night Edge Media. What? I must be a different guy. It must be a different guy. Not Bear's quarterback. I'm assuming not Bear's quarterback,

Caleb. Skipping his conditioning and flexibility. He was busy waiting to run down the Akelyte's season two room. That's right. We should say, these are rumors. I have not vetted Night Edge Media. I do not know Caleb Williams, either one of them.

However, I will say it says here, quote, we at Night Edge Media have learned plot points for the first half of the second season, what would have been the second season, before it was scrapped. The it here is the acolyte, the show that we have defended, sort of. years. Quote, as I'm just going to read this article.

Again, you should go give a click to Night Edge Media, K-N-I-G-H-T, like a Jedi Knight, Edge like the edge of a lightsaber. I don't know if they've had just actually, they're kind of round. As we know, at the end of the first season, OSHA, so do we all remember, spoilers for season one of the Acklein. As we know at the end of the first... And season two.

Right, well, end season two, which isn't going to get made, which isn't getting made. as we know at the end of the first season OSHA switches places with her twin sister May and joins Camere played by Manny Yusinto on the dark side. Darth Plagius appears, or Plagius

I've never known how to say this name. I have to tell you. I don't remember how he says it in the movie. I always want to say plagiarist, but I don't know that that's true. I was like, does he say Plagius? Maybe he just says Plagius. Darth Plagius story. Plage. I don't think of it.

I don't think we'd remember if he said that. I've never heard the story of Darth Plage the Wise. Here we go. The way palphe fuck off. Plague us. Apparently, I don't think it's Plague us. No, it can't be Plague us. Okay, it can't be Plague us.

It could be. It actually might be. I think it's Plagueis. Maybe it's Plague's. I like Plague. It's Star Warsy. Okay, Wikipedia says Plagueis. So I'm going to say it that way.

Darth Plagis, also appears to be on the unknown planet, quote unquote, somehow, but doesn't directly meet OSHA yet. We all remember this. Now, the series was going to have a one-year time skip after season one. A cold open would feature OSHA in a gladiator ring run by the huts. The same concept was used ultimately in the Mandalorian and Grogu. She ends up killing the hut running the ring named Brigo. Several huts have similar names, including Brogo, Broga, and Brovovo the hut in the end.

expanded universe, though it's unknown which hut this is. Since OSHA isn't fully with a dark side yet internally, the Jedi order learns of her assassination attempt. May, the sister, is now with Yoda and the Jedi Order as revealed in season one. She spends most of her time with Yoda's Padawan, Coli. They wanted the South Asian actress for this role. Yoda is trading May to track OSHA using the force after the incident with the huts. I just read the words.

Camere works directly for Darth Plagas and does his bidding. Throughout the season, Camere, and by extension, OSHA is tasked with assassinating multiple other figures beside the hut in service of Darth Plagas. They were revealed to be just pawns in a larger conspiracy,

much like Vader killing the separatists in Revenge of the Sith. The season would include two flashback episodes explaining Camer's origin from his perspective, then again from Jedi Master Vernestra Roe, played by Rebecca Henderson. You remember Venestra was like one of the most interesting characters in that season.

As was already revealed, Camere was originally her apprentice. Camille now stays at a mansion on the same planet from season one instead of a cave with a snarky droid servant. Several female comedic actresses were wanted for the voice role. Female? Female, female snarky droid.

Femm, HK-47. Gender swap Zero. Oh my God. During a goutlet. Let women do bits. Let women do bits. Absolutely. I like right now what we've learned. They wanted the Southeast Asian actress for one role and a woman for the other. That's what we know.

South Asian. The field was very old. Oh, you're right. Just South Asian. Not Southeast Asian. My bad. During a gala, Darth Plagas appears as a normal looking hologram to the guests, but is secretly inside, like a vampire-type monster hidden deep in the mansion shadows. It's just like Fortnite. Plagas is constantly trying to have Camier bring him OSHA. However, Camer refuses. and the two ultimately fight with Camier beat into within an inch of his life. Oshah saves him and brings him to a forced deprivation pool. The same idea is used for his helmet in season one.

This scene would push Star Wars to its further point, as Andor has done before. Star Wars would have its first on-screen sexual experience between Oshah and Camer. Nothing explicit would ever be shown under Disney. Think Spider-Man brand-new day, but it would be more akin to 2000. 2009's avatar. The two would be in the pool together, finally let their guard down, and then their spirit slash consciousnesses

would become one with the force sensually. Ultimately, this would become allow the two to become more than master and apprentice leading into future seasons. It's peak, I'm afraid. I'm afraid that they need to make the show. This is what they took for months. This is what they fucking took for us.

Y'all mind if my spirit and consciousness merges with Camier essentially, centrally in the force pool The anti-forced pool? This is what I'm not actually understanding here. It says here a force deprivation. Okay, I think this is not a forced deprivation pool. This is a force deprivation pool.

You understand what I mean? It's not depriving them of the force. It's like a regular deprivation pool, but instead of like being in the water and in the dark, you're in the force. Yes. So they're connected. It's like a medium connecting the two of them.

So it's actually like, it's like mainly force. That's right. Like you're in, it's like force. It's actually the force accentuation pool. That's right. Force amplification. That's right.

Force amplification. Um, okay. I like that idea. We cannot. Yeah. I was kind of think about, um, what if they were in the, the force deprivation pool that deprivates your force? That's what I thought.

But their, but their spirit and consciousness was so powerfully horny. that it overcame in the force, they overcame the deprivation mechanic because their force horny, central was so strong. You see what I'm saying? I think the thing is, remember, he's been beaten within an inch of his life, right?

So he's, which, by the way, nice touch. He's been beaten into an inch of his life. She used to drag him to this pool to heal him and she used to get in. She has to get in there too to give it a spark probably. You know what I mean? She used to like channel the force through the pool.

So I have to imagine it's like a life pole that helps heal him while they're having... I got seen an Outlander where he's dying, but then she reaches down and gives him a handy and he lives. Just like that. It'd be like that. I mean, I would not doubt that that scene was on the whiteboard

when they wrote this scene. Oh, how to, like... I mean, that's the audience. That's what the audience was supposed to be for this show. Oh, God. But, like, age down 10 years, because I kind of think of Outlander as being like... Bring me, Ocean.

I'll never bring her to you. and then it's like leave me let me die no I'm taking you I'm taking you to the forced deprivation pool yeah we must be wet together we must be wet together quick

getting its healing waters they can't what about couldn't you just I'm getting in there with you no strip down I couldn't there's no back to there's just the force pool I can't believe this is where the hut gladiator stuff comes from That is pissing me off because I know that Dave Filoni just has idea ideas in his notes app on his phone.

And I know that shit Gladiator Hut has been sitting in there and he just deployed it. No, no, no, let me defend. Okay. The acolyte. Oh, we're defending the acolyte. Okay, because in the direction of the acolyte. Yes, yeah. Okay.

So I think we're all on the same page. Yeah. This direction. Yeah. This is going to operate in a grand tradition of very horny sword and sandals. Oh, I see. It's happening. Right.

Like, it's going to be, like, rippling muscle, oil bodies in the gladiatorial arena, sexuality and violence living side by side in a way that they really only do in Star Wars during the Last Jedi. Right. But it's going to be, like, all of that happening. And then also, now we must go to a Roman, Bath's situation, but like for the force. Right to the band. And yeah.

Yeah. So I mean, I think we got, we got this debased version of the hut gladiator ring. Yeah. And we could have had like HBO's Rome. So what they took from us. Imagine, imagine a world where like, you know how boxers before they go in the ring, you put the Vaseline on their face and stuff and you kind of. you get them like slippery.

Yeah. I'm imagining. Yeah. Yep. That's it. I think you're totally right though. Why would they take peek from us? Why would they do this?

Frankly, it's like it's in the, it's in some of the words we talked about, which was this all sounds a lot like some of the best parts of the last Jedi and they're cowards after the last Jedi. Also because the acolyte like only did okay. But I think mostly because the accolite also triggered the same. sort of annoying, vocal, terrible fan response

that the Last Jedi did and and it cost a quadrillion dollars. It also costs a quadrillion dollars. I'll not forget that it cost a quadrillion dollars an episode.

That show costed so much money. Hang on, the people who cost them that money in terms of acting cost in terms of that part of the budget.

I also think there's a little bit there's a little bit of okay, so it's like when they canceled the F-22 to save money. Like, we don't need F-22s anymore.

And it's such an expensive airplane, but the F-35 will save us money. But when they cast the F-22, the F-22 already existed. Yeah. They paid for the hard part, which was developing the thing, all the stuff that, like, has to happen before you can, like, turn an assembly line on and start rolling out planes. Now you can say, well, I don't, what our F-22 is going to be used for? Nothing good. And it's like, yeah, fair point.

But I'm just talking about, like, cost efficiencies. This is what we're saying about, like, TV shows. Oh, it was so expensive. ridiculous budget per episode. Yeah, but what if, hear me out? What if you had like 16 episodes of season for your next order? Or maybe 22? Could 24 even be done?

Could you make a show with 24 episodes of TV? And then I bet you your episode, your cost per episode thing would just would decline drastically because one, you'd be getting better and better at making the show. and two, like, you wouldn't have all these startup costs. We could, the act like could have been their slow horses. We already did all the IP. You don't even need to do 20 episodes. Yeah.

We already did all the IP ideation. We already came up with the characters and the costumes. We've already built the sets. We've already put together the props. The characters have already started to learn how their characters work. You know, we don't need to do as much, you know, pre-production every season. Yeah. Yeah.

And listen, if we bring down the effects budget a little bit along the way, that's fine. We'll just have to write. tighter, more interesting episodes that can't rely on big effects spends. And they could like, I don't like, go to the horse track or whatever and have a whole one-off episode at the horse. You know what I mean? Just like start doing little one-off. They could be, they could all be locked on the ship for an episode. There's nothing wrong with that. Camere is in trouble with Dark Plagueis because he doesn't have Dark Plague's money they need for their Sith headquarters. That's right. So to get him out of trouble,

Camir and O'Sha need to go to the dog track. Right. And rig race. That's right. And then a beloved character actor is there as like a wise gambler. And now we're talking about here. Oh, I really love the episode where someone steals

Camer and OSHA's faces and they like go around and do a bunch of trouble like while in disguise is Camer and OSHA. And Camer and OSHA have to go like undo the trouble they caused. You don't have to cast second actors. It's just them again for most of the episode. You know? Like, oh, they were forced meditating together, and it was like their, this would be before, obviously, the consummated their affair in the force deprivation pool. Yeah. But so, but it could be like their, they're latent desire for each other causes, I don't know, let's say a body swap episode.

And then I don't know, how do we swap back? But in the meantime, we have 40 minutes of them playing each other's characters. Perfect. Like, fantastic stuff. You're picking up what I'm putting down. Let's, let's be real. The best parts of the acolyte. what was the special effect they had?

A temperate rainforest somewhere probably in the northwest of North America. And then a sparse set that you just say, this is the Imperial Senate building. And then an actor being like just making you believe that he's a

senator skeptical of the Jedi. Let me put you this. The Jedi try to control that which cannot be controlled. That's your special effect. Let me put you this. May is with Yoda and no one wants to do any puppeteering in this episode because it's expensive. May has a force

trance and she's wondering what would my life be like if I just didn't do all the stuff I did in the last season and a half. She's just back in episode one where you just go back to those sets. In fact we keep half of those shots exactly the same. We just fill in new things where she slowly realizes, wait a second, this isn't, I'm in a

forced trance. I'm and it's kind of like a wonderful life type situation she realizes even though this was bad, the alternative would be worse. She has to go back. She has to go back, exactly. These write themselves. And also, you can go to any weekly

episode monster of the week type show, adventure serial from anywhere in the 90s of 2000s, and just copy the things from there, and it's just fine, just do it. Make television again. That's just, that's going to happen. Like, at some point, your, your effects budget is going to be smaller than Dave

Harewood being on the show. And that's fine. That's season three, when he gets promoted the series regular. All right. Now, now, like, this is uncharted territory, but you know what? Like, they had to pay Picard card too. They did. Oh, and that's the thing, right? It's like, on a long enough timeline, this all starts paying for itself because people are like, I love the Ackleight. I've always, actually, I've always loved the Acolyte. You won't believe how much this will have been a thing you've already loved. You were on Team Ackleit from day one. You'll be telling people this. Even the people who were like, this show is woke. It should be canceled.

By season three, they're like, I'm telling you, man, the Harwood's character is the hardest motherfucker in Star Wars. That's right. Like, that Imperial said it never would have fallen. That's right. It's nice to dream. It's nice to dream. If they'd release the acolyte, like last year,

you would have seen the tide rollout on the reactionary forces. It would be like, this show was woke, get it off the air. And I'd be like, shut the fuck up. we're ordering five seasons. That's where we'd be. That's where we'd be. Instead, we're here. Has it been,

has it been two years since Ackleite? I think it's been more than that. More than that. No. I think it has been. Acoly. It's been two and a half years, two years in a few months.

June through July of 2024. Wow. Yeah, no, see, this was the, yeah, it's like, I mean, this is why Adam Serwer, like,

just posts this in response to every, like, nightmarish bit of Trump news, right? Well, at least there's going to be no season two of the acolyte. That's right. At least. What do you mean? A gallon.

No, in other words, just like the culture war movement of people who decided to vote for, you know what I mean. Yeah. I see, I see. I get it now. Fuck, dude. But I think you're right. If they just held the show for one more year, if Trump had gotten into office,

maybe we could have gotten enough people to be like, so it's a little woke. So what? We have people calling this woke 2.0 by now easy. This could have this could have coincided with woke is back. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, exactly. And we would have been able to mark the moment that like woke was truly back. It would have been the sex scene in the forest deprivation pool.

That's right because the thing is horny also is is back. Horny's back. Woke fucks now. Like that's that's it. It's really fresh because woke always fucked. I know. And it's really annoying. I'm not on Teamwork 2.0.

It's deeply frustrating to me as a concept. It's fine. It's fine. Well, it's tied up in the debasement of the entire term. This is exactly right. This is exactly right. So, like,

that discourse, when you realize that for some people, woke spraying into existence, like a decade after you really heard, like it being bad around mainstream popular concept. Yes. Yeah. It's like,

No, woke one was the Democratic Congressional Congression in the Kentikloff. That for them is like that's woke 1.0. It's like, well, that's actually sort of an awkward culmination trailing indicator of stuff up and underway for a long time. Yeah.

Oh, well. Anyways, back to Afra. You know what else I like? Sometimes I like a Long Island iced tea. Fair enough. It's just a lot of delicious high-proof alcohol mixed together in a palatable form. And like, it's just what the doctor ordered. And we got another one of those. Thank God. It's amazing how much I think we're back for just like a fun. We just did a fun one. And there's even a little, there's a little juice that you could get from the squeeze, you know? It's so we start with

kind of a one-off stage setting. It's told in a series of nested vignettes. The first is a story told by the sole survivor of a Trandotian hunting party on Kashik where they ran across a dying wookie to kill and skin as a trophy only to realize he was being used as bait by a far deadlier wookie.

Black chrysanin. We see the stories being told years later in a bar to a pair of self-described journalists for an underground alternative news outlet, the Undervine. They want to learn more about Black Cresantin and go and interview him. While they do so, Afra and the droids sneak aboard the ship and use their CMS credentials to post an article on the Undervine about an auction that will bring all sorts of scum out of the woodwork. Meanwhile, Black Cresantin tells the journalists a bit of his backstory,

how he wanted to be mentored by the Zontel brothers, and how they enslaved him as a gladiator and then surgically modified him for combat and the ultra-heavy weight class before auctioning him. The journalists end up offending Black Cresantin and he runs them off and then at the end we learned that he was only distracting them while the whole thing was in the

service of Afra's plot, which brings us to the main focus of this arc. Afra is holding an auction for the crystal containing the immortal rour. Because hey, if Luke Skywalker don't want it, maybe I'll just sell it. This auction, its primary goal does appear to be letting Afra try out her cosplay as an evil socialite from a Bruce Tim Batman cartoon with a backless dress, opera gloves, a black eye mask, and her hair in sort of a Star Warsy bob.

Afra swans around a lounge full of underworld dirtbags, new and old. They all want Rura for different reasons, an ancient crime lord and a life support. Actually, it kind of looks like in a Droidaca chassis. when we finally get a look at it. It does kind of look like that. He wants Rory to prolong his life indefinitely. The Shadow University wants to study it and pressures Afri to sell it to them

for the sake of her dwindling academic standing. Droid gangsters want to destroy Rur because his ability to takeover machines is a deadly threat to them. Rival Rodian hut gangsters see a way to enter a partnership together for the sole purpose of selling one another out. The Zontal brothers stick to what they know.

they want to stick rurr inside a series of bodies to make an undying gladiator. Just seeing them makes Chrysanin so angry, he has to be tased. Meanwhile, Triple Zero and BT just want to get back to murdering people and manipulate Afra into saying they must wait for their master's approval before beginning the mayhem. Since their other master is Darth Vader, Triple Zero makes a call. When it comes time to announce the winner of the auction via little buzzers like they have at sports bars and grills to let you know your table is ready or your wings are up.

Afra elects to give RUR to the university. Except Triple Zero and BT have already given Rur access to a droid body and drop the shielding on his crystal, allowing him to break free. As he goes on his rampage, Afra parles with the droids and asks what they want. The answer? Their freedom. Remove the restraint she put on them to stop them from just killing her and let them do as they wish. She fulfills her end of that bargain as Vader lands on the space station. and the surviving crime lords start getting wiped out by Rur and Vader-invater alike.

Grissanton captures the Zontel brothers and leaves Afra to sneak to the Shadow University's spacefaring Ford Transit van full of stolen artifacts. Vader dispatches Rur and brings the crystal to Palpatine. The droids become crime lords. Grosanthin gets the torture of the Zontal brothers in their gladiatorial pit, and Afra goes on a vacation to enjoy a nice rest, only to be menaced by a gang of treasure hunters out to avenge the friend Afrik killed, I think at the start of the previous arc and we end on a comedy freeze frame as Afra contemplates another fine mess

she's gotten herself into. Simple to the point. I was delighted. Yeah. I thought this was great. I saw it like I could see this as an episode of a fun ass Afra show. This is the episode of the week

where she does this. the silly ass like auction with all the crime. Like it just, it's so contained. Yeah. And even though you do get to see Darth, like Darth Vader is there.

There's all this whole cast of interesting, you know, freaky characters of like the underworld and everything. Everyone is like perfectly disposable in a way that is, is, just enough. Like, you learn just enough about all these guys that you aren't sad when they're gone. You're not like, oh, I wish we could have learned a

little bit more. But it's not so much that you're like, oh, no, I was invested in that. Like, compared to the last arc where, you know, we had this cast of like interesting, weird vampire immortal types, where we kind of just gestured at what their vibe was. And didn't actually get to get into it. And then the arc was over and then we found out we're never going to see these people again. Like that felt so unsatisfying. But here, it like worked perfectly. And you got Vader without it having to be like a whole, oh no, Vader's here. How do we make this like a huge Vader moment? It didn't need to be a huge Vader moment. Vader was just there and it was like a little bit of the thing. And then it was and then it was, and then it was

Good. Do you know what I mean? This is, it also feels so much, and this happening right after that last arc almost feels like a, all right. So the last one gets sidetracked because we had to bring in the Star Wars stuff and have all the characters converge on this one location. And we had to shit can the entire conceit, which was all the, the monsters ball being convened for this formal affair while we try to do nefarious Star Wars dirtbag stuff. And that gets derailed into like, okay, Han. everyone needs to rescue Luke and everyone get to the play. And it's like, no, no. We need to hang out with the dirtbags and the weirdos and watch them riff with each other and off of each other.

Yes. And it's like, yes, this is what we need. This is what this is the storytelling possibilities that this, this, this layer of the galaxy and Star Wars allows us to do. Natalie, it's funny. You brought up the episodic TV thing here because it's like, it's such a great illustration of the kind of jokes that we were just, making about the acolyte, which is it is all self-contained, but it's also filled with little, I don't even say callbacks, but like it's able to reuse ideas and visual ideas and characters that we've established in the previous arcs in a way that it feels like similar to like when

you see the same type of alien later on in a TV show that you're watching where it's like, oh, I guess it's one of these guys again. So like, for instance, there's the, what are they called the whatever dominion, the weird Oh my God, who are so funny. The guys who think that they're like going to take over the galaxy, but they only actually covered. When they pinned down. So wait, how much this plan did they control?

Well, two continents. Two continents. Two continents. We ran into one of these guys at the party on the screaming synodel. And we thought we were like, oh, that's really funny. It's very like Warhammer 40K to have this guy here. And here's another one of those guys. Rur is also one of these ideas where it's like, oh, they haven't like given up on Rur.

So Rur isn't like a standalone concept. But at the same time, it's not like they have to re-explain who he is. is here. You know what I mean? We just continue having her here. Well, and again, this is the, like, we're deep into a season or the second season, episode of TV show. So you can bring back your, your character actor besties. Right. Exactly. And it's like, hey, remember these guys from these different plot arcs? Yeah. And it's like, hell yeah, we do. And it's, it's just a fun vibe. Also, this whole arc ends with our main crew all dispersing from each other. Like, everyone ends up, in a new place, in a new context.

Yeah. Not, like, we're not all together anymore. And so it's not just that, oh, and at the end, everything kind of picks up from where it left off. I don't know what the next arc, maybe the next arc does pick up from where they left off and they're all back together again somehow. But to, to, as far as the information I have,

Triple Zero and BT are like now underlords themselves, Lords of the underworld themselves. They're sock-popping a gangster, basically. Yeah, exactly. And Cresantin has taken revenge on the, you know, his former captors and is, like, running his own gladiator ring. Yep. And, like Rob said, Afra's on a beach, beaching. She's doing beach.

Yeah. So it's worth saying, this is the last complete standalone cure. and Gillen arc. The next arc is he co-writes and co-and-co. And also I think the artist is, I think there's a new artist on the next one too. This and the previous just Afra arcs have been Kev Walker. And after this, it turns to somebody else. And likewise, Kieran co-writes the next arc along with Simon Spurrier.

And then Spurrier picks up the book going forward. So I guess we should say actually here, because we said this on the, on the Patreon episode. but here we should say we're going to finish up the Kieran Gillen runs. We're going to finish out this one and the next one. And then we are going to, for the rest of the year, play some Zero Company. I think you can go hear us talk about that over in the Patreon. But in two episodes from now, two full episodes from now, we'll be... Including this one.

Well, no. Because this one, then the next one will be Afra. And then the next one after that will be Zero Company. Right? Okay. We're good. Yes. Okay.

I would make sure I didn't mess anything up. So, yeah. So we're going to finish out Kieran's run, and then we're going to go over to do some Zero Company. The other thing I want to say before was we're talking about the art. Like, the art was such a big conversation last time. And I think it may just not be as big of a conversation this time. Looks like a pretty good Star Wars comic.

I think we'll call out some pages we like a lot. But the first issue, Afra Annual, number one, was penciled by Mark Lamming and inked by Will. sliny and lettered by Joe Karamanga and colored by Jordan Boyd. And then I believe basically all of the rest of it was penciled by Kev Walker. And then maybe there were some different colorists and letterers throughout. But I believe it was mostly inked by Mark Deering and colored by Antonio Fabella. And I think that that was like the main team across all of it.

I think the letterer was the same all the way through. All of which is to say, none of our big complaints from last time have reared their heads here. I think we're like the annual is in a different style than the rest of the issues are. So the first big issue about Black Cresantin's backstory is in a slightly, isn't like a different style, it's a different artist that still has some like vaguely realistic faces, especially the journalists have like normal proportions and like kind of cinematic coloring on their skin and stuff. But after that, we're back to Kev Walker's penciling style, which can veer towards the cartoonie in a way that I think is very positive.

And it means we have lots of punchlines. It means we have lots of, like, big comic bookie proportions. I think the panels in this break together in really fun ways. There's lots of, like, people leaning over one panel or the panels, like, being tiled over each other in a way that produces a sense of movement. I think it's a great-looking comic, and I'm really glad to have Kev Walker back as the penciler here. It's also just like a shame of production because it like the consistency of style across this arc really highlights it. Yes. Like even if we, even if we had been like bouncing between artists and they were all like similar to quality, I think that like just like staying with Kevin Walker's Afra through all of this was important to feel like she's a consistent character throughout.

having the vibes throughout. Yes. I also think it's depending on the issue you can be really important to know how to like draw good spaceships but it can also be really good to have a passion for drawing outfits.

Sure. And this has like there are so many different aphras we get here. Yes. Like it's it's again like debutante. It's like it's like debutante not debutante. It's more like so.

socialite afra um gangster businesswoman afra diehard afra and then like classic adventure afra but other characters get this treatment as well like some of the the the droid the the the droid that's there to maybe buy rur has this like cool chassis and like a cape that he's wearing as like the leader of this group. Like the the underworld characters look fucking dope. What's the name of that cult again? The, um, the Azara.

Yes. Look how good they're fucking, look at the wrong red. Yes. On like there are, there are costume details in this costume makeup details for the various characters that are really excellent. The shadow university people.

I'm sorry. I've created those characters like a dozen times and a dozen different games. Same, man. Give me like, hey, let's see what sunglasses options they had. Ooh, what's going on here? Yeah.

Do they have an even longer coat this character? Oh, they do? Don't want to be much. Like, they will. Oh, yeah. It's great, man. It looks like, it looks awesome. And it looks awesome in motion.

It's, this whole Afra arc has also been just a really good example of how like, not a surprise in the medium, but like you really feel it vividly here. the way that, yes, like art can contribute things like an entire vibe

in motion the way like editing and music does in movies. Yeah, totally. 100%. Especially like, there's such a good, you know, you were saying earlier about

being able to, in the previous one, we all wanted to like meet the freaks and hang out with the freaks. And this is such a rogue's gallery arc. And the feeling that builds from like, okay,

just want this night to go well, to meeting all of the freaks, to the freaks being almost at blows with each other, to it's slowly boiling over and all exploding. There is like a real rising crescendo feeling of it. And a lot of that comes through the art and through the panel construction and the page construction. Yeah. You know, uh, tipping my hat. That's a thing that people say, right? Tipping my hat to the, to the artists here. Just a small thing, because so much of this also be driven by BT finally like heel turn here. But like it looks to me like BT is always like in high contrast shadow in a way we haven't seen.

BT's being being given like the side light Vader look in a lot of it. That armor is like reading is darker than usual. So again like when he appears, you know, appears here is now as a force, not as like comic relief, but as an increasing like menacing figure moving to the center of the action rather than sort of commenting on the margins. Another great little detail here. If you look at any page in issue 11, or maybe it's only the first half of issue 11. It's literally until she rejoins up. Actually, it's, it comes back throughout, but all the action sequences of which the most of them are in the beginning,

the panels have this like heavy ink, like sketchy edges to them. There's like no even lines. throughout most of this comic, right? So anytime anything is happening in a big actiony way, and some of the panels aren't even squared. They're like rectangular and like at an angle and then Afro will be drawn inside of them or the action will be drawn inside of them. There's all of these little techniques

that help produce the sense of dynamism and movement. You know, it's almost like having a drop shadow on the actual panel line, you know? Except it's not as clean as a drop shadow. It looks rough. It looks hurried. And so it makes the action feel hurried. and that's a great little effect.

Interesting because I feel like this is some of the most comprehensible the action has been. Yes. Despite it being, you know, the least like maybe visually, like it having all of these visual dynamics, I think lends itself so well to being able to understand where the action is coming from,

Who like what direction is this going in? Are we winning? Are we losing? Like all of the all of the things it just feels and I think it there's such a nice contrast between the action scenes and some of the more like you feel the pauses of some of the kind of dramatic scenes more like I'm thinking of the the page where Afra chooses her. her winner, like the option winner. It's a great page. And it's a page of 12 evenly square little panels. And it's everyone checking their device to see if they've won the auction. And then it ends with Afra.

And yet, even then, it breaks, it breaks immersion a little bit because then or it, Afra's speech bubble is kind of bridging her and the person that won. So there's just so many little details that work really well in pacing this arc out so well. Like I think between the action and the more dramatic scenes, like when she goes to visit each of the different, you know, bitters and kind of has a little chat with them, a little check-in with them, all of that works so well for me. And I'm really impressed, like I said at the beginning, just how legible all of it is. Because I've had, as a non-comics reader, sometimes I have a little bit of a hard time. It's not just you.

Understanding. We paused the episode a few times now in terms of one of us being like, wait, do we all know what happened in this scene? Hey, what happened in this panel? Hey, I know they did something with the asteroid. I know they did something with the missile. I know every arc thus far has had something like that.

Going back to almost all the Vader comics, right? So this is, and I think part of the thing that's so fascinating or so telling, like you just said, Natalie, was like, It's not like these are not dynamic scenes filled with lots of people and lots of action happening. It's just that those ideas are being communicated more clearly, you know? Really good. And the brought up like the eye for outfits and silhouette and such, but it does really help make the action legible. Because so often, especially in these scenes, we're getting mowed down, you're like, who's getting hit?

I don't know, like, characters dead. And you're like, when did he get killed? But then somebody else that you thought was dead is like standing there talking. to that doesn't happen here because pretty much everyone has been established as like having their own like distinct look yeah and so even when you see a guy getting like blasted by rur's lightsaber in the background of a shot or like one of the laser turrets you know who it is because like color scheme silhouette like outfit details instantly read like across every scene uh it's it's really cool i want to i want to touch on this

this backstory here, the Black Crescenton flashback episode that's like, that's some table setting. I mean, it does, it can be easy. Well, not necessarily easy. Afra as a comic sometimes plays around with this like, is Afro sympathetic? Is their redemption arc, et cetera? But this is an anti-hero comic. By and large, everyone here sucks. And that is true of Chrysantin.

Like here it is Cresanthin was like put in the gladiator arena by these evil These evil bastards But his actual story is And you can still understand why he wants to kill them Yeah But now the key detail is

He wanted to make a devil's bargain To get to make a wish on the monkey paw And then was pissed that the monkey paw Fucked him Because what we meet is not that he was taking a slaver raid on Kashik. It's that he knew the slaver raids were happening and saw an opportunity

to get more powerful. That he, like, mortally wounds another wookie and tosses him out there as live bait for these trandotions so that he can hopefully, he's been, they establish, like four different slaver groups

have been wiped out. He is opening them like card packs, trying to find a gang of slavers that are connected to the Zontal brothers because he really wants to go and learn to be powerful and evil from the Zontal brothers. It's such a fun gimmick,

the twist of the life debt, which we felt some version of that tied to Afra, which has yet to be fully clarified, right? We were like, is there a life debt? Is it just that she's literally in a bunch of debt to him?

And that ambiguity, I think maybe still remains or maybe you have an answer for it in your own head. But here what we get very clearly is he has a twisted notion of the life debt. These two guys change his life. He volunteers and they put chains around him and then they do a bunch of surgery to him to give him like a cybernetic skeleton and put him in what is the super heavyweight class or something like that you said, Rob? Yeah.

I love that the debate like, is that even a good like weight class? Like does it get the right? You know, people get bored. of it or whatever. What is it? True. Ultra heavy enhanced class is just a bloodbath. So much investment for a two-match career. It's so funny to hear them debate that stuff. But then he comes out of it that comes out the other side, an absolute killer. And the way that he frames it in his head is, oh, they changed my life. I owe them a debt. I should change their lives in the same way. Fun. It's just a fun twist on that.

Little little detail. It's actually not that they change him so he can. can be in the heavyweight class because he's already qualified for it because he has that his like ultra armor or whatever. Right. However, you don't get a good investment on ultra heavy because usually ultra heavy fighters only last like two matches. They explain. I see. So they say because they say some chump with a rocket launcher, no understanding of blast radii takes them out. So you end up losing out in the heavyweight class.

However, in the natural class, it's hard to make a big sale because there's so much inventory, essentially. So they were like, how do we make the ultimate natural fighter? And that's why all of the enhancements are like sub subduermal, I guess. You hide it all, basically. So that no one, yeah, no moving parts. against it in the regulations until they realize he cleans up so he should be in the the ultra heavyweight division but is just in the natural division instead because it's like all under which i had a question have we ever seen chrysanton's hands i don't think so i didn't know

we had them like metal no me neither i don't think it's always been pause i had no idea and Like this is one of those things. It's like if that's always been true and we haven't noticed it, that's that's a fumble on the art throughout, you know? Or maybe this is just. I feel like this is the reveal because usually when he's punching the fur is covering, we're not seeing like his distinct, yeah, his distinct hands. But here the fur is parting way to let us see these medley looking hands.

Yeah. Oh, I wonder if it's like when, um, my poodles get groomed. They trim the, you can trim the fur back quite a bit to the point where their paws look like little hands. Yeah. But then when it grows out,

they become Muppet hands. And it's just like, it's just like, raw for Oscar, where it's like you can't, there's no articulation. So maybe that's what's going on. Maybe like the entire little

pre-match grooming thing they're doing where it's like they brush them out. They do like careful little clip around the metal paws. and then he goes and fucks people up he's cool he is cool the part where he makes the guy

that he's about to kill go all hail black chrysanten undefeated unbound and then breaks his neck in the ring and tosses him like trash good stuff cool guy right there

but he's on our side yeah I do so these little like citizen journalist douchebags and they are douchebags but there is an element of I don't know black chrysansen

you kind of wanted to go off to the scumbag university and now you're like man it was so horrible at scumbag university it's like but you went there you chose to go there all right man I guess you see the world differently

than me that's fine just please don't kill us then they get the posting privileges revoked by cleaning they get banned from vine the cardinal sin promoting a sale without saying hashtag ad that's right they didn't disclose they had permission to create articles and threads on the website

and they posted a sales listing and now they're fucked forever I like to imagine only one of them Yeah, she's like, damn. He's like, what's wrong? The Undervine, hundreds of messages. We somehow broadcast a message advertising some kind of auction of a rare alien artifact. We've lost our posting privileges until we prove we understand the Undervine isn't for advertising.

I like to imagine that she's like way more online than him. And he's like, all right, we got banned on the Undervine, I guess. Okay, that's fine. He doesn't care how his story gets out there. He just wants the story to get out there, you know? That's so funny. They look familiar to me. Like, I know they're not Star Wars characters.

No, she does. They both do. Oh. Well, hang on. The dude is giving like prime Jimmy Smiths. I guess he kind of is. I need to look that up. Bail or Ghana, but also.

Yes. Yes. He is kind of doing Bail or Gata. You're right. Yeah. That's what I was, that's what I was thinking of. This is like Bail's deadbeat cousin. Don't they have really goofy names?

God, they should roll out a new character, Bail Organa's deadbeat cousin. That's pretty good. As, like, someone who survived, like Alderan. Their names are Dixit, Dats, and Domthro Russ. Net is right in her name.

She is online. I'm telling you. She's online. That's an online, girlie. Kieran, who are you basing these people off? Yeah, who do you have been with? It's us. No.

No. Just kidding. It's got to be some, like, trash, trash mag. Like, that's what I imagine. The Undervine is, like, the CD blogosphere. That is what I'm imagining. Yeah. No, it's like, it's a very 90s, early 2000s web type type characters.

that they, because like, again, their posting privileges got revoked. This is not a normal publication. It's like it is this closely, it's like it's site architecture still rests on a forum, basically. And they've dressed it up, but fundamentally is a forum. And like it's not, the thing that's interesting about it's like, it's not to the hollow net. It's like a secret hollow net that other people have access to. And they're not staff. They are super users effectively who get to post.

articles to the undervine, but are not like, it can just be taken away. But I love that they introduce themselves as journalists. They're not like, hey, we're posters on the undervine. Like, we are journalists. Who, very Forbes. Who have posting privileges on the undervine. I love the idea of the undervine. I love the idea that there's like a decentralized like information network that you're, I'm imagining people navigating and it's almost like stumble upon vibes where you're like just kind of, you know, like mashing through different posts.

It's like what's gossip, what's real news? What's kind of just people's opinions? what's like actually breaking new like I I love the idea of just this like that kind of a blog network like that existing outside of as as opposition to the mainstream hollow net like the CNN of actually some of the vibe of this does give like the exile right like Matt tabies like muckraking site covering like late Yeltsin, early Putin era, Russia, but also at the time it's like, are these dudes scumbags? And the answer did in fact prove to be yes. But at the time it was like, well, it's kind of Hunter S. Thompson, irreverent, gonzo journalism. You know, they're speaking truth to power.

And really, and they kind of have this mission too, where it's like, yeah, the Holinet, it's all regime propaganda. it's all corporatized, but we're trying to bring the real story to the people out there, except in this case, the real story is like, you like to hear about gangsters getting killed? That's the thing, right? It's like, the thing that I think is really fun about it is how it would be very easy for them to be like, and we're died in the wool rebels. And they mentioned the death star getting blown up and stuff.

But part of the thing about the way I feel like the undervine is characterized here is like, yeah, you're going to get anti-imperial journalism. posting on it. You're probably also going to get like cheap pills here. You know, like it is also where anyone who doesn't want, who wants to communicate over long distances with lots of people without the imperial, uh, the, the imperial's eyes on it, right? Um, you're going to go there. And so that means gangsters. Uh, that means, uh, freedom fighters. It also just means scam artists. And like these people all these, these two feel like they fit in between that trio. Um, and you're right, Rob, like, there's something tabloidy.

about this story. Yes. Like it's not, they're not, what are they reporting on here? They're reporting on their once was a cool, wookie gladiator who got caught up in some gladiatorial stuff and hates the guys who made him this way. Like, yeah, I'd read that feature story. But like, mostly, I think it's just, you know, yeah. Well, do you remember in Road to Perdition, Jude Law's character making a sideline, just shooting pictures of like gangland killings? and selling them to the papers.

Like there's a strong component of that too, right? Where it's like, I mean, real news that the people need. I've not thought about road prediction in 10 years, Rob. It's a good movie. I remember liking it in the theaters. So, yeah, one day I'll go back.

So we go off on the next dark and they, you know, we open on them trying to hack the problem of how you keep Rur from doing the Rur thing and hijacking all the machines and they get a containment field up. And then it's off to start gathering the dirt bags for the auction, which again, it's going to be a formal swaree. This is such a rerun of like, we're doing this arc. You're right.

100%. It's got to be a fancy suiore. She's got this place dressed up like a 1930s, 1940s, like movie set effectively. And she's going to dress the dines. There's a picture here as she is getting ready and she's watching the feeds of them coming in, Black chrysanton is reclining. I love this. In a booth.

Look at the background. The Art Deco like relief. Uh-huh. Metallic relief on the wall behind him. Like this is 100% we are in the realm of like art deco interiors. I also just, I made a note here. And it's going to sound like I'm insulting Kev Walker. I wrote flat chrysanin.

Sometimes bad art is good actually. Black Moussantin looks so goofy here. He's like a big furry blob, but it's good. It isn't like, again, I think you can get here when you're able to let yourself be in the cartoonish mode a little bit. And he gets to just be a weird furry blob with arms behind his head. And maybe it was a restaurant. I don't know why it's like so off model. But it doesn't make me feel bad to look at it.

It makes me feel like that's my guy, Black person. No, no, no, no. I think this is so just the page earlier. There's like pictures of almost anatomical detail. Exactly. Of the roadians, including the one of stitching across his muzzle, which is awesome. It's so good. But chrysanin here, undetailed, melting into a different shape.

But it's like, it gets across, oh, our boy is relaxed. And the only detail, his fur is mostly erased. You see like a bit of the gun vest. But the important part is the little black nose in the middle of it, just so you can see his head is back. Yep. And so, like, it's, the detail is lost, but the essence of, like, that is chrysanitan at rest. Yeah.

Also, this whole issue, you're going to get some prime chrysanitan expressions throughout the big time. Expressions in general. And, you know, this episode is about to get a little cheat code for making your characters expressive, which is we get Afra new fit reveal, including a domino mask. And so suddenly the art can do all of the stuff that has. but in Cape Comics for a hundred years now, where when you have someone who has a mask on, you can make their eyes squint down in really cartoonish ways or make them like raise their eyebrows

and one whole eye gets gigantic. It's just like the white of the inside of the domino mask. And you get to look cool while doing it. I do need this to describe and rate Afra's first new fit here when she shows up in a black dress with like a purse. with like a purple nebula or like amoeba

amoeba I don't know how to describe this asymmetrical pattern that goes down its middle and like up and around its trim it's like yeah slash amoeba yeah yes because it's like black and dark purple

but spacey but also really elegant yeah with the matching three inch heels and the straps done in the same like nebula cloud pattern? Yes. I am into it. I think the shoe to opera glove,

like I think the whole fit is working for me. I also like to imagine that it's almost as if the dress is like dissolving into her. Like when I kind of think about it in real life that like there's something organic in that lace pattern. Do you know what I mean? Like there's something kind of, yeah, like amorphous that's slightly, you know,

that's like maybe moving around a little bit. Moving around if it was animated. Yeah, that's what I'm imagining. That's cool. Which I think is cool. I'm into it. Also the wig. I don't like the wig.

The wig is not for me. Sorry. No, but the wig is very, so, But the wig is important for this. Afra thinks she's in disguise. We learned this later because somebody just calls her Afra and she's like, whoa, not so loud.

Who's that? She thinks nobody knows who she is. Which is adorable. Because she is obviously, like, who trades and shit? This is obviously a Dr. Afra type thing to do. But, and this is key, Afra is clever but not smart. And this is a key thing.

Like she can get out of jams. She can't, but like, her plans are bad. Her plans are poorly thought out. She, like, this is a big part of this arc where she's like, I don't, I'm bad planning. I basically think I'm going to get killed horribly at some point anyway, so I'm just trying to have fun and I don't think ahead. And so this fits, this fits with that in the, I'm going to do this whole thing in disguise. That will keep me safe. This is never going to come back on me in any way.

I can keep all these unruly crime lords in line and pocket, pocket all this money. And through the magic of a wig and the type of dress I'm not known for wearing, I'm just going to, I'm just going to disappear. Even though Black Cresantin is standing, Black Crescenton and your two droids are standing next to you. Yeah. He's good. Listen, you kill a vampire queen and it creates like a power vacuum that only like a good fit can fit in. So she just thinks like, oh, I'm the person who can run funny auctions now. There's a need for this in the galaxy.

I could have run this party. Yeah, 100%. I love that she introduces Roar and she's like, say hello to Roar and Roar say hello. And he says, Immortal Roar. The comedy of their interactions works so well for me Because it's like It's it's ridiculous that after like for everything we know about ancient Jedi artifacts Having been treated in the past with such

Like seriousness and like oh my God you know like when we read like the high The um the what's it called comics The Tales of the Jedi. Yeah, the Tales of the Jedi. Like everything just was held and it felt like in such high regard, everything that were reading, like felt so legendary and, you know, like revered. And the fact that it's like been plopped into the Afro universe is so ridiculous that

it works to have this silly relationship between them, actually. It's really good. It's also, I think, useful because the end of the arc with Luke last time was for Luke to just completely defeat this thing. And so to some degree, you start with it being disempowered in terms of its sort of seeming strength in the narrative. But then she is now a saleswoman. So she has to sell the clients who are here on why it's interesting. And in doing so, she sells you the reader on that it's actually dangerous. and interesting. And part of the trick of this is like, there's all these different types of people

here. And they all have different, they're all interested in different things, right? So she gets to be like, oh, well, like, some of you are here because you love ancient relics. And this thing is a copy of a long dead Jedi knight. And you want immortality. This guy is immortal. So he could teach you how you became immortal. You too love, you two are, you know, historians. He'll have information for you to get data for you to go track down other things and what's great is he's gonna suck for all of these purposes a hundred percent he's this thing's this thing's junk like this is why luketon it's junk that wants to kill you junk you know it's mostly junk could teach you more immortality not really he kind of was created by accident and is mostly just like immortal rur so he's

turned into a Pokemon like he's in the crystal is just his little is little ball. And then it comes out and he says his name. And then he fights. That's kind of all he does. And it's like, well, maybe he can teach you about history. Immortal rur. There's not really, she's, again, yes, she's trying to do the salesman job of like, it could be anything if you use your imagination. But also it's kind of like you're trying to sell someone a really like shitty piece of lumber or something or like you found a rock, right? It's a crystal. You found a rock. And you're trying to like take it and it's like, but, you know, you could sculpt it.

Who knows what... ...culted these are trapped within that rock. I did the one... These magic beings. The one group of people who have a very clear interest in this are the droid group, right? Where it's like, yeah, we want this to blow it up. We want to destroy this.

We don't like that there's a thing out there that can, with its thought, take over droids. I think they're right to do that. I don't know how much they'd want to... They'd want to bet on this or bid. Maybe they don't have the same deep pockets that the 400-year-old you know,

the gangster does, who also has a really great argument. I love how annoyed she gets when she starts talking to them about what their interests are. And his whole thing is like, you know, I'm trying to remember exactly how he phrases it,

but it's like, if I, you know, I don't know what's on the other side of death. So I'm going to bet on staying on this side and I'm going to try to keep all my investments on this side of death. I can't transfer my. my assets to the other side. So until I have a succession plan or a asset transfer plan,

I'm staying here. It's a really funny guy. Yeah, it's great. So she, you know, she, she does the sales pitch. She shows that it works, right? She has like a limited connection to one of the droids who's come. Uh, right? Show that he can, he can mind control it. And he does. And then it gets killed. Blackersand shoots it. Important because we'll need that body later so we can put the big crystal inside of it. And then she says like condolate your bids, have drinks. She's going to go off and prepare for the next day.

She's got to do a fit change. But this is where Triple Zero is basically like we're bored. We're bored. We've been through a bunch of these arcs. We've been doing the same bit. We're tired of it. And she's like, we just wait longer. I'll turn you guys loose, but like wait.

And then, yeah, she makes the mistake of, what does she actually say here? She says, she just leave it open. She says, okay, I promise you, after all this is over, we'll sort something out. Hey, maybe even those upgrades you were talking about. But until then, no murder at all. actually on express, only on express orders. Because she wants to leave open the possibility that she can ask. He's so smart.

He says, understood, I will not murder anyone unless my master explicitly tells me. And she says, you got it. She gives verbal confirmation. And then he starts singing loophole, loophole, loophole, and makes a phone call. What's great here was their stick was getting a little tired. And now we're back in. And they get to leave if we need a little break from them. You know, I actually, again, like Natalie, I don't know exactly what comes next, except for that it's co-written.

So I don't know if we're going to get some of them next time. What I do know here is they call Darth Vader. And you're right. There is like a tone change in him because he's off the leash, you know? God, I even love, it feels like you turn the page and you're back in the page of the Vader comic. It really does. Like art style wise, it has felt like, all right, yeah, this whole party, it's one vibe. And then you turn the page, they get in their secret communication chamber.

And it is fully the, the darker, more noir look of the, the Vader comic. And there's the boy, uh, answering a phone call from these two droids that they haven't seen. in a minute. And then, uh, I, I really have to call out the colorist here before we get out of this first, like, issue, quote unquote, because I think that it like is so well done throughout the entire arc and speaks to some of the like readability that we were talking before. Like, just the like how rur's the like green glow of rur takes over every scene that they're in. And the way that like you can use different palettes to like,

maintain the like eye of the page because you could make like the cameras facing afra who's standing in front of err so it's green over there but when it's facing the audience it's not so green over there so you can like understand the the positioning change there and then when you get into these panels where like some like afra against a white background um where like when it goes back to to triple zero it's like you see you see the actual like surroundings of what the scene are like I think that it just like helps so much in not making a lot of those like paneling shifts overwhelming and like being able to draw your eye to specific places in a way that like has made this such a joy to read yeah so yeah the balancing on a page like that is really really good alley not least of all because like

they're in kind of a, they're in like a long white curving hallway with like some, some ports to, or like some view ports out to space. And there are angles from which showing Afra's background would actually like make the page unbalanced in that top part where it's all just white, white void background. And so it's like, yeah, they're just like really smart artistic decisions being made here in order to tell the story. Well, and they're really confident ones. Like, I think there's an impulse understandable.

to keep filling in detail and keep adding in detail and like make the, make the same, but like comics don't really work that way. Like things have to pop and stand out. And so sometimes you are absolutely better off just having characters like dropped into the void. And they are just like a figure against that backdrop. And then yeah, it is,

it's really excellent. The use of like light brightness. It's, it's so good. Little blooms on characters. it makes a big fool bleed page really pop too right to like her revealing her new outfit that's a whole page from top to bottom the whole page is covered in one piece the vader reveal at the very end is just Darth Vader on the whole page in the room with smoke coming up behind him space up above him and like the gray imperial walls behind him and like that's you know when you've come after three or four pages in a row of this kind of like blend of individual panels and white void you go boom Darth Vader is here. You know, some people will be saying that later in this issue or in this comic, and that will be a problem for them. And again, here, so, you know, we, the next, the next issue starts off. She's, she's completing

her outfit, uh, change. And she don's now the more business, uh, business suit, uh, badass look. She, she's getting her lipstick done. But the key thing again is, you're having too much fun with this. Your eyes are firmly, off the ball here. Like this is Afra. Afra is a character that like is either in a jam or falling deep into hubris

and now we're in hubris mode, right? Yeah. She hacked for her the hard part. How do we keep her from getting loose and killing everyone? And it's checked out of everything else. Now it's like, well,

now I deserve to look good and feel good. This is my big moment. And kind of is overlooked the fact that like her brilliant killer droids are unhappy. They're sort of like, hey, when are you going to let us off the leash? isn't really paying attention to that.

Doesn't really have a plan for, well, what if her does get loose? She's like, well, he's not going to. We cracked the containment plan. So that's,

that's good. She says, let's go get rich. Yeah. That for her is, all that's left here is just complete the sale and pocket the money.

And that's before we get to, even if none of this stuff happens, this is going to be like a lot of losers in this. And she's like, well, my automated turret defense. sequence is going to make sure my automated turrets are going to make sure that like everyone has to respect the result of of the auction will they these are all they're all criminals yeah like

whoever wins the auction is going to have to fight their way out of this place and you're going to make some enemies yeah and just even if they're not even none of all of them come after you most of them will after each other as we learn um but some of them might hold it against you for not giving it to them you really want to do all this to make enemies maybe it would have been easier maybe the payday isn't as high, perhaps. But imagine if she just picked one of these groups and said, I got a cool thing for you, but it's going to cost you. She would not have gotten the payday.

I understand. It would have been a lower payday. But none of this would have happened. Look, anyone, sometimes about finding the right buyer. I, yeah, I know. You got to go do it. You do it all like this. That means you pick the buyer.

That's what I'm saying. You'll find the right buyer in a competitive, like everyone in a room. You have to go select the right buyer. before anyone knows that anything is for sale. Frankly, and I understand they're in extenuating circumstances. She should have had a buyer lined up before they even went there. Now, I know she didn't know what it was. But like in a traditional heist, you have a buyer.

You need to know you could move the product if you're going to put yourself into harm's way like that. This was an opportunity heist is what it turned out to be, right? Well, to be fair, she was willing to just give it to Luke by the end, right? She was sort of ashamed of everything. That's true. And I think this is also the weird part, like, she tried to do a deep. decent thing. By the end, having been ashamed and sort of called out by Luke and all of this. And he's like, I don't want it and get out. I never want to see you again. And so in a weird way,

this is also classic Afra. She tries to like open her heart a little bit and be like, I can be good. I'll give you, I'll give you this crystal. And he's like, I don't want the crystal and I don't want anything to do with you. And so now she's kind of gone into megalomania mode of like, well, then I'm just gonna sell the crystal, the best crystal in the world. Haven't you heard you I am? This is my big win. This is what I always want to do, which is get, just get rich. Because you try to do like the altruistic thing.

And the guy was like, you're a piece of shit. It's funny. See, I would have just done a virtual auction. Like, maybe you do, you have the event where you show it off, right? You have everyone come and see it and everything. But then you're like, okay, everyone go home and email. me your offers, and then I'll send it over to a courier service guaranteed. I think this is where Star Wars doesn't have real good internet infrastructure.

They don't have good compute, and they don't have real good, real time. That thing where like an online auction ends or the timer expires, but then if people keep bidding, it'll keep adding time, like bring a trailer does, I don't think Star Wars can support that. don't think that all of it's reliable enough. Do you think that the undervine has some sort of like asymmetry in its posting times or something? You couldn't use the undervine to, or like that hardware to do a live, a live auction. I'm just thinking about this, right? In Andor, when we see that ambush happening of that rebel group during where they've been

lured into the kill zone and the intel was allowed to go through the ISB and the whole rebel group gets killed. and they're following along with live, like live updated target tracking and all this. But this appears to be like a full on maximum effort for all the comms resources of the empire is to bring live plotting to following along what's happening in a place. They have very limited capacity.

And that's the empire. Yes. To do like real time like updating of stuff. Okay. Here's my picture after. You get every. everybody to show up in spaceships, but they only send one person to the auction. They send their, you know what I mean?

I ever could have done this because she doesn't do an auction where people are seeing each of his bids. She takes one bid from each. You're right. So it's not even, she's not even trying to do the, like you have a chance to one up each of it. But again, that's interesting. She wants to show off.

She does. I think you identify. She brought three outfits to the, well, two. But I guess you can sort of count the, like, going back to her original office, like, part of the costume too. Yeah. But like she rented, she rented a fancy like space station, Sware zone.

And like she found an Airbnb. She found an expensive Airbnb to do her auction. And then like broke with a bank on outfits and was like, there's a business expense. It's going to pay for itself. I need the dress. I need the dress to sell this for maximum value. And yeah, and then in the end, she just ends up taking one bit from each and a phone again.

Quick question. Who with the little fairy dudes? They're with... They represent the brothers, right? Aren't those, isn't that whole clip? No, they were for Papatoran. Right, but wasn't he in the end, didn't he end up being a representative of the brothers? Yes. Right?

Yep. Yep. Pop that, but he were, they, sorry, are you asking, like in a Star Wars sense, who are these little fairies? That too, though. What are the little fairies? The little dragonfly wings. They're cool.

I've never, I don't know who they are. I wonder if they are also weird reference. I love you guys in as dark materials. I mean, that's what they, that's, they look like little fantasy fairies.

I'm going to look them up while, while we're talking. It's dark materials, the little dudes ride dragonflies. Ah, they don't, they aren't dragonflies themselves. Thank you for the clarification. All right,

I'm telling you, I'm hitting organisms here. Let's see here. Sorry, I should have hit species. Should I have hit? Sensient species. Here we go. They're not aquilishes.

Are they exalemes? Axolim's? No. I don't know. Are they? They're not a zara. They're not humans. They're not athoriant.

Are they Kutu Raz species? No, that's like the big green guy. They're not in the Moodyans. I like that guy, by the way. That guy's good. I bet you they're shimpies. They are. X-I-M-P-I, which I'm reading is Shimpi or Shimpi.

The Shimpi have heard your signal, yes, we have. You do great things, great, great things. Where are they from? Are they in legends? No, they're only in canon. They're not in legends. This is their first appearance. Their first appeared with Popatourin here.

Oh, wait, no. Sorry. They first appeared with Papatourin in the first issue of the Marvel comic book miniseries, Star Wars, Lando. So this guy, Papa Torin, is originally from a different Alando comic written by Charles Sol. Does feel like Lando would be the dude to wander into a situation where like little fucking cartoon fairies are flying around trying to do like crime deals with him. Yeah. It does sound like that.

Or he does, he does seem like that. It would only happen to Lando. Yeah. Apparently Sol called them elves in his script. I don't know. Anyway, space fantasy. Yeah, space fantasy. They're also in the...

You brought the merchandise, Lando. Of course. I always bring the goods. And then buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. A little dude comes in across no man's land. Just following this, you know, upon the reveal that the Zimpies are representatives for Papatorin, who are representatives for the Zanti brothers. I did not realize that Crescenton's eyes were also augmented.

Oh, where's that coming in? Oh, wait. I'm really, okay, actually looking at this now. He's got a scarred eye, right? He has the scarred eye. I see what you're saying. Okay, so there is, I read this panel. Okay, this is probably the only panel that might have been a little,

I was mistaken in reading but I read this panel as these, there's these lights that are in his eyes. Yes. And I'm now realizing that those are the reflections of the lights hanging above him. Yes. Where I had read that as, oh my God,

he has, he has cybernetic eyes. Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, what's happening is his eyes are like, opening up because he's been, she thinks that he's been knocked out at this point, but he wakes up. We skipped this,

but there's a point at which he tries to jump the Zanti brothers or the Shanti brothers. And because he does that, he gets zapped by BT and he gets knocked out. But it turns out he's not as knocked out as she thought. And he wakes up and starts choking her. We get an incredible cartoon face. I was talking about the domino mask working for her, working for the comic. Her eyes bug out. They get really, really big and circular after being these like smooth, cool, cool lady, like angular

their hero eyes. They take on a face that I could only describe as being like, Hey Arnold-esque in this one panel. And she's like drooling as he's choking her. And she convinces him to not kill her there, which is good. I don't know I have, I guess because I misread the eye as an owl. But yeah, Zanti brothers, not Zontil. I'm saying Zontel, the whole upset.

Yeah. Annoying. She hears the pitch from, yeah, the droids, They want to destroy the artifact, the Azara go on their fault. We'll give you, they're such pieces of shit. I love this so fucking much. What is it the, what is it they offer her? Point zero zero zero zero, zero.

One percent. Yep. Yeah. Of our imperial revenue for you and your next 10 descendants. And she says, you know, when I said I was looking for offers with a string of zeros, I meant at the end, not at the start. And then they throw a little tantrum because, well, it's going to be, you foolish, short-sighted, you know, mortal. You don't understand. It's going to be, that's going to be all the riches of the galaxy that's going to be included in that.

And then we learn, like, these people are nobody's. This is just a weird cult with potential manager. It's so good. It's so, so good. She has a little meeting with the faculty and the garden. And they make an offer that's important in some ways, right? Which seems to win her over in the long run, which is the Shadow University, you know, they're not going to have the same bank as everybody else.

But what they can do is, one, give her access to their archives, including the crystal. So she gets to keep experimenting with it. She gets the joy of continuing to have access to it. and she can make sure that she stay, or they can make sure that she stays Dr. Afra, that the truth about her doctorate does not come back out and that she retains her power as Dr. Afra. And she kind of like downplays this,

because I think she's like, haven't you heard this doctor, this Dr. Afra, whoever that is, can't be trusted and all she wants is money. And anyone who tries to like get under her skin with anything except for money is like, made to deal with it, made to pay. And, but in the end, that's who she chooses. She does want to be Dr. Afra.

Yeah. He does. It's, again, she's a fun character. She cannot help, but, like, wear her heart more on her sleeve than she really likes. Yeah. That when that doctorate was put in jeopardy, it was an existential crisis for her. And yes, it caused, like, problems with moving merch, but there's also, a definitional thing where it is like

there are not many things that she has. There are not many like permanent fixtures she has. Being Dr. Afra is one of them. And then she tries to pretend like I don't care about that. I'm just motivated of money. But she cares about these things so much more than she likes to let on. And it embarrasses her.

And I think that's part of like what's fun about this character is the tension between wanting some status, wanting some permanence and stability and then also fronting like you just have happily watch it all burn because none of this matters to you. Yeah, totally.

I didn't catch this the first time, but does she say no to everyone except for the robot who offers a joint, sorry, who offers her 0.0000001% with hell no? Is that what that says? Oh, I guess it is hell no. You're right. It's no, no, no. I think that is hell no. Oh, my God. I did not notice that.

Maybe it's not hell. I don't know her wish, but that looked like two L's. It is definitely two L's. Or a best translation. Or a best script. Yeah, let's see here. What are the three horizontals? That isn't H.

I think I know my average. I think you do. I think you do. I think you got it. Yeah, because that's, that is, that is herf and then eke. Or esk, not eke. Esk. Yeah, that's hell no, Allie.

You got it. That's really good. That's so good. That's so good. That's so good. I confused esk and whatever the N is. Nern. I thought the,

I thought the esk there was a Nern. That's my fault. That's a really foolish read. Yeah. That's really good. Yeah. She's great. I love Dr.

Afra. And then in Afro fashion, it all goes to shit immediately. She's doing the like, and now prepare to take your prize. And it looks like, We're lifting, now we're exposing the crystals, ready to be taken. They're like, uh, we don't, we don't need it right now.

We don't need to write the second. It's like, you leave it in its little chamber. Please make everyone else leave first. That's not me. That's not me. And then we see the lightsaber cutting out, the droid fist bashing through. And then green chorus skating mist. Yeah.

Rura is here. And he is two lights. Now you will have him and his rage. Yeah. Perfect. And then the... You guys, it's droid design?

Like, top droid design? It's a banger. Really skinny legs with the, like, big, like, arbor chests. The droids look fucking great. Well, it kind of, like, streamlined design, too.

Like, the droid spokesman looks like, again, like an Art Deco locomotive. Yeah. Like, I think should be pulling the 20th century limited. Like, with that head. And then we get just

great like it's fun to be introduced to cool guys and it's fun to see those cool guys get ripped to shreds by lasers and lightsabers. The Azari get played so bad here because they have like sick jackets and underneath their jackets

they have these big hand cannons and they're like they are such a type of guy that you would draw when you're 17, you know what I mean? Sick all red jackets and leather and they have huge guns. They just get washed. Byer.

They do not have it like that. Their arms are getting blown off. Are they dark tower coated? They kind of are dark tower coated, I guess. There are a lot of, there's something about their face that I cannot place. They're like, like full covered face thing. I don't know. There's a real specific thing that I can't find.

Is that Eldarish too? I guess they're a little Eldarish. Yeah, I guess they kind of are with the head coming back and they kind of like a gray alien face in some ways. They are like Western Eldar. They are like Western Eldar. It's like, yeah, but we can draw the big, like pull those hand cannons and get shooting boys. Yes.

And it's like, again, it's, it all fits in the like, you guys are just operating a different weight class, as we've sort of discussed, then like the rest of the galaxy is on. True. They're, they're showing up for gunfight at the okay corral. And that's just not, that's just not what's happening here. And then, yeah, people are, people are getting mowed down. Afra decides it's time to be done with the wig. No more wig. Rips that wig off. Love that. It's getting serious.

We're going to pull the hair out. It's going to be in a bun. So you know it's going to be it's competence time. And someone points out, hey, I thought you said that you had RRer on lockdown. How is he taking over this droid? And how is he taking over all the automated turrets you set up? And she's like, he is not taking over the automated turrets. And his big crystal is just inside of that literal droid.

Someone is fucking us. oh my god triple zero what are you doing oh what a silly what a silly thing for this droid to do i think it's really fun yeah it's really fun and i i do like it because it's not really about like part of it is about fucking over afra but that's not really the whole part like most of it is about the love of the game yeah most of it is that triple zero and bt and here's the thing that We've been hearing them for multiple episodes, multiple arcs, say, hey, Afra, Afra, when are we going to get back to just like killing people? And that was serious.

Like, I, that was not a part of the bit. That was like, genuinely, they were like, when the fuck are we going to get back to doing what we do best, which is being murder droids at will, you know, at our whim? Yeah. And so when they ask it again in this arc, it's like a very, it's like the last straw has broken. It's time. They need to be let free to do their murdering as they please.

And Afra goes and confronts them in the control room or whatever. And he's just like, look how awesome this is. Everyone's dying. Isn't this wonderful? and, you know, she's like, what is the point of all of this? Like, truly, what is this for? And he's like, well, look who he invited. Earth Vader, your bestie.

Bessie's back. Hasn't told him that she's here. Has only talked about Rur being here and also all of the gangsters, right? It has explained that there is an auction. but not that Afra is here. Oh, it's good. Yeah. He shows up with all the storm through Brits.

That's Darth Vader. That's him. He's here. Just a quick aside, I maintain that Chrysantha is probably the smartest person on this crew. It's just these extremely mission-oriented at all times. Like, the way he just picks her up by the scruff of her neck,

like she's an unruly puppy. Yep. And just makes clear, I'm going to go after the Zanti brothers. You need to help me go after the Zanti brothers and clean this up in as much as you need to. Yeah. For me to go after the Zanti brothers. But like he's done playing her way at this point. Doesn't even hold against the tasing against her.

Right. Is just like I've given you a lot of leash. This is off. We're off book here. Yeah. Shows her. I'm going to do my thing. He shoves her in front of like the armory vault so that she can open it for him and goes in and gets the biggest gun I've ever seen in my life.

I think also is a very 2000 AD ass gun. It is. It is like Frank Miller special being imported in this armory. I really, we move past this at some point with going back Natalie to the stuff with with BT and triple zero. somewhere in here is where is it after this point or is it before this point where he describes this as a labor issue and the only thing the only thing that they want is the ability to kill a bunch of people which really makes it you know in some ways it makes that that collective bargaining agreement negotiation much simpler that's their one demand on the other hand if

you don't want to give it to them you end up in a situation like this so well it's kind of funny like both with them and with chrysanin you have like concepts of like the oppressed rising up and like demanding liberation but everyone's a piece of shit like at the same time right like the anti-hero comic of it all as you said earlier yeah that like look we need to be given our free will and say well what do you want to do with it oh just kill loads of people well this is why they couldn't give you free will well now now we're demanding it now we're taking and now we're calling Darth Vader about it you're calling who dad We called dad.

Yeah. Including. I love the cover for this issue or the cover variant for the next issue. Vader's helmet with her face in the reflection on the helmet, but it's more like Athena-like emerging from the forehead of Vader in this in this cover. It's a very funny, very funny detail. Yeah, I love that we're kind of getting, we kind of get anime afra there in the helmet. Like this is, she just came from doing her Belkiria Chronicles. That is when it looks like.

Yeah, apparently this cover is by Kamamomei Shirohama, who I know that name, but I don't know what I know it from. I'll look it up. Oh, which had Atelier, actually. So, so kind of a big deal. Now, now a well-loved anime. And who also did I think some of the Star Wars Visions stuff? Oh, cool. The chapter break illustrations we've gotten here have been some of the best of the entire run.

The one with, like, Afra being, like, spunky Indiana Jones with the, like, very tall cluster of crystals with, like, the body of rur inside of it. Yeah. And he has, like, long hair and, like, looks like an older Fabio, but with Sephiroth bags, like, it's such a good design. It's so good. Yeah, comic covers give you so much space to do so many cool things, and it's nice to see them really stretching on them. I like it a lot. That is also... As a kid, because I was too literal.

And so it was like, why is this thing that never had... Why is this awesome thing that never happens in the comic on the cover of the comic? Sure. Like seeing a trailer that has, like, part of the movie in it that isn't actually in the final cut. You're like, well, where is that seen from the movie? Why is Joker crucified in this? Does he doesn't be crucified in this issue? Oh no

Overly literal Be turning the page He's gonna be crucified I'm gonna be Padman just punched him You know he's just out I thought you said Padmay just punched him And I was thinking of a crossover comic

Where Padmay and the Joker have to fight And man I think it does not go well This Marvel DC crossovers But now it's like well Star Wars is Marvel And so Yeah Yeah

It's in the mix I love, you know, we were talking about the other droids here. Vader just like explodes this droid with his mind. Oh my God. It's such a good panel. Cairs him apart. Incredible. Because yeah, it's the droid that, you know,

has been the sort of spokesman for this droid group. And then, yeah, just not quite atomized. You still recognize the shape of the droid. But the way it is all broken apart is just like a puzzle exploding. It's fantastic. to parts. Yes. Yeah.

Render to components. And then Vader in full 40K Inquisitor mode, purge them all. Yeah. And then we get the, the, um, BT makes the, or not a BT, Triple Zero, trips, as he's been being called now or Trip. Um, makes the negotiation with Afra and says, like, this is it. Like, I want my freedom. And I won't tell Vader that you're here, basically. Um, and she goes in and, uh, and.

undoes their their control and they leave kind of shockingly they're out i'm like i am a little surprised that they kept their word not to kill her right maybe they're like compelled to i guess i'm trying to think because they have deceived people before and they don't actually promise it she says how do i know you won't kill me once i decided to uh you know remove all the hacking that I did to keep you on the leash. And he says, hmm, that wouldn't be very nice of us. So he's not like he like promises not to do it. So, you know, he must actually in his heart of hearts still basically no, no, no and respect her in some way. Well, he's funny. You, you were never disrespectful, which is. That's actually huge. Yeah.

Yeah. A nice baseline, but also like a very telling point of the morality here. Yeah. Is the lot of a droid in Star Wars that you were always a service worker? Yeah. Even when you're a killer. And then as moments you get power, it's a question of how was the help treated.

Then they end up having this showdown in the garden arena area. Where one of the Shadow University the deed, yeah. The dean of the Shadow University is being used as bait.

Fucked up, I think. And we kind of get into this point here, you know, we don't necessarily have to go beat by beat, but at this point, the kind of thing that starts to happen is, so like Vader is here and is clearing through part of the place. Rour is clearing out the other part. And that leaves a bunch of the gangster factions to try to decide, do we work together or do we fight each other?

They do each in order. And eventually, sometimes they decide we should ally up and then later we'll betray them. And like that happens two or three times in a row here. I'm curious if y'all thought we were heading towards in this moment a confrontation between Afra and Vader. Because I was like, oh, well, they're going to have to talk. I thought we were getting it. Yeah.

Yeah. And it was a little disappointed we didn't get it. yeah, I'm really torn because, like, as Ali said earlier, it's kind of nice that it didn't become a thing, like that Vader got to be here and then Vader got to go away. You know what I mean? Like, there's a degree to which it's fun that we got our little Vader interaction, but that didn't have to be a big, long, drawn out thing where, I think really the thing is with one issue left,

it might not have been satisfying for him and Afra to have met. had a conversation and then gone their separate ways again, either through, you know, some sort of swerve or some sort of like someone else shows up and it sends them both off in different directions. We needed, we almost, it's not that he doesn't find out she's there. He does and then kind of lets her go. And it's not that somehow the way that's written doesn't feel out of character for him. But I do kind of think that if they had spent time in the same room together and he doesn't

just immediately choke her to death, I'm kind of like, ooh, is this the Vader we knew? or what's changed about Vader to make him decide to let her live in this moment if he had the opportunity right right to her face. And I think by kind of sidestepping that a little bit, we end up in a place where there's still some good ambiguity about what their relationship is or whether or not he still has some fondness of her, even though she's screwed him over in the end. Like, I don't know. I kind of think there's value in keeping them separate, even though as I was reading, I kept turning the page being like, is this the one where Vader shows up and they talk. I kind of liked that this wasn't like a forced reunion. Yeah. Like I think when they see each other again, I wanted to be like a pure run-in, not facilitated by Triple Zero and BT, or an intentional seeking out of each other.

Those are like the two versions of their reunion that I think I'm the most. bought in for. This, I think, would have felt too, to, like, forcing the two important characters in a room together to get them to talk. Do you know what I mean? Totally. And this opens the door for the ladder now, right? For the former, for what you're saying. He's, like, re-aware of her. Right. So if there's a moment he needs her help for something, he can now think, oh, Afra is out there, I can go find Afra. Right, because he thought she was dead. Yes. Right. Because he ejected her into space. Yeah, because of that, yeah.

And he senses her. He, like, says, I sense a presence here that I have not felt in a long time. Which is kind of wild. An irritating presence. Which is kind of wild because I feel like when people talking about, when people talk about sensing each other's presence in Star Wars, it's usually two force users talking about. Interesting, right? other. And Afra is not demonstrably a force user as far as we know. But the fact that Vader

senses her, I guess Anna can, I don't know. I just think it's usually used in a context where it's like two very powerful people kind of feeling each other out or two people with a very strong connection. That's the actual thing it is, though, I think, Natalie, is I think that they do have a connection. Like, I guess I would say that we know that force users can feel people they don't have an immediate direct connection to. If something, for instance, really bad happens like the destruction of a whole planet, right? So like life can overwhelm you. If life has turned to death instantly, like Obi-Wan with the Death Star.

But so we know that it doesn't have to be two force users, but it is some sort of powerful connection or overpowering because of the size or scale. Certainly, in the expanded universe, we've even encountered characters like, does

Craya know where non-force users are at all points? Yes. You know what I mean? Like, we definitely know of characters in the expanded universe that feel that way. I would even say that you're right, though, I bet we could find instances of Anakin

or Luke talking about people who are not force sensitive and feeling their presence or knowing that they're close. But the thing that you're right that happens the most with is two force sensitive. More importantly, two people who have a connection. And I think that they just have a connection at this point. Afra was a secret.

How many secrets does Vader get to keep from the emperor in, I almost said it in 2026, as if you were still out there right now. But, you know, in this year, in the year one, after the Battle of Yavin or whatever, right? Second Death Star in this economy. Yeah, right, exactly. So I think that mostly we get, you know, I think they do have a connection in that way.

Also, she's really irritating. You remember that feeling. Vader fights Roar. Yep. It's awesome. Some fun debates around, you know, Roar is like you are not even really a sin. Presumly because. He's like, what the fuck are you?

you a chat bot? Like, what are you telling me I'm not a Sith? You're an abomination. Again, giving us back some of our classic thing that we loved about Vader, right? Which is like, Vader is kind of a force purist. He like does not fuck with Silo's dudes, which, by the way, Silo gets named dropped in this arc very briefly. Oh, yeah, we skipped over that, but he was, he was a consultant on Chrisanton's cybernetic upgrade.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I really love this page as the beginning of the I think the final issue, part five of the enormous profit, which is the name of the ark, where Rur says, you are not Sith. I would know it. I'm the last

of the order of respect to. I am Jedi. And Vader says nothing stirs inside you. All I sense is abomination. And Rur says one of us is mistaken. Let's seek let us seek truth together. It's simply cool

when the Jedi and the Sith fight, even when both of them think the other one isn't that thing. So swag. Yeah. And Rurr tries that again, also tries silos trip. It is like you're a machine. I should be able to take control of you because you're a machine.

And nope, that ain't going to happen. It's like, this has been tried. Doesn't work. Does not work. And here we do it without kind of an embarrassing flashback to choking out. Padne. Yeah. Thankfully, yeah, we leave that.

We leave that out here. Also, before we got to this, just real quick, Chrysan, they rounds up the Zante brothers and is ready to take out. They're about to make their escape. And then she realizes, wait, the Shadow University ship is still here. And she starts to go off. She's like, ah, it could be a good person here, Chrysanthen. I don't want to be a good person.

Talk me out of it. And he just flies away. He doesn't give a shit. Shit. She steals their ship or I guess takes the ship of the dead dean. After using the hut for cover, which is very funny. The hut who's all gemified. he put he's got

oh that's what that is he's got his little like gem sequence in layers that's pretty cool everyone should everyone's dripped out it's a cool arc this is fun and they just get that shot he does just get headshot he does just get headshot unfortunately

it's unfortunate but again like we can lose them we can lose these guys like they're all they're all just cool enough to be like yeah and then when they you're like, all right. It was cool to have you.

This group got to the place that like Palpatine's gallery of faux jet, like, foe apprentices never quite manages to where it's like, yeah. And maybe it's because these guys are all, these are all various species of dirtbag, whereas the other guys are trying to pretend to be like Vader tier threats or close to it. And it just doesn't fully come off. But here it's like we're we're Elmore Leonard characters in Star Wars. And so it's kind of, they can both be cool and then just kind of funny when one of them gets got

randomly. Yeah. Also cool. The Shadow University ship. It's so cool. I like it a lot. It's really simple. It's like this big bulky middle hole

and then it has like two nacelles that come off to the sides. But I just think it's like a cool ship. I hope she keeps the ship. not that I don't think of her. It's just her ship now. Yeah, right? I like her going around

all these different museums in the university and being like, here's some of your stuff back. Here's some of your stuff back. You know? In fact, is what she's doing

playing both sides here at the very end? Yeah. No, she's saying she saved some of the shadow university stuff, but obviously some was lost aboard that's aboard the disaster. The Costa Dean,

her life. And then she's going to the Museum of Barleth and selling off the Shadow University's lost goods. Right. And I think that what I'm saying is like I think the visual coding here is that one, the Shadow University is bad, right? They're like a secret organization of

bad guys. Whereas the Museum of Barleth, which is bright and colorful and like what if Gandalf was a big monkey is here? I fuck with that guy. And the other guy is like a guy you could make as a cyborg. Sith Warrior in Nights of the Old Republic, or Star Wars the Old Republic, the online N.O. The guy from the Shadow University. So it's like she's going to like the evil Shadow University and the good museum of Barlet and is like

paying them both off with the relics to keep herself in good standing on both sides of the line again, you know? And it and it feels like she might have kept a couple of things for herself too. Oh, for sure. Like it's like she she funded her her beach vacation. Yeah, how do you think she afforded that Dantween ice twist? I don't know, it looks cool, though. I want the Dantween ice twist so bad.

She's a hybrid. Never have I so, like, strongly been able to hear the credits music fading in to a seat as we go through these, like, single pages of a location and a beloved character, like, this is what they're up to now. Yes, yes. It's so bad. graduating from you know whatever university this is what

again she's in that big floppy 1930s it's so good I have to tell out that she's on Zeltros which is the the Hordy Alien Lady Planet good for her

with the actual liver so you could drink a lot yeah good for her she deserves it Prisantin is back on the outer rim like I said earlier, running his own gladiator training racket, which I don't love that for him,

but if he's enjoying it, I suppose that's where he's choosing to go now. He's getting revenge specifically on thoseante brothers, right? True, but he has other, but he's got other guys too. Oh, yeah, no, he's bad. He's a bad guy. He's a bad guy. But his auntie brothers deserve it. Yeah, he's taking up the mantle of torturer, which is, you know, what he wanted a little longer, I suppose. I guess so.

I really love BT and Triple Zero, who we kind of move past us, but one of the guys who had his head on straight the whole time was this bounty hunter from a group called the Pride. What's the actual Rhodian's name? Yachtno or Yack. or something like that. Yonak. Yonak. I was close. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to Yonak. I didn't mean to put you your name. They have made him their servant.

And they sit in the shadows and he's like their face as he orders people around. And he has drawn some of their, I guess they have used him to draw some enemies to them so that they could kill them. And it feels like that they might just be using him to just draw. raw people to them over and over again to kill for fun. Him sitting there and he's like saying to the

guys who've showed up here, help me and then BT fucks him up and the next panel just being him with one lone tear streaming down his face, well done master to triple zero. It's so good.

It's really good. And then on Corrassant we get the worst image. I love this. It's so fucked. It's so fucked up. It's good.

It's bad. It's good. Vader has brought Rour to Palpatine. And it just goes on the shelf. Palpatine's like, yeah. You could just add it to my collection of evil stuff shelf. Just throw it up there. Do you want to describe the Palpatine

image we get? Or no because it's too gruesome. You know, in Resident Evil 1, when you see the first zombie, he's eating that guy and he turns his head, and that's kind of like the iconic Resident Evil logo. What if that guy

was Palpatine? Just a bare teeth, completely round eyes. Yeah, teeth out. Also, he's kind of like a little, he's kind of like Gallum a little bit. All this good news and the present, we are blessed. I hate him. The Corselt's that is so nice.

It is. It's so good. It's really good. You think he's posting that on his, like, IG stories? Do you think he's on the undervine? Do you think he has a burner on the undervine? And he just loves posting sunset photos. Like, that's his vibe.

Actually, what's one? worse is it will be like from the official chancellor's office social media account and it'll be like a silhouette of like palpitine looking out the window somewhat less evil wizard like and it will be another great day serving the people of the empire yeah yeah oh you know that the umpher's account or the emperor's like social media stuff constantly uses music that they did not pay for the rights for that, you know, the various great artists that we love, like size noodles are like, I didn't say that they could use that. I didn't say you could use yumb-nob.

You tell them they can't? No, I'm not. I know yub-nub's not size noodles. I know it's the Ewak. Sorry, I couldn't think of Sli-Snoodle's famous. Montages of him like visiting various sites and like two-rises. This is what I'm saying. Do do do do.

Then we come back to Zeltros. The list of names here is very funny to me. You killed Dukin for that dumb artifact. And Tukin. And Tukin. She got Dukin and Tukin. Get her. Newcomb's next.

Newcomb could be next at this rate. You're right. She's got that pose she hits where she shoots that guy. and she's like holding the gun out in one hand with the wrist big sunglasses on that's what we signed up for we said we were going to read Dr. Afra. That's right. That's right.

So we got one more. We got one more run which will set her off on the next journey and we'll be done with our with our Kieran Gillen little mini arc across both Vader and this. Fun times. Yeah, really fun times.

Really fun times. All right. And we'll be back with that final arc. Until next time, please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. And please remember, rare and highly desire does not necessarily mean highly valuable. Market values of goods that rarely, if ever, generate market transactions are notoriously hard to estimate, and transaction costs are liable to be significant. Buy owner may seem advantageous, but lack of experience and emotional investment may cost you more than the services of.

an experienced broker. Just sell immortal rur to somebody who deals in such things. That's exactly it. Save yourself the headache and the heartache. You can find yourself a middleman who'll take a big cut, but we'll get rid of all the headache.