Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #1
Written by Alyssa Wong
Art by Marika Cresta and Rachelle Rosenberg
Lettering by Joe Caramagna
Published by Marvel Comics
‘Rama Rating: 3 out of 10
Space can be treacherous, often with its own rules and laws of physics – and in the case of Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #1, comic books space can be a similarly tricky medium to navigate, as well. Having written for prose, video games, and now comics, Alyssa Wong clearly has an idea of how she wants to portray her title character… but there’s something lost in translation with artist Marika Cresta. As a result, this debut issue never feels as immediate as it should, often feeling too physically and emotionally distant to connect.
To her credit, Wong understands the core of what makes Doctor Aphra such an interesting character on paper – taking the roguish, adventuring archeologist from Indiana Jones and grafting it onto the sprawling sci-fi world of Star Wars is a slam-dunk concept. But like I said before, it all gets lost in translation because we’re kept at such a far remove from who Doctor Aphra is.
As Wong first shows us Aphra and crew in action on the planet Hoth, she also throws readers into the deep end of the pool – if this is your first interaction with the character, you might have a difficult time figuring out which members of the cast are actually important and who is just canon fodder, while there’s little to establish Aphra’s history or emotional state. The effect is only compounded as we follow Aphra to her next job, on the hunt for a pair of rings that give eternal life and endless prosperity… but also a society-ending curse.
It partially comes down to Wong’s rhythm as a writer, and how comic books operate very differently from prose and video games, because how the story is divided on a page-to-page basis – as a result, characters aren’t given the space to be properly introduced or fleshed-out, while action sequences are chopped up across pages in a way that can throw readers for an unexpected loop. Perhaps the most jarring example is the epilogue introducing the series villain Ronen Tagge, who takes up 20% of the book’s page count, but feels almost completely disconnected from everything else going on.
But at the same time, you can point to artist Marika Cresta for many of Doctor Aphra’s ailments, as well. While you can point to the aforementioned rhythm issues to the script, much of Cresta’s shots are so distant that it’s hard to figure out what are the important elements of the story. And this extends everywhere from character introductions to a particularly hard-to-follow action sequence featuring a group of hired guns targeting Aphra and company – a sequence that feels like it should evoke Raiders of the Lost Ark winds up getting completely buried, even with potentially awesome set pieces like a weaponized chandelier or giant alien robots.
Of course, given Doctor Aphra’s surprise popularity as an up-and-coming Star Wars supporting character, you could understand the idea that any book with her name on it would sell copies – and especially given that the greater comics industry has largely been on hold due to COVID-19, I wouldn’t be surprised if fans turned out in droves. But this is also not the kind of storytelling that made Aphra such a hit in the first place – this book feels inaccessible and unengaging, with artwork that doesn’t seem to make the best use of the comics page as a medium. There’s potential to this concept, but only diehards are going to want to stick around long enough to see if Star Wars: Doctor Aphra hits paydirt.