Doctor Aphra: Chaos Agent #2 Review

by Henry Wood

Written by Cherish Chen

Illustrated by Gabriel Guzman - Colored by Mike Atiyeh

Lettered by Joe Caramagna

Edited by Mikey J. Basso, Drew Baumgartner, Mark Paniccia, Robert Simpson & Grace Orriss

Doctor Aphra and Luke Skywalker continue their investigation into the deadly force artifact! They arrive on the planet Aragau and are forced to put their difference in tactics to the test to find the Louvian Gauntlet prototype and find out just how far Luke Skywalker’s newfound reputation as a galactic hero goes!

Aphra is still steaming about losing access to her electro-tattoos at the end of the last issue, and still working with Luke Skywalker on this case. The crux of the issue is the difference in tactics between Aphra and Luke. Luke still takes a more direct and diplomatic approach to finding intelligence, while Aphra is more underhanded and deceptive in her approach. It’s not a particularly subtle plotline for the issue and serves to show that Aphra has not changed at all in the time we’ve known her.

Perhaps my biggest complaint about the first issue was the art, and how overshaded it was in certain places, making characters look more sinister with shadows covering parts of their faces. I think this has improved in this issue, but there’s still some problems there. It is, I believe, perhaps less overshading and more that the saturation of the shading is too dark.  This is also apparent with how some of the faces are constructed, particularly when it comes to Luke. There are places, especially early in the issue where Luke is smiling and it looks unnatural.

Luke’s inclusion felt pretty natural here, and Chen does a good job of playing off the established relationship and dynamic between them, while still presenting development. Aphra makes a crack about Luke being a galactic hero, and his reaction to that illustrates how he has changed since they last saw each other. Luke is still ever the optimist, especially about Doctor Aphra and that drives this plot forward. It is still the same central question of the previous run, being “can Doctor Aphra change?” but asking the question in a different environment makes it feel at least somewhat fresh.

I think overall the story is pretty straightforward in the way it’s presented and there’s not a lot of room for misunderstanding of its meaning. This is a new galaxy that our characters are navigating, but how different is it really from the old galaxy? The idea here is that Aphra has to adapt to this slightly changed galaxy. To be more specific, she has to incorporate some of Luke’s optimism to her strategies and not just be the same greedy and jaded rogue archeologist. It’s an interesting story idea and we’ll see how it progresses, but I would still like to see where some of Aphra’s previous supporting cast have ended up and why they’re no longer in her life after how the previous series ended.