Staff Pick of the Week 2/7/18

• Comic: Star Wars: Doctor Aphra by Kieron Gillen and Kev Walker
• Staff Member: Liz

If you love Indiana Jones but sometimes wish he were a little less good and a lot more female, I need to talk to you about Doctor Aphra. The second volume of Kieron Gillen and Kev Walker's Star Wars comic about a very morally dubious archeologist comes out today, and it's the perfect time to start in on this series. Chelli Lona Aphra is an archeologist in the way that a mattress store jingle is a song. She's all about making money. Technically, she is a doctor and she knows what the heck she's doing, but she's only really concerned with the profit that her discoveries yield, not studying or preserving the precious objects she finds. Somehow, though, Doctor Aphra is a deeply likeable character. She's competent, funny, and exciting. Plus, she's the leader of a crack team made up of two murderous droids (think R2-D2 and C-3P0 but with homicidal tendencies) and a former-gladiator Wookiee that she's indebted to. The Doctor Aphra series is fun, fast-paced, and feels like a Star Wars book without requiring much knowledge of the Star Wars universe to enjoy it. Pick this one up now!

Staff Pick of the Week

• Comic: There's Nothing There by Patrick Kindlon and Maria Llovet
• Staff Member: Liz

The plot of Patrick Kindlon and Maria Llovet’s There’s Nothing There is familiar. Filthy rich, Kardashian-esque Reno is famous for being famous. Her life is filled with social media, parties, fake friends, and general debauchery. She doesn’t even blink at the prospect of an orgy, which turns out, actually, to be a bit of a problem; her cycnical nonchalance keeps her from realizing that she’s stumbled into a demonic, ritual orgy instead of your average, garden-variety orgy. As a result, she ends up cursed, the prey of a demon that will erase her very existence if it ever catches her. I don’t want to give away too much but what follows is a horror story that’s deeply rooted in our and image-obsessed culture. 

There’s Nothing There is scary and beautiful, a rumination on fame and social media and the constant visibility that both demand as much as a demonic horror story. Patrick Kindlon and Maria Llovet pull of both with ease, though. Llovet’s art, especially, provides a throughline, representing the grotesquery of celebrity with always stylish but almost impressionistic art. It seems constantly in motion, never settling into any image too comfortably. Reno’s fame is similar. No matter how glamorous on the outside, at its core, it’s a constant struggle to maintain attention.

There’s Nothing There was one of my favorite comics of this year, and in my opinion, it was seriously under-read. The collected paperback comes out today from Black Mask Studios.