Crash Course: Get To Know Doctor Aphra Before Her Ongoing Series In December

Yesterday evening Marvel Comics announced that popular Star Wars character Doctor Aphra will be getting her own ongoing series in December by Kieron Gillen and Kev Walker. Aphra is one of the most popular new characters to come from Marvel's recent line of Star Wars titles, but if you don't know who she is, we've assembled a Crash Course to get you up to speed.

This article contains spoilers for the recently concluded Darth Vader series.

Created by Gillen and Salvador Larroca, Aphra is a rogue archaeologist who travels the galaxy in her ship, the Ark Angel, and was recruited by Darth Vader to help him procure a private army of droids away from The Emperor's prying eyes. With Vader's help, Aphra was able to unlock the Triple Zero personality matrix and install it into a protocol droid, who then woke up the dormant blastomech BT-1, rounding out the team.

As a sidenote, Triple Zero and BT-1 are essentially murderous doppelgangers of C3P0 and R2D2, and the only thing stopping them killing Aphra is an imperative to recognize her as their master. They're going to be supporting characters in the upcoming title, and given the chance and ability, would very much like to kill her.

After helping Vader procure the means to create an army, she assumed he would have her killed to cover his tracks, but he chose to let her live and continue to assist him in his schemes. She proved herself a useful ally over the course of a number of missions and assignments, but ultimately was a loose end that Vader could no longer afford to keep around.

In the most recent issue of Darth Vader, he attempted to kill her by forcing her out of an airlock, but unbeknownst to the Sith Lord, she was reeled in by the crew on her ship and lived to scavenge another day. Now in her upcoming ongoing series, she must keep a low profile to avoid Vader discovering her survival, while attempting to get back to work and raise the money to pay off the sadistic Wookiee bounty hunter she owes in more ways than one.

If you want to know more about Doctor Aphra, you can check out Gillen and Larroca's Darth Vader. All twenty-five issues are available digitally on Comixology.