10 Best Comic Books Of 2017

9. Star Wars: Doctor Aphra

Marvel Comics

While the dissolution of Dark Horse's Star Wars canon proved to be a divisive move at the time, there's no denying that - almost three years on from the move to Marvel - things have changed for the better.

With Greg Rucka, Kieron Gillen, Jason Aaron, Charles Soule and more all leading the charge in the galaxy far, far away, Marvel's Star Wars stories have been granted a whole other level of quality, exemplified best in the main Star Wars series (written by Aaron), Darth Vader (Gillen), and of course Doctor Aphra, another Gillen work.

A spin-off from the writer's Darth Vader comic, Doctor Aphra centres around the eponymous character and her life under the employ of the Sith Lord. It's stellar stuff and, of all the characters to have been introduced to the canon in the wake of Disney's acquisition of the Star Wars license, she's undoubtedly the best.

The series has gone from strength to strength this year, and while Gillen is now dividing his time between Chelli Lona and the main Star Wars comic, there's little sign of it stopping, or of any other starbound comic usurping its place on this year's podium.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.