10 Star Wars Comics Moments That Shocked The World

5. Aphra Outsmarts Darth Vader - Darth Vader #25

Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca's Darth Vader series represents the pinnacle of Marvel's Star Wars books, and part of that comes down to the brilliant cast of characters it introduced - chief among them Doctor Aphra.

Chelli Lona Aphra (the reverse Indiana Jones of the galaxy far, far away), finds herself in the employ of Vader and proceeds to have The Most Stressful Time doing his bidding. She's joined by homicidal versions of C3PO and R2D2 (Triple Zero and Beetee), and with the threat of death constantly looming should she fail, Aphra makes sure to remind Vader that her biggest fear is being ejected into space. She asks that if Vader HAS to kill her, that he do so with his lightsaber.

Well, Vader being Vader (i.e., a huge dick), you can imagine he wasn't interested in obliging that request.

In the concluding chapter of Gillen's run, Vader decides to finally do away with Aphra after she revealed his many deceptions to the Emperor. He whisks her away to an airlock and ejects her into space, no doubt satisfied the punishment given was sufficiently cruel.

Only, we discover that Aphra has really outplayed the Sith Lord. Using gear acquired from a previous mission, Aphra is intercepted by her two droids plus Black Krrsantan - the fearsome Wookie bounty hunter - safe from the Empire's wrath... for the time being.

Ewan Paterson

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.

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