Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #3 – “Book I: Vader (Part 3)”! In the previous installment, after having taken a licking by Emperor Palpatine for that whole exploded Death Star thing, plus a weapons ship stolen by space pirates, Vader gets an assistant named Oon-Ai to keep a very close eye on him for the task of destroy the space alien base.

It turns out Oon-Ai was a mole planted right under Palpatine’s nose! Vader makes short work of him and we move on.

Has Vader gained back Palpatine’s trust? Has Palpatine bought enough concealer for his dumb white face? TIME WILL TELL, FRIENDS.

Darth Vader (Vol. 1), Issue #3 [May, 2015]
Written by: Kieron Gillen
“Book I: Vader (Part 3)”

Looks like some woman with a simple biomech tattoo and a barely working belt is going to show up to SHAKE THINGS UP a little bit here. Will Darth Vader want to bone her, or did his penis fall off along with his limbs back on Mustafar?

“Hmm,” says this new lady. “Surveillance already bypassed guns, but no new triggers.”

This is Quarantine World III in Kallidahin Space, which means nothing to me but maybe after about 15,000 more Star Wars comics it’ll start coming together. “Just an empty room,” she continues.

She considers just traipsing along the corridor of this empty room of this quarantined world, but she pulls out some magic dust first to check out if any security lasers will be ready to zap her to smithereens and/or call in the flamboyant protocol droids. Lasers are there. She shimmies under them and enters a vault of interest.

She finds a computer chip that she refers to as a the “triple-zero personality matrix”, one of which is probably installed in Luke Skywalker’s brain right now. Ha! This thus-far unnamed woman removes the chip from the vault with tweezers and shimmies her way back from whence she came. Verily.

Whoops! Whoopsy-doodle! She trips one of the lasers and a large robot starts chasing her down the hallway shooting his own lasers. It’s Laserfest 2023. Or Laserfest a Long, Long Time Ago, rather.

Anyway, she makes it down the corridor and through a closing door at the last minute. The comic is already almost half over.

“Doctor Aphra… you are an irresponsible and troublesome woman.”

Nasty, even! Into the binders with you.

This little robot who calls the now-named Doctor Aphra is named Utani Xane, and he/she is reprimanding Aphra for attempting to steal the triple-zero personality matrix. It has been quarantined for centuries for a reason! And… it’s… uh… I dunno, something about a coronavirus.

Doctor Aphra calls it “beautiful” and it shouldn’t be locked away any longer. It should be in an armory, not in storage. Utani Xane retorts that Aphra should be in prison (again), not running free like some… non-prisoner.

One of Utani’s henchman informs it that a TIE fighter is headed their way to land on the planet. It’s Darth Vader. There wasn’t much build up to this, so you don’t get one from me either!

Vader clearly isn’t allowed here for reasons related to treaties and protocols, but he doesn’t give two rancid shits! He does his Force thing to blow most of the robots back while Utani scrambles away. He’s here to get the triple-zero personality matrix, so hand it over! Papa needs to triple-zero his current double-zero personality. However, the chip is dropped and topples off the platform they’re all standing on. “Oh no!” Aphra says. Oh no indeed! OH NO! Nooooooo! *burp*

Aphra grabs onto the edge with one hand and grabs the chip with the other. Vader plunges the business end of his red glowstick into Utani’s back. “Doctor Aphra,” he says boomingly (I imagine) to the precariously dangling woman. Brace yourself, he’s about to say something rude or mean, probably.

“I have need of you.”

Brrrt! Well, how about that? Darth Vader needs someone! What a fucking loser.

This Doctor Aphra, she’s a huge fan of this smelly, dark helmeted one. She invites him to her lavish ship, the Ark Angel. “This is a private business,” Vader tells her, getting right to the MEAT AND POTATOES of the matter at hand. “I recently destroyed some of your reactivated droids. They impressed me.”

Cool! This guy is not easily impressed, and he once saw Padmé Amidala’s sweet, sweet erection.

It also slices and dices! It can cut this shoe in half!

Doctor Aphra is after the chip because “it speaks languages no one else does, and that’s what I need”, so she needs to spend the next few hours busting the code on that before she can help anyone! Especially present company. And furtherm–

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” she asks, turning her head to see Vader walking away. She turns back and the codes hath been busted. It’s unlocked at any rate, probably because of some voodoo magic that Aphra knows nothing about. “…how did you do that?”

She verbally fellates Vader’s alleged wonderfulness and continues her task of installing the chip into one of her “impressive” protocol droids. It’s eyes light up red. “Oh, hello,” it says.

AHA! ENGLISH! The most inscrutable of languages! A language so mystifying that only the dumbest people in the universe speak it.

“I’m O-O-O or Triple-Zero, if you prefer. I’m a protocol droid, specialized in etiquette, customs, translation, and torture, ma’am.”

Aphra’s tattoo is sexy. Now back to our regularly scheduled protocol droid-in’.

“As there’s no one here to murder presently, how may I be of assistance?” O-O-O asks politely. Aphra wants O-O-O to kickstart this nearby astromech droid, which Vader finds befuddling. All that work for a lousy trashcan? Surely there are other things more pressing than that? Like this game of Parcheesi that they still need to finish?

It’s too bad that it has the word “BLASTOMECH” engraved in huge letter on the back of its head.

So, this trashcan can kick ass. That’s good too. Beats C-3PO and R2-D2, those pussies. These robots can actually do shit, it seems.

It used to be a product of the Tarkin initiative base, but then it jettisoned itself after blowing it up for some reason. Aphra found it, but she can’t get it to wake the fuck up. It only speaks the language of the base, but that’s lost. That’s why the chip is important, see? This is why O-O-O is here to jibber jabber and such.

“BT-1, wake up.”

“BLEEP!”

Well, that was easy. Now it draws out a few weapons and gets ready, much to Aphra’s chagrin. “No, BT-1! No! You can’t possibly do that!” O-O-O yells, shielding Aphra and Vader. “They are our masters!”

All right, we’re all on the same page here! Looks like Vader got what he wanted, I suppose he can just leave Aphra there and go about with his busy day then.

“There was a time I had armies at my beck and call. That time has passed. I need resources of my own. Private resources,” Vader says rather absent-mindedly if I do say so myself.

“I was abstractly meant to be delivering these two to the droid Gotra. They had another mission lined up… but you’re my next mission, aren’t you? And the next. And the next. You’re what I’ve been looking for all my life,” she says to him, doe-eyed and mysterious-like.

So Vader gets to have the droids! What else does the benevolent, frisky one need? “I need troops of unquestioning loyalty.”

Sounds good, boss! I know there’s a Rebel Alliance out there full of people who would gladly—ooops, that’s not right at all! Silly me!

Aphra knows where to find an army of droids! “The droid Gotra wanted me to recover an… unusual droid factory. It’s under close watch by you Imperials – plus not-exactly-friendly locals. Best bet…” she turns to him with a wry grin, “…how do you feel about a secret mission to Geonosis, Lord Vader?”

Vader stares vacantly. “I have no feelings regarding Geonosis.”

“Good,” she responds. “Then we need to move. I won’t let you down.”

“Wise, Aphra. That would be a mistake.”

Final Thoughts

I like this Doctor Aphra! She’s not in the movies, right? That must mean she gets killed early on in the comic book canon? Maybe a Hutt falls on her head.