Doctor Aphra #22

The cover of Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #22 is genuinely unsettling in the best way — Ashley Witter renders Aphra wide-eyed and sweat-soaked, coiled tightly in the thick, serpentine tentacles of a massive alien creature looming in the cold blue light above her. The sense of helplessness is palpable, yet Aphra's expression reads more as desperate defiance than pure terror, which says everything about this character. With Spurrier, Walker, Deering, and Tartaglia driving the interior, this 2018 Marvel issue promises the kind of pressure-cooker tension that makes Aphra's solo run such a compelling corner of the Star Wars galaxy.