Star Wars: Doctor Aphra by Kieron Gillen Vol. 1

This is review of volume which contains The Screaming Citadel story arc. There is another volume 1 which contains only first six issues of Star Wars: Doctor Aphra (2016-2019).

Doctor Aphra was introduced in Darth Vader (2015 - 2016). She was Darth Vader’s secret weapons specialist helping Vader get his own army and trying to find Luke Skywalker. This led to events of Vader Down in which Doctor Aphra was captured by rebels. Rebel Jail story arc in Star Wars (2015 - 2019) issues 16-19 was her face turn. When she got back to Darth Vader (2015 - 2016) Vader wanted to get rid of her. At the end Vader thought he had killed her but she made it alive.

Doctor Aphra wasn’t evil at any point of Darth Vader (2015 - 2016) she was someone trying to make in Empire controlled world any way she can. Her droids were the evil ones. They were practically evil C-3PO and evil R2-D2. In Vader Down they got Wookie bounty hunter to make dark side version of Han, Chewie, C-3PO and R2-D2 team.

For her own comic Doctor Aphra has changed from ancient weapon specialist to archaeologist. Ancient weapons could be considered as archaeology but she is not into weapons as much as she was in Darth Vader (2015 -2016). Otherwise she is close to what she was before. And Triple-Zero (evil C-3PO) and BT-1 (evil R2-D2) are what they were before. Evil droids are one of best things in Star Wars and these are one of the best evil droids there are.

I told in Darth Vader (2015 -2016) review first story arc of Doctor Aphra’s comic is best the thing Disney’s Star Wars have given us. It has everything good from Darth Vader comics without what was bad and Aphra is even better than he was before. It has more humor when it is not about one of the top villains of all time.

The Screaming Citadel story arc don’t rise to same level mainly because it is with Luke, Leia, Han and others. Having others disliking Aphra but working together made sense in Rebel Jail story arc. Here they do it again in lesser story arc. After reading this I am sure I don’t want to read Star Wars (2015 - 2019). Rebel Jail was one of the kind case with correct premise and correct characters in correct story.

I got all Star Wars: Doctor Aphra (2016 - 2019) collections from May the 4th sale. So far it has been good choice. I hope rest will be as good as first story arc when she can do her thing without the package of the original trilogy cast.

Darth Vader (2015-2016)

This is review of Darth Vader (2015-2016) omnibuses and Star Wars (2015-2019) issues 16-19 which contain Rebel Jail story arc. Vader Down event was included in omnibuses.

Little bit about my Star Wars taste before I go any further. Knights of the Old Republic games are my favorite things having name Star Wars. The Last Jedi is my favorite of Disney movies and best Star Wars movie since original trilogy.

Darth Vader (2015-2016) tells story how Darth Vader moved from Tarkin’s thug to the one who calls shots for Empire between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. Story starts soon after end of A New Hope and end in place which could be near the beginning of Empire Strikes Back. We get lot of references to both movies and prequels. This is biggest flaw of Disney’s Star Wars. It concentrates too much into past. Non trilogy movies concentrated showing what was referenced in movies. Same problems seems to be in comics. Rebel Jail story arcs have secondary story based on two words said by Leia in Empire Strikes Back.

Setting stories between existing stories having characters of those other stories takes away some excitement because you know where this is going and at least in some part who is going to make it. It is pretty sure Darth Vader will survive stories set between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back and he can’t end up having something he didn’t have in Empire Strikes Back. So final issues cleans the plate from anything not mentioned in Empire Strikes Back.

One more thing before going into positives. It is not the problem of Darth Vader run but Vader Down event. Vader becomes unstoppable killing machine in Vader Down. Whole event feels like fan fiction by someone who thinks characters from original trilogy are far better than anyone else. Jedis of prequels couldn’t have survived what Vader survives in Vader Down. His powers and skills were more reasonable in rest of the run. It is because Vader Down was written by different writer.

Everything above may sound like I didn’t like Darth Vader (2015-2016). That is not the case. I liked it but not because it was about Darth Vader but because of everything which had nothing to do with the movies. This is story of Darth Vader playing a secret game against other Empire officials with Doctor Aphra. Doctor Aphra is reason I picked this run first place. Doctor Aphra is ethically compromised female Indiana Jones with little bit of Han Solo and Tank Girl.

Together they are against Emperor’s new technological squad who could replace Darth Vader if they can win him. This is same Sith ideology which Knights of the Old Republic had. Not sure if it is still part of current Star Wars but this was very close to Knight of the Old Republic. Story goes quite far from the movies. It is engaging. There are interesting twists. Last issues are almost let down after where this went during the story. Vader had to get to where he was in Empire Strikes Back.

This is more interesting as Doctor Aphra story than Darth Vader story. Her story moves from pages of Darth Vader (2015-2016) to Rebel Jail story arc in Star Wars (2015-2019) to return to Darth Vader (2015-2016) later. Rebel Jail story arc is good because of Doctor Aphra and the villain but it didn’t make me want to check the comic. Doctor Aphra got her own comic Doctor Aphra (2016-2019). I have read first story arc of it and it is the best thing Disney’s Star Wars has give us.

This and Doctor Aphra’s own comic shows Star Wars can still be interesting. Some fans might still want Star Wars to be references to movies the grew up with but that doesn’t make it interesting story telling. This is only Darth Vader comic I am planning to read. I read it because I wanted to read Doctor Aphra’s story from the beginning. Darth Vader on his own wouldn’t have carried this for me. Darth Vader fans might have different opinions.

Give us reasonable gear ratios (or give us death)

It is reference to classic Dead Kennedys album. I am not looking for death if I don’t get reasonable gear ratios.

Current pandemic made me ride daily and I was starting to think maybe I should support Finnish bike stores by getting new bike. Not only because of this pandemic. I have considered upgrading my cyclocross bike for a while now. Might have done it this summer in any case. I want disc brakes and wider tires. More gears wouldn’t hurt either. This is where we get to this post’s topic.

I checked cyclocross and gravel bikes. Current flavor of the month seems to be them having mountain biking gear ratios. Having 11-36t gearing on back seem to be the standard. It would be good on cross-country riding but on everything else bike wouldn’t be too good for that sort of riding. If you have something like fatbike you don’t want to use gravel or cyclocross bike on cross-country style of riding.

If you mostly ride on something that can be called road or easy trails you want gearing where jump between gears is one teeth rather than two teeth which is mountain bike gearing. I rather have 11-28t gearing. Mountain biking gearing is big reason why I don’t like riding fatbike on road. Bigger tires and worse aerodynamics play part too. But it is hard to find good gear sometimes when jump between gears is so big. On cross-country you want that but on roads gradients and surfaces don’t change so much that you need to make huge gear ratio changes all the time. It is more of getting optimal gear for current situation.

Other part of gear ratios is front chainrings. By default front chainrings are something meant for racing. I watched video which preferred gravel bikes over cyclocross bikes because gravel bikes had gears to go over 60 km/h when cyclocross bikes have gears for top speeds of 45-50 km/h. Like anyone who isn’t racing would need gears for that sort of speeds. Two by bikes seem to have bigger chainring of 46t. One by bikes have chainring 42t. I calculated gear ratios. Bigger chainring of 42t would give good gear ratios. When it is only chainring you have to have mountain biking gearing on back to make bike to handle all sorts of terrains and gradients. But if you had smaller chainring of 30t you get everything you need with 11-28t gearing and you get one teeth jumps between most gears.

I couldn’t find gravel or cyclocross bikes with 42/30t on front and 11-28t on back. 46/36t or 46/30t on front and 11-36t on back are more common. I understand 46t on front is good for races but not everyone of us races. 42t on front would give rest of us more reasonable gear ratios. My current cyclocross bike has 46/36t. I haven’t used biggest gears it has and smallest gears are not small enough on some cases. 42/30t would be more useful. I don’t know if it possible to get that without custom components. Haven’t seen that anywhere.

Corona 20200407

It is a miracle. Finland had day when total deaths lowered by one. Not daily deaths. Total deaths. I don't know how you can miscalculate when daily maximum is five and total is under thirty. Today we have more deaths but our situation is still quite good. There haven't been exponential growth in confirmed cases, hospitalizations or deaths.

Talking about statistics. It has been interesting to see Financial Times's corona page statistics. Graphs have changed when United States' situation has started to look worse than elsewhere. It could have been also because they wanted to show curves turning down elsewhere. Now the new graphs start to look bad for United States. Will the graphs change again? From outside it looks like United States wants to make this worst possible without looking like they are doing it. Some states let churches stay open when other places are closed. I guess they haven't heard about South Korea's Patient 31 who at one point was responsible of half of the South Korea's cases.

British government planned to let Covid-19 loose on their population to get herd immunity as soon as possible. Now their prime minister is in intensive care because of Covid-19. I guess he will have second thoughts about the original strategy

Last weekend was Tour of Flanders weekend. It was cancelled or postponed. They still hope to have it later this year. What we got was virtual Tour of Flanders with quite star packed field. At least if you call 13 riders a field. You can watch the race below.

Corona 20200330

People have started to go to parks more than before. Same with jogging and cycling. I started riding my bike daily because there is little else to do. I work from home. Don’t feel like continue creative hobbies in home when I work from home. So it is cycling. I rode three times a week before this. So it is only about doubling the riding it did. Adding that much may not be best idea during pandemic but so far meters haven’t gone beyond yellow. Only one meter have stayed on yellow. It is the least reliable of them. So I don’t worry about it too much. Just trying to listen to my body and not push it too hard.

One problem in everyone going out is there are so many people new to cycling lanes not knowing how they work. Some even take social distance by walking or running on cycling line. For those who say I should ride bike on time like these I say I can keep recommended distance to others with few seconds exceptions every now and then. I try to stay away from most populated routes. Some routes I have used for ages have became too populated and I had to find new routes to use during this time.

Podcasters and Youtubers have started to release more content. This would be nice if I didn’t have enough of them subscribed already. Now more content means I don’t have time to listen or watch everything. I know they have good intentions but for us who already had enough with normal content it increases our backlog. After backlog gets big enough we have to drop something because we don’t have time for everything.

Corona 20200326

I don’t know what happened but most bars which had not closed before closed today. At least in Helsinki. Did bartenders and waiters start to get ill or was there common decision to do so? Law requiring then to close should come next week. It didn’t come this weekend because politicians didn’t want to close all bars in Finland but have different rules for different areas. This was too late for Capital Area but others could have done it on better time. It seems like bars have to be open until it is too late. Closing them at this time help but they should have closed couple weeks ago. People don’t tend to make good choices when results show only after few weeks. China and Italy have shown what this could be but people still think it will be different here.

It could be thanks to how Finnish people live. Bars and events are like everywhere else but outside those our way of life helps in outbreak situations. We like to keep distance to fellow man and not as social as people in Southern Europe. It is better to compare Finland to other Nordic countries. Sweden is trying different approach than Norway and Finland. They want to do only the minimum. They say they do only what is proven to work. Their situation is worse than in Finland but they are week or something like that ahead of us. After this we see what worked better.

Almost forgot. Uusimaa region will be closed from rest of the Finland during weekend and it will last for three weeks. Uusimaa is basically Capital Area and municipalities around it. Rest of the Finland expects us to become like Mad Max. I think megacity of Judge Dredd would be more likely outcome with rest of the Finland becoming wasteland around it. Speaking of Judge Dredd you can get 400 pages of Judge Dredd from 2000 AD’s website for free. I don’t know how long this offer lasts so get it while you can.