Star Wars: Doctor Aphra Comic Book Wins GLAAD Media Award

Over the past five years, Doctor Aphra has gone from a new character to a bonafide fan-favorite, spinning out of the pages of Star Wars: Darth Vader into her own solo series. As Aphra has found her way into official merchandising, video games, and an audio series, her solo comic continues to be a hit among fans — and it looks like it just earned a pretty big honor. The winners of the 2020 GLAAD Awards were announced on Thursday, honoring the best in the past year of LGBTQ+ media. During the virtual awards, it was announced that the Star Wars: Doctor Aphra series has won the award for Outstanding Comic Book.

Other nominees in the Outstanding Comic Book category were BOOM!’s The Avant-Guards and Lumberjanes, Comixology’s Liebestrasse, DC Comics’ Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass, First Second’s Bloom and Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, Image’s Crowded and The Wicked + The Divine, and Marvel’s Runaways.

Aphra was originally created by writer Kieron Gillen and artist Salvador Larroca, and was established as a lesbian archeologist who has a morally-ambiguous relationship with the sides of the galactic war.

“Of all the characters I’ve created for other people’s universes, she’s by far the most successful one…” Gillen said in a 2018 interview. “She’s kind of fun but at the same time, there’s a really dark heart to her … All those weird kind of contradictions to her, I think they’re quite appealing. At the same time, she’s got a very core thing people can get. She’s quite complicated and not complicated at all. With Luke or Leia, they’ve got that core archetype you get, you get what they’re like. You get that with Aphra but at the same time, there’s an underlying … all this weird, twisted stuff in there that kind of gets under people’s skin.”

The past year, Doctor Aphra has been written by Simon Spurrier, with art from Emilio Laiso, Andrea Broccardo, Caspar Wijnggaard, and Wilson Santos. Earlier this year, Doctor Aphra relaunched with a new #1 issue, with Alyssa Wong, Marika Cresta, and Valentina Remenar working on the book.

What do you think of Star Wars: Doctor Aphra winning a GLAAD Award? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!