Yet another chapter of War of the Bounty Hunters is here. As we enter the final stretch of the crossover, Doctor Aphra and her companion Sana are imprisoned on Crimson Dawn’s ship – and their cellmates are, coincidentally, Aphra’s old ‘friend’ Lucky and his current companion, Ariole. Despite their differences, they set about trying to escape from captivity and recover Aphra’s lost necklace.

It’s another fast-paced and entertaining issue, but like most of the Doctor Aphra/War of the Bounty Hunters tie-in issues, it feels less than essential to the wider crossover. As a standalone side story it’s entertaining enough – and it’s drawn in a nicely hyperactive, cartoony style – but after the much stronger chapter in the previous issue it does feel like a bit of a step back, despite the jailbreak itself being pretty entertaining.

There’s still ten issues in total left of War of the Bounty Hunters, if you count all of the crossover issues. I’ve complained about this an awful lot but it really seems as if the second act of the story – the Crimson Dawn auction – really became far too drawn out and stretched the already thin premise of the tale to breaking point. It has yet to properly recover, but I suspect that act three is now going to rush to conclude the story – and swiftly get everyone into their positions for Return of the Jedi’s opening.

Though it started strongly, the crossover’s story really would have worked so much better as its own mini-series, rather than dragging all of the Star Wars titles into its orbit pointlessly. I get the sense that Doctor Aphra’s adventures are a lot of fun when the character is off doing her own thing, with her own supporting cast – as yet, she hasn’t had much of a useful part to play in the War of the Bounty Hunters crossover, which doesn’t look likely to change.