For anyone who has sampled my Winners And Losers Of 2025 list, you already have a pretty good idea on what I think of this series, but for the rest of you folks – particularly you folks who are disenchanted by modern Star Trek television properties – might I recommend that you give Redshirts a shot?
The premise of the book is pretty straightforward; A band of Starfleet security officers from the USS Warren (a.k.a. the titular redshirts that have become a meme over the decades) must defend a listening post from enemy spies. Naturally, things go horribly wrong and our redshirts are picked off one by one. Who will be left standing? The answer… well, I won’t spoil things, but if you pay attention to things, you’ll see the story play out in a way opposite of what you’re expected to expect.
When I first heard about the idea of a comic book that was going to be based on a somewhat tired meme of sorts, I was naturally skeptical, but decided to give it a chance if for no other reason than IDW’s track record with Star Trek comics ever since they first nabbed the license in who know how long… hell, just the fact that they still have the license after all these years should be a telling sign alone. But Red Shirts actually does a tremendous job in not only making you care about some of these largely unknown characters with very short lifespans, but also tells a compelling enough story with a bit of a twist that some might see coming, but is so well executed that it’s satisfying.
Complimenting the superb storytelling is the solid artwork, which maintains a nice, clean look to it with some bright colors that pop out to go along with the gory bits that go far and beyond what one would see in TOS material. I do admittedly get a kick out of the covers for each issue, which shows off the skeletal remains of a redshirt having met some unfortunate demise. All in all, Red Shirts is quite honestly, one of the best Star Trek stories I’ve read in a long, long time that does a far better job of making the reader care about its cast of doomed redshirts than the last several television shows made you care about their crews. This gets my highest recommendation.
dtm666 