Category: Comic Reviews

Much like the previous film, Star Trek Into Darkness – the overall twelfth Trek film and the second in the Kelvin Timeline trilogy of films – got its own prequel comic book series in the form of Countdown To Darkness… and in hindsight, this one hasn’t aged all that well.

Don’t get me wrong; as a story in a vacuum, it’s a fairly traditional Trek story involving a trip to a new planet, the discovering of a reimagined classic character, the depiction of Klingons in this new universe, and an otherwise, fairly entertaining romp. There are some minor inconsistencies in terms of canon – the mention of a previous Starship Enterprise before the one featured in the movie, for example… which I don’t believe ever made it to Kelvin canon – but as a standalone adventure, it’s a perfectly adequate Trek comic book.

As a tie-in comic, there are a couple plotpoints that tie in to the movie in question, but these are mostly related to comments made in passing in the film. Unlike the first Countdown miniseries or even the Nero miniseries that came afterwards, there’s no real reason to dive into this one expecting anything that would further your enjoyment of what has since become a somewhat divisive motion picture.

David Messina’s artwork is still pretty much a highlight to these comics and pretty much drive the series onwards. But he’s provided artwork for many superior Trek minis. Not quite his best work, but still pretty good.

Countdown to Darkness is fairly basic Trek fare and an underwhelming tie-in comic.

The other Trek 09 prequel comic miniseries focuses on Nero and what he’s been up to in between the prologue and the rest of the movie many years later. Beginning shortly after George Kirk sacrificed his ship and his life to save the fleeing crew, Nero and his ship are soon ambushed and captured by Klingons, who somewhat resemble the Klingons we’re familiar with when they don’t have their helmets on.

A lot of the Klingon stuff is based on deleted scenes from the movie and Nero’s band eventually make their escape, but there is an additional element that comes into play that gives Nero the answer to where and when to find Spock. I won’t spoil it here, but it is a nod to another Star Trek movie that I thought made quite a bit of scene in the larger picture and was a nice fit here.

David Messina returns to art duties here and he hasn’t missed a beat. The same kind of colors and character portrayals are pretty spot-on in his own stylized way and his interpretation of the Klingon ships as well as the battle at the end of the series is pretty good,.

Nero isn’t quite as good or as essential as Countdown, but it’s still a pretty good read and fills in the gap nicely between point A and point B.

2009 saw Star Trek get a “reboot” of sorts in the form of what is now known as the Kelvin Timeline.

The story of the Kelvin Timeline involves time travel that created an alternate reality so that these movies can co-exist with the “prime” universe of the previous Trek shows. And so a comic miniseries was conceived to give us some backstory as to how we got to t his point… and while the more recent Picard series (or as I’d prefer to call it, Blunt Talk: The Next Generation) has effectively curtailed Countdown’s chances of (already non-existent) canonical status, when it comes to giving that generation of Trek a proper sendoff while also leading us to the next Trek era, Countdown has it nailed.

It tells the story of Nero, a humble minor who assists Spock in attempting to save Romulus from the expanding supernova, but when that doesn’t happen, we see his descent into madness and the origin of his mining ship, the Narada. In addition, we get appearances from Next Gen characters such as Jean-Luc Picard (now an ambassador to Vulcan), Data (revived in B4 and now Captain of the USS Enterprise-E), and a couple others even. And they’re all true and consistent with how the characters have been portrayed all these years, which is more than what I could say for BTTNG.

This series was my first exposure to artist David M|essina, who had done a prior Trek mini for IDW and would eventually do art for several more Trek series. I like his style; his depiction of the characters are true to form while being somewhat stylized, the various space settings and ships look fairly accurate to what was on screen, and the choice of coloring to create a somewhat somber tone for the book, yet retaining some of the old TNG movie aesthetics is much appreciated.

A pity that this couldn’t have been used as a backstory for what would come after and we got Blunt Talk: The Next Generation (a.k.a. Star Trek: Picard) instead, because in terms of not only providing the backstory for two of the film’s key characters, but also giving us a satisfying farewell to the Next Gen crew, Countdown has it nailed to a tee.

IDW is at it, again.

They’re doing another round of their Deviations event – one-shots of various licensed properties being subjected to “What If?” scenarios. We’ve sampled a couple of these last year and this year… well, there was only one that piqued my interest and that was the Star Trek one. Took me a little longer to gather my thoughts on this one because… well, let’s be honest here. I’ve read three of these Deviations so far and we’re one for three at the moment.

Yeah, this isn’t very good, either… but this time, the blame falls on the premise, which seems to be all over the place.

The premise of this Deviation seems fascinating on paper; what if, instead of the Vulcans, it was the Romulans who were Earth’s first encounter with extraterrestrials. It’s an idea that has potential to be explored and possibly spin off an interesting alternate take on Star Trek lore before we get to the eventual “everyone dies” ending that a lot of these things fall back on because we’re uncreative hacks or something.

So what happens when the Romulans land on Earth before the Vulcans? They turn the planet into a Romulan colony and enslave the human race. Jump ahead to the 24th century and an eyepatched Will Riker leads a ragtag band of freedom fighters (who, coincidentally or conveniently, happen to be some of the old TNG crew in similar altered states or worse) to find a man who may or may not know the location of a Federation base… wait, what? A Federation base? How could there be a Federation base if the Romulans enslaved the human race shortly after Zefram Cochrane’s warp flight? If the humans never had a chance to develop space flight, how could there be a Federation? Hell, that Delta on the cover shouldn’t even be there if that were the case.

So IDW either lied about the deviation or nobody had a fucking clue. I’m leaning more towards the former because IDW has been doing Star Trek comics for years now and they’re usually on the ball with this stuff. I’d have to assume that, at some point, the Federation and the Romulans got into a war, the Romulans won, took control of Earth and enslaved the humans. That would make more sense and less questions would be brought up that we’d never get answers to. Approaching the story from THAT context rather than the premise it was sold on… eh, it’s not so bad.

For what it’s worth, it’s a fast-paced piece of business that doesn’t waste time on exposition since we don’t have time to waste in a one-shot book. The action bits are well-done and it was interesting to see the different takes on these familiar TNG characters. Would it have been nice to get more emphasis on the main players and how things have changed? Sure, but given what’s there… it was fine.

It’s just unfortunate that for all the good bits that this issue offered, I am left with more questions regarding anachronistic aspects of the story, including the final big reveal, which – had this been following the original premise of the series – should not exist in the first place. I don’t know… this feels like a sampler of a much larger story and if there’s more to come, I’d look forward to reading it.

As a one-shot, however, Star Trek: Deviations leaves much to be desired.