Star Trek Boldly Go #1
IDW
Written by: Mike Johnson
Art by: Tony Shasteen
Boldly Go is the second run of Star Trek comics to feature the Kelvin Timeline, original series characters. Issue #1 picks up shortly after the events of the latest movie Star Trek Beyond. Since the destruction of the U.S.S. Enterprise the crew have gone their separate ways. Kirk, McCoy and Chekov have taken interim assignments on the U.S.S. Endeavour while Sulu has been promoted to Commander and First officer of the U.S.S. Concord. Uhura has joined Spock’s sabbatical on New Vulcan and Scotty has taken a teaching post at Starfleet Academy.
Unlike a single hero book, the writer has to contend with a seven character ensemble and being issue #1 the main text is needed for the “Where are they now” round up. Mike Johnson does a good job weaving his setup for our first story arc, while committing a couple of pages to all of the principles. The look of the book is great. The ships, interior and exterior, along with the panels of outer space and Vulcan have a nice ecstatic. When an artist has to take the characters look from real world actors, they run the risk of pulling the reader out of the story if it is not handled with the right touch. Tony Shasteen does great job. The characters are done well and are easily recognizable.
Thankfully long gone are the days of newspapers strips and Gold Key comics featuring the original series Star Trek crew. Most Trek writers in the 60’s and 70’s wrote the books on guess work without watching a single episode of the series that they were based on. This book stays in cannon with its general look and characters. Star Trek Boldly Go #1 is a decent set up with an interesting cliff hanger that has me looking forward to issue #2.