Star Trek #22 Review

Star Trek #22

Written by: Mike Johnson
Art by: Erfan Fajar
 

Star Trek #22 picks up after Star Trek Into Darkness, wherein the Enterprise Crew sets off for a five year voyage into deep space. While the idea of the comic book series acting like an episodic TV series is optimistic, this “episode”  does little to test the crew’s morality, and only offers another Starfleet power struggle story.

This issue focuses on Spock, who has revealed his Vulcan commitment to betroth T’Pring, in a process that is pretty much an arranged marriage. The conflict is funny, and could have been taken as one of the goofier Trek exploits, but it is written very melodramatically when we see Uhura’s emotional reaction to the situation.

Yet again, there is a “Leonard Nimoy” Old Spock appearance, which just like in Stark Trek Into Darkness, feels absolutely pointless and does little to move the plot forward. With Nimoy’s version in this universe, it’s best to either not include the character in stories at all, or focus an entire escapade around him. Otherwise, his appearances come off like cheap cameos.

The art from Erfan Fajar is inconsistent, sometimes replicating the cast extremely well, and sometimes (even in the adjacent panel) it’s as though there is a fill-in artist. On top of that, every character seems to have a Photoshop “Plastic Wrap”-type effect on them. Stylistically, it’s just not something that fits the tone and mood of Star Trek.

Star Trek #22 doesn’t dig deeper into the character development of the Star Trek cast. Rather than extrapolating on the characters from the films, it makes similar mistakes in not testing the characters’ moral judgement, and just features the most defiant and begrudging Starfleet Officers that presently exist.

Score: 5.0/10