Star Trek: The New Adventures: Volume 4

Star Trek (2011) #9-10

by Mike Johnson, Tony Shasteen (Illustrator), Cat Staggs (Illustrator)

Following the events of Star Trek Into Darkness, the U.S.S. Enterprise embarks on a new five-year mission of discovery, but is interrupted by a visit from the classic character Q, who challenges this timeline’s Captain Kirk to solve a classic no-win situation… if he can, in “The Q Gambit.” In “Behemoth,” the crew come upon a damaged alien vessel of unknown origin. Discovering the injured pilot inside, they learn of a new threat of unprecedented power. In “Eurydice,” the Enterprise finds itself adrift, farther from Earth than any other starship has ever traveled. And, in “The Tholian Webs” the ship becomes trapped in INTERPHASE, a dangerous condition of space within which the ship’s structural integrity–and the crew’s sanity–are at risk. Collects issues #35-47.

Genres: Star Trek, Comics, Graphic Novels

292 pages, Paperback

First published January 16, 2018

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Mike Johnson is a comic book writer.

An almost lifelong Trekkie, he has scripted more Star Trek comic books than anyone else to date.

Reviews

[Clare Moseley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this volume. "The Q Gambit" is an amazing story, combining two of my favourite casts-- The Kelvin Enterprise and DS9. Tholian Webs was also a really good story. These are some of the best stories that the New Adventures has done.

My only problem is something that has been in some of the previous volumes, but was really apparent in this issue. That is what I call "trace face". While I completely understand artists using reference, especially when trying to capture particular actors, it was plainly obvious the artist had taken many of the panels directly from screenshots of the movies, to the point where I could tell you exactly what scene they had come from. My problem with this is the drawings were so exacting that it retained the context of the original scene, which did not match the new setting.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's understandable that the series is going to go through the motions of hitting all the touchstones - NTG, DS9, Voyager - but the first half of the collection , despite a few surprises, was lackluster, paint-by-numbers storytelling at its worst. Thankfully the second half did a better job of showcasing the strengths of the concept, re-imagining several old episodes in a new context and delivering fine entertainment.

[Warren Tutwiler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Volume 4 was an improvement over Volume 3. Still some inconsistent artwork (particularly the nearly-unidentifiable closeup of Kirk on the 2nd panel of the 3rd page of "Behemoth") but also improved from the previous volume. I didn't enjoy the feature story, "The Q Gambit", as much as I had hoped, but this is due to my general lack of familiarity with the Dominion-era characters (Deep Space Nine?), not quality of storytelling.