Villordsutch reviews Star Trek: The Next Generation – Mirror Broken #1…
The Star Trek mini-series event of the year kicks off! Captain Jean-Luc Picard will stop at nothing to get his hands on the Empire’s newest warship, the ISS Enterprise, be it lies, deception…or murder. With enemies and allies around every corner, Picard’s quest to help the Enterprise and restore the Empire to glory will not be an easy one. Good thing he has a crew onboard who will also stop at nothing to ensure total victory — at any cost.
SEE ALSO: Check out a preview of Star Trek:TNG – “Mirror Broken” here
For those of you lucky enough to pick up the prelude issue to this new six-part series, from your local Comic Book Shop on Free Comic Book Day 2017, you’ll already know what’s going on within the covers of Star Trek: TNG “Mirror Broken”. If however, luck didn’t favour you pop over to our review of said free comic book here and take a quick look, then fly back to this review to get yourself up to speed. Though truth-be-told you’ll understand exactly what is happening within issue#1 from Scott & David Tipton, along with art from J.K. Woodward, without having to take a glance at the prelude.
Here in this Mirror Universe we discover that Spock’s early attempts at a more “Enlightened” Empire has helped the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance to grow in strength, thus forcing the remnants of the Empire to pull back within the limits of Earth’s own solar system. Now patrolling the borders looking for easy targets we find Captain Picard aboard the I.S.S. Stargazer and his crew of sadistic officers, which include a much more confident Reg Barclay, Lt. Cmdr Data who has numerous, interchangeable arms with different weapons attached, and the ‘Mind-Witch’ Inquisitor Troi.
After both a successful and brutal capture of a severely disabled Cardassian ship close to the system border, Picard learns of a new Warship being built by the Empire at the Utopia Shipyards and he sets into motion actions for securing the Captain’s chair for himself.
As ever with anything painted by J.K. Woodward this is the first thing that stands out before you even pay attention to the words on the page. You can’t help but admire the work of this rather excellent artist, for each panel is almost frameable! Everything from the battered looking Stargazer to the muscles of Picard’s biceps look fantastic and this series is going to look just perfect. If you want to see more of his work including images from the Star Trek/Aliens comic then go over to his blog here.
Scott and David Tipton have more than proven themselves as Trek writers over the past few years so it’s safe to say that I feel secure knowing this six-part series is going to be rather special. However, I couldn’t help but feel that once the crew arrived at the Utopia Shipyards everything became a wee bit more conveniently rushed than I would have preferred. Still this is issue #1 of 6 and we now have five more issues to go, with it looking like issue #2 is going to be a bit of a slobberknocker for a special chair.
Star Trek: TNG – Mirror Broken already looks like it going to be hailed as a classic.
Rating: 8/10
Originally published May 17, 2017. Updated November 21, 2019.
