Villordsutch reviews IDW’s Star Trek – Space-Spanning Treasury Edition…
“IDW continues to boldly go where no comic book company has gone before—producing beautiful treasury editions of comics deserving of a BIG format! Collecting three issues that tell two complete stories, featuring one story inspired from the original series as well as one completely new tale! Great stories by ace Trek scribe Mike Johnson and stupendous art by Stephen Molnar featuring THE RETURN OF THE ARCHONS and THE REDSHIRTS STORY! “
If you’ve bought this comic you have spent well and you have, in your hand, value for money. You’re getting both parts of The Return of the Archons and Hendorff’s (Cupcake) Redshirt story.
The comic starts with the Archons tale which brings a good old fashioned Trek story but with our new crew. Many years back the USS Archon vanishes near Beta III, there is no mention of it in any Starfleet records, and Kirk only knows this from an old Academy teacher. So off Kirk trots with his box fresh new ship on a hunt for a mystery. Reaching Beta III they beam down and discover a Middle Ages style society. What’s odd is this planet is that it’s populated by humans who are all living in a trance like state and worshiping the God-like being Landru. Investigating deeper we find shards of the USS Archon crafted in a temple and behind the Captain’s chair is a hidden supercomputer named Landru.
By the end of Part 1 I’m enjoying this story. We’ve had Sulu and what I suspect to be Section 31 enrolment, ships made into temples and unknown supercomputers controlling a medieval civilisation, but Part 2 arrives and it trips over itself. As with most television two-parters, Part 2 always feels a wee bit less exciting and we have it here too.
The Archon story is wrapped up far too quickly and easily in Part 2. There isn’t the mystery or interest that Part 1 held. It feels like Mike Johnson would have enjoyed making this story into three parts instead to allow the conclusion to arrive at a steadier pace, rather than just crammed in with no actual feel of a story around. However, the closing Admiral Pike pages make you crave more of what’s to come (hopefully).
We turn the page and we are met with the story about Hendorff. You will remember Hendorff as Cupcake who puts Kirk’s jaw the other side of his face in the bar fight of the first film. Well here we see his Enterprise and the life of the Redshirts. We are re-introduced to the main players on the ship through his eyes as he dictates a letter to his father. It’s a simple story that midway through drops into an original Trek style story of poison dart spitting flowers and nearly naked native peoples. It tries to quash Redshirt jokes and show what the they are, which is the blood of the Enterprise and Starfleet.
Throughout both of the stories Molnar and Johnson do a fine job; Molnar gives them a nice look with old style art and colours, rather than a J.J. Abrams sheen to each panel, which would have looked out of place here, and even taking into consideration the rushed Archons Part 2, they’ve created a good couple of Trek tales. It looks great and reads great too. As I said at the beginning, this is a real value for money book.
Villordsutch – Follow me on Twitter.
Originally published April 10, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
