Star Trek: The Manga Vol. 1
September 25, 2006 | Trades
Star Trek: The Manga Vol. 1
TokyoPop
$12.99/$9.99 US (Paperback)
*** 1/2 (out of five)
Star Trek is boldly going somewhere it’s never gone before.
While comic books based upon the classic 1960s sci-fi series have been around for decades, this month marks the arrival of the first collection of Star Trek Manga stories from TokyoPop.
This five-story volume has its highs and lows, but the series does translate rather remarkably well into this Japanese illustration style. William Shatner never looked so good (and thank goodness he’s not singing).
Here’s a quick rundown of the five stories in this collection:
• Side Effects, written by Chris Dows with art by Makoto Nakatsuka, involves some of Trekkies’ favourite elements: time travel and temporal causality. When the Enterprise happens upon a derelict vessel filled with sick humanoids, they are perplexed. But when that ship and theirs is dragged into a wormhole, things get really interesting.
• Anything But Alone, written by Joshua Ortega with art by Gregory Giovanni Johnson, sees the crew discover a race of people thought to have perished when their sun went supernova thriving on a new planet. But is this utopia a little too perfect?
• ‘Til Death, written by Mike W. Barr with art by Jeong Mo Yang, finds the Enterprise surveying a class ‘M’ planet that apparently has no inhabitants. But when the ship quickly comes under attack, things heat up and threaten to boil over when an anger virus infects the crew.
• Oban, written by Jim Alexander with art by Michael Shelfer, has the Enterprise playing courier to a cute, little creature given as a gesture of peace between rival planets. Of course the creature has a little secret — and a deadly one at that!
• Orphans, written by Rob Tokar with art by EJ Su, is the most Manga-fied of these stories, as the Enterprise comes in conflict with a group of sword-wielding mechanized warriors. When the pilots of these robots are revealed, Captain Kirk finds himself with some tough personal issues to deal with.
You must be logged in to post a comment.