It’s never been told before, but finally we can read about the final mission of the Starship Enterprise. It’s been five years and Captain Kirk and his crew have encountered many new life forms and discovered many inhabited worlds but will this mission bring about the end of the Federation itself?
The mission brings Kirk full circle as they head to Archernar IV, where Kirk had his first mission as the Enterprise captain. The natives here are essentially giant, intelligent spiders, and their beasts of burden are centipedes.
The story mostly looks at character growth. How much have Kirk and Spock and bones matured, as people and as Starfleet officers during the past five years.
I found this to be a well-written, interesting story and the art was generally okay (I miss the work of Gordon Purcell who worked on a number of different Star Trek comics) but there are enough oddly drawn scenes to take me out of the story. I’ve randomly opened to a couple of pages and grabbed these moments:
Kirk and Spock as dwarves?
Who knew Scotty had such a skinny leg?
I love Chekov with the machine gun, but is that Captain “Skinny Arms” Kirk firing a phaser?
This just strikes me as a 1970’s action pose.
I do think that author Ty Templeton captured that characters, as we know them from the television series, nicely but why the bugs? Why spiders and centipedes and dragonflies for the presiding life forms? It kind of made me chuckle.
Artist Steven Molnar isn’t the worst Star Trek graphic novel artist I’ve seen, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend this book based on the art.
This was a pleasant enough read, but I’m glad I waited for the Kindle Unlimited version and didn’t shell out big dollars just to read it.
Looking for a good book? Star Trek: Mission’s End is a graphic novel by Ty Templeton and Steven Molnar of the last mission of the Enterprise’s five years of missions. Star Trek fans will enjoy the story (but probably not the art).
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Star Trek: Mission’s End
author: Ty Templeton
artist: Steven Molnar
publisher: IDW Publishing
ISBN: 9781600105401
paperback, 124 pages
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