Looking For a Good Book

STAR TREK WEEK

For those who aren’t strong Star Trek fans and/or who haven’t given much thought to the various incarnations of the series, when the ‘new’ movies came out, directed by J.J. Abrams and starring Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, this has been referred to as the “Kelvin timeline.” I’m not going to go into an explanation about this – there are entire websites dedicated to this and it would be easier, if interested, to check out one of those.  But it’s important here because author Mike Johnson has taken what I think is a rather brilliant approach to this.

Assuming that the Kelvin timeline is an alternate universe or alternate timeline, still with people known as Kirk, Spock, Uhuru, etc and have similar but not identical experiences, we’ve got 79 episodes-worth of existing stories to explore – to see how they might be different.  And that’s what Johnson does here, taking the very general story from the original series’ episode “Operation: Annihilate” and bringing it in a different direction.  I’m not sure how I felt about the direction itself (it takes Jim Kirk’s brother, Sam, in a very different direction) but I appreciate the concept. The artwork by Joe Corroney is quite good and helps the story nicely.

This book also includes a more original story, “Vulcan’s Vengeance,” again using the Kelvin timeline cast (for the sake of the art). I found it a little bit ridiculous and the art, by Joe Phillips, is actually pretty bad – looking sometimes cartoony and extremely simple.  It definitely looks rushed and there are times I’m not sure which character is being drawn.

I’m a longtime Star Trek fan and I really enjoy reading new adventures from the familiar characters. I appreciate this graphic novel for that reason, particularly the Kelvin-look at a more familiar story.  The art is inconsistent which definitely hurts the overall appeal of the book.

Looking for a good book? Star Trek Volume 2 is a two-story graphic novel with one strong story and art for the variant of an original Star Trek series story (“Operation: Annihilate”) and a weaker art and story (“Vulcan’s Vengeance”).

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Star Trek Volume 2

author: Mike Johnson

artists: Joe Corroney and Joe Phillips

series: Star Trek: Ongoing, Vol. 2

publisher: IDW Publishing

ISBN: 9781613772867

paperback, 128 pages