Star Trek: Boldly Go #3 - IDW Publishing

STAR TREK: BOLDLY GO No. 3, December 2016

Any fans quibbling as to just how Mike Johnson could logically incorporate both James T. Kirk and the Borg within the same comic book adventure, doubtless had their questions well and truly answered by Issue Three of “Star Trek: Boldly Go”. In fact, much of this twenty-page periodical’s narrative, such as the deliberations of Spock and Uhura on board the U.S.S. Endeavour, specifically focuses upon ‘set pieces’ which explain just why the Collective have “arrived” in the Kelvin Timeline “over a century ahead” of when they did so within the American science fiction television show “Star Trek: The Next Generation”.

Admittedly, the “IDW Publishing” writer’s notion that the cybernetic organisms would spend thirty years travelling from the Delta Quadrant simply because the Borg “detected its own technology light-years away” with the arrival of the six-mile long Narada from the Twenty-Fourth Century, arguably appears a tad contrivingly convenient, especially when it’s later revealed that Nero’s doomed mining vessel “essentially” spoke “the same language” as the long-range tactical scout sphere due to it ‘incorporating the Hive Mind’s machinery.’ But the author has mentioned the Tal Shiar’s experimental retrofitting of the Romulan ship with “salvaged and reverse-engineered Borg technology” before in his previously published “Star Trek: Countdown” mini-series, and it does provide the assimilation-driven extra-terrestrials with something like a sound rationale as to why they start obliterating the Star Empire’s Fleet “ten light-years from the edge of the Neutral Zone”; “You failed to provide that which we seek. Your failure results in your destruction. Resistance is futile.” 

Equally as well embedded within this comic’s script is plenty of sense-stimulating Starfleet action. Whether it be an apocalyptic attack upon the Romulan planet Quirina VI, Kirk’s fisticuffs with a handful of Borg once he realises they’ve adapted to his landing party’s hand-phasers, or the Collective’s subsequent injection of microscopic machines called nanoprobes into Mister Spock, Johnson’s storyline intermixes enthralling explanations and dynamic ding-dongs with the same skill as Montgomery Scott uses at the controls of the U.S.S. Enterprise’s matter to anti-matter chamber.

Of course, much of the enjoyment gleaned by this book’s readers would have additionally arisen from Tony Shasteen’s excellently rendered breakdowns. The graphic designer, for the most part at least, can not only draw a good likeness of the cast’s ‘Silver Screen’ counterparts, whether they be involved in a sedentary sequence or not, but also demonstrates an incredible ability to pencil some seriously impressive space-battle single-splashes too.

The variant cover art of "STAR TREK: BOLDLY GO" No. 3 by Marc Laming