Star Trek: Boldly Go #16 - IDW Publishing

STAR TREK: BOLDLY GO No. 16, January 2018

It is difficult to imagine that many of this comic’s 6,564 readers were particularly impressed with Mike Johnson’s script for Issue Sixteen of “Star Trek: Boldly Go” in January 2018, considering that the twenty-page periodical not only sees the likes of Helm-Unit Sulu-1701 and Pavela Chekov being killed by Khan augments and the truly traitorous Simon Grayson respectively, but also the story-arc’s central cast of Captain Jane Kirk, “Captain Plant-Kirk” and even Chris Pine’s cinematic Kirk. This surprising bloodbath undoubtedly makes for a truly shocking experience, especially when the tone of the book’s narrator repeatedly implies that the U.S.S. Enterprise’s commander will successfully escape his perilous predicament along with his crew-mates. Yet equally must have made the publication’s audience despairingly wonder just what the point was of the series’ previous three instalments…

Arguably this book’s most disappointing aspect though, besides from editor Sarah Gaydos utilising a fourth different illustrator for “Infinite Diversity In Infinite Combinations” on-the-trot, must surely have been the American author’s handling of Earth-Garden’s Starfleet Officer, who is used within the tome to supposedly depict one of the main character’s defining traits, “the legendary Kirk charm.” In the past, this irresistibility to the opposite sex has predominantly been utilised whenever "the quintessential officer” needs to influence or persuade an opponent to acquiesce to one of his cunning plans or high-principled opinions. However, in this tale the leafy “man among men” is shown by artist Angel Hernandez as deliberately turning his back upon his mission and colleagues in order to make love to at least two vine-covered naked beauties; “Rest your tendril’s Uhuro! There’s no rush! Don’t they have Shore Leave in your reality? We’ll find a way home soon enough!”

Such behaviour is hardly demonstrative of charm, more an unpleasantly insatiable urge to put his own selfish pleasures ahead of his responsibilities and debatably ignores the Captain’s ability to put his assignment first even when he has lost his inhibitions (as seen in the 1967 “Star Trek” television episode “The Naked Time”). Indeed, it is actually hard not to cheer when, towards the end of this comic, ‘Klingon-Kirk’ unexpectedly interrupts his green-hued counterpart’s “private moment” by setting his leaves ablaze with a lighter, and subsequently causes the burning “hero for the ages" to explode when he startlingly comes into contact with the gaseous Montgomery Scott.

The regular cover art of "STAR TREK: BOLDLY GO" No. 16 by Angel Hernandez