Star Trek: The Mirror War #4 - IDW Publishing

STAR TREK: THE MIRROR WAR No. 4, February 2022

Opening with a delightful ‘nod’ to the classic San Francisco-based car chase which actor Steve McQueen made so famous during the 1968 thriller movie “Bullitt”, and then cramming its twenty-page long narrative with all sorts of science-fiction shenanigans, there can surely be little argument that Scott and David Tipton’s storyline for Issue Four of “Star Trek: The Mirror War” is an exciting tour-de-force set deep within the franchise's alternative twenty-fourth century time line. Indeed, fans of the fictional parallel universe will find plenty of familiar plot-points with which to enjoy this comic, such as the excruciating agony booth, the seemingly never-ending treacherous nature of the Terran Empire, Regent Worf angrily blazing away at the I.S.S. Enterprise given half the chance, and a vital ‘guest appearance’ by Benjamin Sisko and his crew from Terok Nor; “I bet we could swoop in there and do some pretty good damage to the engines of one of them and then warp out before they even notice.”

Admittedly, some of the actual ‘glue’ sticking all these pulse-pounding set-pieces together isn’t quite as convincing as perhaps this book’s American authors would have liked, with a prime example being the Klingon flagship fortuitously detecting that its galaxy-class prey had unwittingly dropped out of warp despite its helmsman previously having no idea just where in the Alpha/Beta Quadrant their human-filled target actually was. Of course, the leader of the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance is ruthlessly determined to thwart Jean-Luc Picard’s plans, and is evidently utilising every probe at his command to ascertain the Enterprise’s location. But so happy a happenstance does seem a little contrived when a reader considers that their ship systems have spotted a single vessel momentarily stopping in the vastness of space, and then subsequently reached it in the blink of an eye so as to almost blast them to pieces…

Resultantly, Trekkies would probably be best advised to engage a modest ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ for this publication, and simply let Gavin Smith’s dynamic pencilling carry them through some of its more manufactured moments. In fact, this particular comic is debatably worth its cover price alone for some of the great action depicted by the Joe Kubert School graduate (and wonderfully coloured by Charlie Kirchoff), such as the aforementioned high speed race through the streets of Golden Gate City, the scaled up Negh'Var warship’s blistering attack upon the I.S.S. Enterprise, and the galaxy-class starship’s own, utterly merciless orbital bombardment of the semi-helpless planet Faundori.

Writers: Scott & David Tipton, Artist: Gavin Smith, and Colorist: Charlie Kirchoff