Going Full Circle With A God-Like Shuffle: Reviewing ‘Star Trek’ #6

A pissed-off injured God that became a city is barreling toward Earth with malicious intent. Only the Theseus can stop it. Just another typical day really for many members of Benjamin Sisko’s crew tasked with the mission of saving the universe’s God-like beings from the Klingon Emperor.

While the movies are a mostly different beast, Star Trek at its core was mostly not a show about action or brute force saving the day. There are occasions, more so as the series aged and changed, where the captains and crews had to rely on violence more than diplomacy because their lives or the lives of so many others were in the balance. Most of the time though the goal of Starfleet captains and their crews is to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go and to forge connections and use diplomacy. Saving the day with words/compassion/emotion is one of the truest ways to showcase what Starfleet and the future is supposed to be.

There is plenty of action in this first arc of the new ongoing flagship Star Trek comic book but Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly 100% understand and love the franchise that they are now contributing to as writers. A vast majority of Ben Sisko’s story on Deep Space Nine revolved around a father/son story and the two of them forging, growing, and healing their relationship over time. Here that same relationship and Sisko’s ability to be raw and true with his emotions including how he feels he failed his son is what saves the day. That’s some Star Trek stuff right there, no doubt about it.

Every single bit of this issue really shows how much they not only know these characters, but how they can bring out the most from them emotionally and developmentally, finding ways to bounce these characters from various series who never met before off each other perfectly. If I wasn’t a lifelong fan of Trek I would swear that these characters had to have crossed paths quite often from how smoothly things are running, including the parts that have run less smoothly as the characters worked their way up to this moment of becoming an actual functional crew together.

Beverly Crusher plays a huge role here in pushing Sisko and making him better, and him realizing that and accepting it and welcoming it at the same time by asking her to be his 2^nd officer so that she can keep pushing him that way is fantastic. Some shades of the Sisko/Kira relationship where they had respect and admiration for one another but could be frank and honest with each other as Kira helped push Sisko where he needed to be at times.

Overall this first story arc has been so solid and delivered so much in just these six issues. Rather than dragging out the killer of the Gods reveal they dropped obvious crumbs before our faces and then swiftly dropped the reveal, building up a whole cast of known and unknown characters to a solid point not often seen of such a large cast so soon into a series (comics or otherwise), dropped tons of threads for stories to come, and wrapped up one part of the story while leaving the overall mission at hand still in play. There was no simple, “we killed Kahless and saved the day,” sort of thing, instead there are references to the fact that their foe is the sitting Emperor of a people they are allies with making it very difficult to complete their mission, but by golly, they’re gonna still give it the old college try.

Lastly that Ben Sisko speech? Chef kiss moment right there, no notes, perfection. Also that last page reveal of the ‘home’ they are returning to…as soon as I saw that shot of DS9 and the Theseus you better believe the DS9 theme song began blaring in my head (helped by the fact that I’m currently two seasons into a rewatch of the show).

Our return to DS9 to wrap up the first arc isn’t the only way this final issue of the story arc takes us full circle back to where things began in the first issue. While he’s done work on some other issues of the arc with other artists, this issue sees the full issue return of Ramon Rosanas as the sole artist. It’s a great way to wrap things up, because that’s where it all began and that’s where we should see the first arc close out.

Every artist that has been part of this arc so far has done fantastic work and really captured the feeling of these characters and Star Trek as a whole. It’s great though to see Rosanas pick up the baton and bring that energy from the first utterly amazing issue and take it even further this time.

Just like that first time through Rosanas still hits that sweet spot of creating characters that look very recognizable to the versions we saw on the screen but are also fully their own thing because they are not just mirrors of real-life actors. Little differences and visual flairs are added to give them their own life in this different medium while packing them full of all that emotion and personality that is bursting out on every single page.

Rosanas has such a dynamic style that creates a visual feast, giving us tons of depth and detail all over the place while structuring scenes in a way that allows the weight of the moment to really permeate. We’re watching a tense moment as the God City is headed for Earth and the separated parts of the crew are doing what they can to try and stop it, and the ay that Rosanas chooses to layout the panels really plays into that tense feeling, making sure we see every moment with the characters in each spot rather than doing a thing where we spend a few pages in one spot and switch. Even shifting where the panels are on the page and their shape and size does something to really create a totally different feeling than just always stacking them at the same size or even going for a more standard style.

Truly the way that Rosanas brings these things to life just reminds one of just how amazing and vast Star Trek has been and can be visually.

Lee Loughridge has been here all along bringing a vast array of colors to the page and they still are doing so much with this issue. While Rosanas brings the visual depth and forms to the page in such a beautiful way, it’s Loughridge that helps make it pop even more because of those bright, vivid, shadowy, powerful colors that remind us how gorgeous things can be. Each of the spaces has a life of its own because they employ different color styles with some spaces having more gray (metallic) tones coming into play compared to warmer colors and all pages being bathed in pinks, greens, blues, purples, and other colors.

For every panel where the colors are taking the lead, there are others where Loughridge knows to pull back on them to allow the moment to have a different feel. For example, the shots on the Theseus are way more vivid in the colors that dominate, compared to the scenes on T’Kon where colors are more washed out but then panels where Sisko connects to his waning God-like powers and T’Kon are more middle of the road normal but also bright.

So many of these issues are giving Clayton Cowles so many juicy things to do letter-wise beyond just captions, dialogue, and SFX. We see a lot of great panels/pages where the dialogue is out of boxes and bubbles and living in the same space as the characters, or that great full-page shot of T’Kon where the words are just all over the God City huge and in your face but also fading and falling to the background as the voice is overwhelming to Sisko. Alongside that bigger stuff, Cowles still nails it with the other lettering as the character’s personality and energy are clear in their words, it all flows around the page perfectly.

Everything about this title has just been hitting with each issue and the avenues that are open for what comes next are so great.

Star Trek #6 is now available from IDW Publishing.