Star Trek Omnibus Volume 2: Early Voyages

Star Trek Omnibus Volume 2: Early Voyages
Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton, Patrick Zircher, Michael Collins, Greg Adams, et. al.
Collection published by IDW in 2009

This graphic novel contains the entire run of the Star Trek Early Voyages comic book, originally released in 1997-1998. I previously looked at a couple of loose issues in this post: Star Trek Comics: the 90's.

I really enjoyed the majority of these issues, and I'm glad to have the series in this format. I do have a few quibbles, though.

The reproduction of the art was uneven. Sometimes the page art went all the way to the edge, sometimes there was a white border. Many of the issues were bright and gorgeous, but for some the art had an odd grainy quality. My only explanation for this is that perhaps for some of the issues they no longer had the original art, and so had to reproduce it from a lower quality copy.

The stories were strong and interesting, maintaining a old-school Star Trek feel while playing with the freedom of the format and the times. Early Voyages is based on the original Trek pilot, featuring a more contemplative Captain, Pike, who notably had a female first officer. This pilot was turned down by the networks, but no editor-producer types would still object to strong female crew members by 1997. The writers also use the flexibility of the comic format to add in more non-human crew members and antagonists.

It's a fun volume to read through: there are renegade Vulcans, a re-telling of “The Cage”, new species to discover, and even time travel into an alternate future. The only other real downside is that the series was canceled in the middle of the most interesting plot, so you never get the end of the story.

This has great moments, but enough shaky ones as well that I'll have to give it:

3 Stars – A Good Book