by Kevin Gaussoin, Editor-in-Chief

Do you remember Star Trek: The Next Generation S01E24, “Conspiracy”? You know, it’s that one where Picard and Riker discover that some alien insects are taking over the minds and bodies of high-ranking Starfleet officials and end up blowing the leader to gory bits? Those bugs are back and the crew of the Defiant (Spock, Worf, Ro Laren, Hugh, Sela, B’Elanna, and more) are gonna put a stop to this latest infestation. 

Official Description:
It’s a good day to die! Left with no other choice, the crew of the Defiant assists Hugh in assimilating B’Elanna in hopes of reclaiming control over the parasite embedded in her brain stem. But it’s a race against time and the undead as hordes of infected Starbase crew bang on the hangar doors, demanding Worf and his crew surrender and become one with the parasitic Collective!

Creative Team:
Writer: Christopher Cantwell
Artist: Ángel Unzueta
Colorist: Marissa Louise
Letterer: Clayton Cowles

Whether it’s Christopher Cantwell, Mike Chen, or the juggernaut duo of Jackson Lanzing and Colin Kelly, Star Trek comics today are better than ever, and we’ve read a ton of great Trek comics over the decades. I don’t know the details of what rules the writers of previous generations were given by Paramount via their editors, but clearly today we are in a beautiful new era of “go ahead and use whatever characters from whatever Trek you want!” And now we are continuing to reap the benefits. Star Trek: Defiant contains characters and elements from each of the first four live action Star Trek shows. This was a risk and could have turned out as a big fan-fic mess, but no. It’s glorious. 

So here we are, 15 episodes, I mean issues, into the latest Trek crossover with Star Trek: Defiant and the action has heated up! People are injecting Ketracel Red (not white, they aren’t stupid Jem’Hadar) to do battle with… Well, that’s a surprise for when you read the issue. Suffice it to say, even though I loved the action scenes, I may have loved the emails between B’Elanna and Tom even more. Cantwell definitely can do well, particularly when it comes to writing comics. Look, someone had to write it. We have all been thinking it this whole time. 

As for Defiant’s art, Unzueta has what I’m looking for in a Star Trek artist: The ability to draw the characters to look like the characters from the show. You all know by now that I want JK Woodward to draw every Star Trek comic for all time, but I acknowledge that that’s just not reasonable, especially if we want multiple titles each month, which of course we do. So I like the accuracy of the character depiction, but I have to admit that there were a few panels that didn’t seem finished. Motion lines in one and weirdly outlined floor slime in another kinda took me out of the action. It may have been a collaboration problem between the artist and the color artist. I still loved this issue and am eager to read the next one. 

And the next one is going to be an epic battle. See you there. Qapla’!

Rating:
ComicsOnline gives Star Trek Defiant #15 4.5/5 good days to die.

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