Star Trek: Year Five #18

Star Trek: Year Five #18 - "On the Death 

of A Friend"

Publisher: IDW

Writer: Jim McCann

Artist: Angel Hernandez

Colorist: Fran Gamboa

Letterer: Neil Uyetake

Reviewer: Michael Nunneley

Stardate 7277.8 - The Federation Elections are still pretty heavy on everyone's minds as the Enterprise heads back to Earth. Kirk in particular is heading back to not just home, but to Ithaca & his new position as Admiral. But on their way back through Alpha Centauri they get diverted by a distress call from Proxima Centauri - which leads them to Alpha Centauri City & a global pandemic. But something's not quite right and something sinister seems to be afoot. As if that were not enough, McCoy have been noticing that there is something a little off with Spock - like he could go off any minute since he squashed Koraxi's head in a door. McCoy is suspicious as hell and it's causing some infighting between Spock & McCoy, but it'll have to be put aside as they deal with the virus and try to determine what exactly happened.

Right off the bat McCann drew me in with his story. I was engulfed by the 2nd page. This is good writing. This is how it's done. Not only is the writing leading and instantly captivating I can really hear the voices of the characters as I'm reading it which really gives this book a TOS/original-crew films feel to it, which is awesome. However, I was confused by a portion of the story - what planet they were going to. First there in the Alpha Centauri system, then they get a distress call from Proxima Centauri which turns out to be from Alpha Centauri City on Alpha Centauri. But then it twists again by saying it's Proxima Centaurians that are dying on Alpha Centauri. This confused the hell out of me so I reread it twice and did some research to understand what happened. I looked it up and according to memory-beta "The Federation worlds [in the Alpha Centauri system] are sometimes also referred to simply as Alpha Centauri. So I figured that they said the signal was from Proxima because the planet was near that 3rd star in the system & that make them Proxima Centaurians, but their planet was generically referred to as Alpha Centauri. Maybe you knew that and bonus points to you if you did. But I had to figure that out before I could continue. However that was the only issue I had with the story. It was just my ignorance on the topic that made it confusing.

Hernandez didn't do the scratchy, unpolished thing with the Enterprise like he did with Voyager  - in fact the Enterprise looks awesome in this issue. That made me very happy - nice and clean with sharp lines. But that wasn't all I want to give Hernandez credit for in this issue. I swear he is the master of the close up. When combined with Gamboa's great dimensional & brilliantly lit colors you could swear your looking right at the actors who played these roles. I brought this up in a previous review, but the consistency, even with different colorists, is worth mentioning. Doing a great likeness is not an easy skill to master and I have to give credit where it's due - you rock Hernandez! I also like the little extras he occasionally throws into the background of the panels like the plaque on the wall in the bridge of the Enterprise. Those little details make my trekkie heart get all tingley.

Uyetake did his usual good job - great placement, easy to read - with the exception of a pretty big mistake in the spelling of Centauri - he accidently spelled it "Cantarui" which threw me off when I read it correctly the next time the city was mentioned as I thought he did it right the first time.

This was a great issue. It sucked me in and held me close, aside from the bit of research I needed to do to understand what planet they were going to. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, hey, I learned something else about Star Trek and that's always awesome. I definitely recommend this book to any Trekkie reading this review and hopefully it will be a bit smoother of a read for you since you won't have to break in the middle to look stuff up. Good story, good writing and that great Star Trek feel. What else could you want in a Star Trek comic?

Score: 4.75/5