Star Trek: Red Shirts #1 – Beam Us Up, But Make It Disposable

About Star Trek: Red Shirts #1

Writer: Christopher Cantwell

Artist: Megan Levens

Colorist: Charlie Kirchoff

Letterer: Jodie Troutman

Publisher: IDW Publishing

Star Trek: Red Shirts #1 Review

The very notion that a serious comic book event could be structured around the very joke that has existed in the Trekkie zeitgeist for decades intrigued the absolute hell out of me when IDW’s announcement first went up. Star Trek: Red Shirts #1 is built on the idea that all Federation Security personnel are living on borrowed time the moment they enlist. Thankfully, Cantwell’s understanding of Star Trek: TOS goes beyond casual viewer happening upon another comic book writing job. Instead, within the first few pages, a fucking Mugato makes an appearance and legendary character, Commodore Decker, gives the audience surrogate, Ensign Miller, his blessing. Proving to the reader that Christopher Cantwell is the right person for the job — at least for now.

Miller, along with a group of well-trained Red Shirts are recruited by Lt. DeMatrio to infiltrate a planet rumoured to be housing spies. A planet already monitored by the oldest red shirt in the history of Starfleet, Lt. Cromarty, who lives and works on a monitoring station. So the question burrowing into your mind, dear reader, is who the hell could these spies be?

What follows is a quick debriefing session by DeMatrio and an insane descent onto the planet’s surface as each of the Red Shirts take their place in re-fitted torpedoes as they decend upon the planet’s surface under the guise of the USS Warren firing them. They’re of course beamed direct from inside the torpedoes by Cromarty before they crash into the planet. But something screws up and two of them die in the process. A grim reminder this mission isn’t an errand of mercy.

With the survivors alive and well on the surface, the group of red shirts begin to question just who in the red alert hell could be the spy? Reasonable questions which give rise to an impromptu decloak of a Romulan Bird of Prey. Cue the credits.

Welcome to the final frontier… for everyone except the main cast. Red Shirts #1 doesn’t just rip the bandage off Starfleet’s most expendable employees — it gleefully pours salt in the wound, flips off the camera, and explodes in a shower of photon torpedoes and gallows humour.

It’s an interesting start to a comic book event which is basically Star Trek: Suicide Squad. Although the biggest letdown is in the art department. It’s overly simplistic, lacks the required detail for a science fiction tale and makes me question is Megan Levens really up to the task? Let’s see how the series develops but for now it’s profusely disappointing. The concept of Red Shirts far outweighs its execution.

At least the cover looks good!

Rating: 6/10.