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• Price: $3.99
• Rated: 9+
• Pages: 34
• On Sale: July 18, 2018
• Writers: Scott Tipton & David Tipton
• Artist: Tony Shasteen
• Colorist: JD Mettler
• Letterer: Neil Uyetake
• Publisher: IDW

From the Publisher – On the heels of the blockbuster THROUGH THE MIRROR miniseries comes a brand-new NEXT GENERATION series, featuring untold tales of Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D! Following their clash with their villainous doubles from the Mirror Universe, the Enterprise crew returns to business as usual, little realizing the serpent in their midst—one of their own has been replaced! What does Mirror Barclay want, and what’s to become of his Prime-universe counterpart?!

Our We Talk Comics WeView – I’ll confess a life long love of Star Trek and most of it’s successor series and, like most Trekkers who are also comic geeks, I have a very large library of Star Trek comics (and by that I mean all of them). The Star Trek license has been both used and abused with eclectic tales that range from barely readable to positively brilliant. In particular, it appears writers are drawn to the “Mirror Universe” concepts first introduced in the 1967 episode “Mirror, Mirror” penned by sci-fi scribe Jerome Bixby. The “Mirror Universe”  is a parallel universe filled with evil doppelgangers of our beloved Enterprise crew, and would be revisited in numerous novels and comics as well as the various Star Trek spin-off television series. So far five episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a two part Star Trek: Enterprise and four episodes of Star Trek: Discovery have taken fans back to the “Mirror Universe” and now, “Terra Incognita” is the latest comic to pull on the Bixby tale for inspiration.

“Terra Incognita” is the third in a trilogy of Mirror Universe tales that have been doing well for IDW. Star Trek: The Next Generation – Mirror Broken, first introduced the “Mirror Universe” version of the U.S.S. Enterprise D crew to comics. It was followed up by Star Trek: The Next Generation – Through The Mirror, and this time pitted Picard and crew against their evil twins. Now in Star Trek: The Next Generation – Terra Incognita, the “Mirror Universe” version of Lt. Reginald Barkley (played in the series by brilliant recurring guest star Dwight Shultz) was left behind at the end of the last series and immediately replaces his duplicate to attempt to go unnoticed.

Scott and David Tipton are no strangers to the Star Trek license. They have penned several series and show a great grasp of the characters and universe. The format of the series is very clever. The arc of Mirror-Barkley is the “through line” but each issue will play out as a “done-in-one” mimicking the episodic nature of the series. The plot is solid, and the pacing is pitch perfect. The characters “sound” like their television counterparts. The Tiptons show their knowledge of the series by working in obscure characters (Sonya Gomez and Capt. DeSoto). Exposition is dispatched quickly and efficiently, so much so that it’s very reader friendly to those who might not have read the two previous series. This issue feels like of an episode of the television series. In fact, it plays out almost too much like an episode. The best aspect of a novel or comic tie in is that the writers are not limited by a budget and this issue could have, without any changes, been an episode, and a very budget conscious one at that. However, I’ll certainly take something too much like an episode over a story that has flames coming out of the Enterprise nacelles, Spock exclaiming “Shades of Pluto” or Capt. “Kurt” wearing a red uniform. The only real issue I have with the writing is that I don’t buy that Mirror-Barkley would keep the real Barkley tied up instead of just killing him. The real reason is that the story is set sometime after the season three episode “Ménage à Troi” and before season four’s “Final Mission” and the character would continue to appear several more times in the franchise after those episodes (and I’m not sure how popular killing the character would be with the licensing people at CBS/Paramount). It’s the only visibly loose thread on an otherwise flawless tapestry and it might be their best Trek work to date.

Tony Shasteen also has quite a bit of experience zipping through the final frontier and it shows. The likenesses are dead on (always important to fans with a tie-in book). The backgrounds look like the television sets. Even the scenes in the U.S.S. Hood’s engine room looks like the movie era sets, which completely works since the ship is an Excelsior class vessel originating from that era. Tony keeps the “camera” moving with multiple angles to keep the more dialogue heavy scenes from getting stale. While I have always liked Shasteen’s Trek work, at times in the past it did look too obviously photo referenced which can be distracting. This time around, he found the perfect balance and it might be some of his best work on the property to date. 2005 Eisner nominee J.D. Mettler is a great colorist to pair with Shasteen. The colors are not only screen accurate throughout, but create great moods, especially the cool and under lit sequences in Ten Forward and the big “red alert” climax sequence in engineering. I wish all the visuals on the Star Trek properties looked as good as this issue did.

There have been hundreds of Star Trek comics printed in the last half century, many good and many bad. This issue is a great start and if it plays out as well as the premier issue, it will definitely be remembered as one of the better comic book stories.

Rating – Very Fine/Near Mint (VF/NM) or 9.0/10

Review by Brett Harris

Love the review? Hate the review? Disagree with me? I’m happy to talk comics on twitter @BrettTHarris

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