by Matt Sernaker, Editor-In-Chief

No one wants to be a “red shirt”. The expendable character trope made it into the pop culture zeitgeist, with these tragic and easily forgotten characters living forever in infamy… Thanks to the creative minds at IDW Publishing, readers will get to explore a unique take on these heroes in the new mini-series: Star Trek: Red Shirts.

Official Synopsis:
The start of an all-new heartrending Star Trek five-issue miniseries by writer Christopher Cantwell (Star Trek: Defiant) and artist Megan Levens (Star Trek), featuring Starfleet’s most intrepid and doomed crewmembers: red shirts. Now, finally, they get their own story.

Led by an experienced officer embedded on the snow-ridden planet Arkonia 89, the crew of the U.S.S. Warren has a small window in which to pin down spies seeking to steal classified secrets and keep Starfleet data out of their nefarious hands. They face threats not only from their faceless enemies but from the brutalizing elements and wildlife of a planet far from home. The red shirts’ lives and Starfleet’s sanctity are on the line… and no one is safe.

When it comes to IDW Publishing’s take on the Star Trek Universe, we’ve learned to expect the unexpected. The Trek books have been nothing but consistent over the last few years, and Christopher Cantwell’s incredible storytelling in Star Trek: Defiant is a case in point. With the current iteration of IDW’s Trek saga coming to an end, it’s time to embrace something new, and Red Shirts is a wonderful place to start. The covers alone are worth the price of admission, but the first chapter of Red Shirts demonstrates a clear opportunity to branch out and explore new corners of the Trek Universe, boldly taking us where we’ve never gone before…

Star Trek: Red-Shirts is a fresh addition to the world of Trek, filled with wild concepts and interesting (yet expendable) new characters. There are some clear favorite characters, but I wouldn’t get too attached as history has a habit of repeating itself…

ComicsOnline gives Star Trek: Red Shirts #1 – 4.5 out of 5 fun ways to lean into a trope.

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