878. You're Dead JimPUBLICATION: Star Trek #53, DC Comics, August 1988
CREATORS: Peter David (writer), Tom Sutton and Ricardo Villagran (artists)
STARDATE: 9000.8 (follows the last issue)
PLOT: Spock telepathically feels Kirk dying from a stab wound in time to get him to sickbay. While the crew entertain memories of their younger days with Kirk, he is called to the great beyond by dead loved ones. Spock meld with him and brings him back to the world of the living. He names his attacker as Bearclaw...
CONTINUITY: In his dying visions, Kirk sees David Marcus, his brother Sam, Christopher Pike. Uhura remembers a time when Kirk talked her out of leaving Starfleet, mirroring Martin Luther King's own talk with Nichelle Nichols.
DIVERGENCES: Scotty misidentifies the chamber Spock died in (it was on a different ship, after all).
PANEL OF THE DAY - So current medicine has it all wrong.
REVIEW: Ok, Peter David likes his little jokes and puns a bit too much ("Pike." "What about Captain Pike?" "No, I mean Bearclaw's head on a pike." is one pretty terrible set-up), but he still delivers some great character moments. Not so much Kirk and Scotty's drunken shore leave, but the bit in Uhura's quarters, Spock's sensing Kirk's death, and Kirk fighting to the last moment... all excellent. Once again, hallucinatory imagery is used, but in this context they work, as does the poem used as narration in the opening pages. David is in danger of overusing the device after Dante's Inferno however.
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