1034. Honor Bound!PUBLICATION: Star Trek: The Next Generation #29, DC Comics, March 1992
CREATORS: Kevin Ryan (writer), Carlos Garzon (artist)
STARDATE: Unknown (follows issue 24)
PLOT: Running from the Shardak - a martial honor-bound race of empaths - Picard's old, retired friend, Anson Peters, asks to come aboard with his son. The latter boy becomes fast friends with Wesley, and Picard and Anson reminisce about old times. When the Shardak fleet catches up to the Enterprise, the aliens ask for the life of Peters' son in payment for Anson's accidental killing of one of their sons. Because they can tell if Picard is lying, Data hatches a plan and asks his captain to trust him. They send the boy over, but Wesley beams aboard his shuttle. The Shardak blow it out of the sky, but Wesley is beamed back in time. Turns out Data had put a hologram aboard the shuttle to fool the Shardak's primitive sensors.
CONTINUITY: None.
DIVERGENCES: They have Anson present at the Nausicaan attack that took Picard's heart, something contradicted in Tapestry. The blond on the cover is a brunette in the story itself.
PANEL OF THE DAY - Promises all the excitment actually delivered.
REVIEW: Oh boy, this is a fill-in issue and it shows. Badly. Ryan's story features Klingon wannabes who turn out to have (surprise twist!) Betazoid powers. Wesley, for those parts of the story where he acts like himself (any part where he's not making out with girls), seems committed to flying through the comic's plot holes. What did he think he could do by beaming aboard the shuttle except get his ass blown up? If he was at a transporter, why not beam his friend back to the Enterprise (thereby noticing he wasn't really aboard)? And a hologram? Really? How does that work? The ship could have run away, but then (another twist!) the Shardak would just kill themselves over the loss of honor. Oh ok. Worse still is that the art doesn't tell it well. There's no suspense to the end sequence since you're not even sure what's happening. You just get told. Clearly a rush job where everyone looks like a stiff, pin-headed manequin, the girls being especially unattractive. Even the cover features tracings from the story, arranged in an awkward collage. I don't dislike the Shardak ship designs, but that's about it.
Comments