1181. Bonds of Honor / Unhappy TrailsPUBLICATION: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Worf Special #1, Malibu Comics, December 1995
CREATORS: Dan Mishkin / Moose Baumann (writers), Steve Erwin, John Montgomery and Scott Reed / Rob Davis and Aubrey Bradford (artists)
STARDATE: Unknown (between The Way of the Warrior and Hippocratic Oath)
PLOT: In Bonds of Honor, Worf leaves a station just as one of its sections explodes, and Worf is accused. His runabout is soon attacked by the real culprits, aliens working for an unknown party. Worf is about to wring the truth from them when a Klingon bird-of-prey shows up and seemingly destroys the aliens and beams Worf aboard. It is an old friend who wants Worf to come over to the Empire. Worf deduces that this Klingon was behind the attack and with the help of a dissimulated Odo, defeats the Klingons and restores his reputation. In Unhappy Trails, Dax and Kira join in Worf's Ancient West holoprogram. Kira is bored at first, but enjoys saving Worf's neck with her fists, by which point Worf isn't enjoying himself much anymore.
CONTINUITY: Admiral Nechayev appears in Bonds of Honor, which mostly deals with the fallout from The Way of the Warrior. Unhappy Trails features Alexander's Ancient West holoprogram (A Fistful of Datas).
DIVERGENCES: Bonds of Honor refers to friends and adventures apparently has we've never heard of.
PANEL OF THE DAY - "This is silly."
REVIEW: A couple of good, if not perfect, stories featuring Worf. Bonds of Honor has nice alien designs and very well drawn action, both ship-to-ship and personal combat. Worf does very well as both a fighter and a detective. The plot isn't air-tight though, with the culprits basically getting away with it, and the Federation perhaps jumping to conclusions too quickly. Unhappy Trails is a comic piece of fluff, but a fun one for all three principals. In fact, it could have gone on longer without my griping about it. That's something that's true of both, actually, as Bonds of Honor could have been fleshed out more.And so ends Malibu's DS9 comics. Next up, Marvel picks up the torch again. Star Trek Unlimited, with both TOS and DS9 stories, will be the focus of our next reviews.
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