Star Trek 1268: Star TreX

1268. Star TreX

PUBLICATION: Star Trek - X-Men #1, Marvel Comics, December 1996

CREATORS: Scott Lobdell (writer), Marc Silvestri and studio (artists)

STARDATE: 4740.5 (after Metamorphosis)

PLOT: The X-Men pursue the Shi'ar Deathbird through a psionic rift and come out at planet Delta Vega, which the USS Enterprise is investigating. Their ship destroyed. the mutants board the Enterprise and are soon discovered. They join forces with the Enterprise crew to defeat the Shi'ar and Proteus, a powerful mutant that has bonded with Gary Mitchell's corpse and plans to rule and destroy both teams' universes. While Spock and Bishop attempt to close the psionic rift, down on the planet, the two sides clash. Eventually, Kirk convinces Gary to give up the ghost, and Spock starts to close the rift, robbing Proteus of his power. The landing party and the X-Men fire on Proteus together and destroy him. Deathbird surrenders and the Shi'ar and X-Men leave through the collapsing rift.

CONTINUITY: The ship has returned to Delta Vega where Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Dehner are buried (Where No Man Has Gone Before). Beast misidentifies the Enterprise as Constellation class.

DIVERGENCES: Obviously, the X-Men, Proteus, the Shi'ar, Gladiator and Imperial Guard belong to an entirely different fictional universe. Spock seems to know what Homo Superior are, but it's then revealed they come from a different universe.

PANEL OF THE DAY - More alike than they are different
REVIEW: Crossing over Star Trek and the X-Men is a pretty crazy idea, and it suffers from everything the X-Men suffered from in the mid-90s. First of all, and this may be a matter of taste, but the line-up is terrible. Gambit (who does nothing by the way), Bishop, Wolverine's bone claws... Marc Silvestri is a good artist, but he has a dozen assistants completing the issue for him, with a corresponding lack of coherence to the art, and even narrative flow problems. The issue is filled with gratuitous splash pages and has too much plot for its own good, with Deathbird and the Imperial Guard showing up and then giving up with no apparent motivation. Oh, and it's called "Star TreX". Yes, there's an interesting notion in that Gary Mitchell was a "mutant", and writer Scott Lobdell adds fun comedic touches throughout, but the two universes just don't mesh very well. It's not so much the Enterprise crew reacting to a superhuman punching the ship. That's the kind of genre friction that's actually fun. The problem is the art, quite frankly. There is no attempt to humanize the superheroes' anatomies to bring them more in line with the human proportions of the Enterprise crew, and so they never seem to occupy the same space. Either the X-Men are parodies of the human form, or the Enterprise crew are terribly out of shape. It looks ridiculous. But of course, the plot is rubbish as well. We're left with a few cute set pieces, like Kirk hitting on Jean Gray or the teams sharing a moment of inspiration, but that's the extent of it.