COMIC REVIEW: STAR TREK NERO TPB (IDW)

Taking place after IDW's Countdown series and concurrent with last year's Star Trek feature film reboot, Star Trek: Nero tells the story of the years between the arrival of the Romulan villain Nero's arrival in the "alternate" Star Trek universe and his reemergence leading up to the destruction of the planet Vulcan. It includes information from the deleted scenes that were on the Star Trek DVD and even features some familiar locations and characters. The story is from Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the writers of the movie and answers a lot of questions about Nero and his motivations.




Nero picks up after the destruction of of the USS Kelvin early in the movie. Nero and crew of the Narada are confronted with a Klingon boarding party and eventually captured and sent to Rura Pentha, the Klingon Penal colony featured in Star Trek VI and Star Trek: Enterprise. I give credit to the artists for outfitting the Klingons with period-appropriate TOS style costumes and hair (although they retained the forehead ridges of TNG era). The crew of the Narada spends the next twenty years rotting in the prison colony only to escape with assistance from their semi-sentient ship, which had previously been outfitted with Borg technology. The ship takes them deep into unknown space were it meets with none other than V'Ger from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This is a pretty cool nod to an element of Trek that is often forgotten. V'Ger assists Nero in his seach for Spock. The old Vulcan is captured by Nero and sent to Delta Vega to witness the destruction of Vulcan as a retaliation for his perceived role in the destruction of Romulus in the prime universe.

While Nero is an adequate supplement to to the new movie and helps to flesh out Nero's character, I felt like it spends too much time arranging its pieces so that it will have everything in place for the events of the movie as opposed to telling it's own compelling story. It feels more like a graphic novel of deleted scenes than anything else. That's not a bad thing as a companion to the movie but it is not very successful on its own terms.

Patrick Garone
Senior Reviewer