There are very few staples of Star Trek that have lasted as long as the red shirts, bona fide “security” for Federation ships, but also the cannon fodder that gets wiped out first. Now IDW is publishing a comic all about them on a mission where they’re all red shirts, but can one rise to the top and become the hero of this story? Judging by the number of deaths in the first issue, maybe nobody comes out alive!
Star Trek: Red Shirts #2 opens with a dossier on all the main characters, detailing their age, gender, and a few key details. The first page features most of the characters in this issue, while the second page shows two dead with X’s on their face. A solid data page if I ever saw one, as it suggests more details are coming.
From there, the issue picks up where we left off. The crew needs to acquire data before pirates (or some threat) get it, and a few red shirts are already dead. Lt. Webster Cromarty and Lt. Midge DeMatrio discuss their situation, and writer Christopher Cantwell provides us with plenty of character development through their dialogue. The character shines through quite nicely throughout the issue, from Ensign Chip Miller and the torturous mission that lost all of his crew, to the alien Lt. Zha’Kree, who is all testosterone. They may be red shirts, but Cantwell makes you feel for their humanity and legacy.
The trauma a red shirt goes through is pretty awful.
Credit: IDW
After some interpersonal team-building, the issue sets the team out to find answers, fully aware that there are threats in the jungle. Threats of a humanoid kind, threats of the alien kind, and threats of the fauna kind. Cantwell and artist Megan Levens don’t let up on the violent deaths, with everyone taken seriously, yet showing how quickly a red shirt can get taken off the board.
The final chunk of pages leans into the fast-thinking Star Trek we know and love, with the red shirts unaware of who is messing with them, but not letting up. They can’t let their fellow red shirts die for nothing.
The art throughout is good, although much of this issue takes place at night, resulting in a muddy black and green hue that pervades everything. Levens’ art has a somewhat simple style, except for its facial expressions, which sometimes border on a middle-grade reader comic. Attention to detail when it comes to gore and the various deaths is good, however.
Star Trek: Red Shirts #2 continues to lean into its darkly funny premise with surprising heart, offering readers both gruesome red shirt demises and a genuine sense of who these characters are beyond their uniforms. While the art’s muted color palette and tonal shifts don’t always mesh, the issue succeeds at making you care about Starfleet’s most expendable crew members.
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