1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Star Trek graphic novel ever!!!, December 29, 2006
This review is from: Star Trek: Debt of Honor (Comic)
A story set all through the James T. Kirk era. The art is wonderful; the characters are so fleshed out, they jump out of the book. Kirk's female Romulan counterpart kicks butt. Also, you get an alliance of convenience (that includes Klingons) turn into something more. By the way it is good to see Gillian (fron ST IV) doing so great in the 23rd century. If you are a ST fan, or just love good space opera, get this one.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Debt of Honor...price of trying too hard !, September 8, 2006
This review is from: Star Trek: Debt of Honor (Comic)
Striving to tell the ultimate STAR TREK adventure, DEBT OF HONOR delivers a major threat that has been building throughout the galaxy during the career of James T. Kirk, giving us reason to revisit many various "select points of interest" from the 1960's original and feature film series. It is truly an epic attempt to engulf the whole of Trek as it stood back in 1992. Regardless of the desire to epically please, this Trek outing sadly falls short of the mark. I have to give it an "A" in the effort category though!
The most glaring problem, simply put, is the writing itself. Author Chris Claremont (of XMEN fame) seems unable to weigh the difference between interesting characterizations and force-fed monologues. He leaves little room for the reader to actually discover for themselves any level of motivation for a character, rather choosing to spoon-feed us in long streams of self-analysis that leaves no detail uncovered. That would be great in a biography, but it annoys as a story telling tool. The choice to verbalize every last nuance of personality, thought, and motivation as long, drawn out monologues laid the groundwork for a big disappointment after only a few pages of reading.
Overuse of this psycho-analytical technique isn't the only problem here. The dialogue between main characters like McCoy and Spock was rife with a desire to recapture the spark that made their banter so enjoyable on screen. Again, failure ensues. Try as he may, Claremont is simply too long-winded with his need to deliver unnecessary information, preventing these very important conversations from flowing naturally. In addition, his attempt to actually write in a style that reflects character accents makes some of the text hard to read and indecipherable. When dealing with characters like Scotty or McCoy, I think it best to focus on what needs to be said, for the reader's mind will hear the proper voice and accents. Claremont clearly enjoys Trek and it's characters, but he simply doesn't have the knack for capturing their essence when creating dialogue.
The plot manages to intrigue as it ties many different time periods together, spanning the early years of Kirk as reflected in the original series, including the era of THE MOTION PICTURE, and culminating in the "present" as depicted just after the events of STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME. The character of Gillian Taylor (played by Catherine Hicks in the film) serves as an bookend plot that works quite nicely, allowing us to see how her life has been going since having been separated from everything she ever knew. While the flashbacks work well in context to the overall story being told, the whole affair tends to get far too caught up in the need to pay homage to every little thing the series ever had to offer. An example of this is the secret staffing of the Enterprise with a plethora of characters that had noteworthy one-time appearances on the series before...or in certain cases, their offspring. It went from an homage to a saccharine series reunion of everyone Claremont was able to think of that could possibly be shoehorned into the plot. A basic rewrite could have solved every one of these problems and provided us with a tighter story, editing out the excess secondary characters and cutting down the winded dialogue.
There is an attempt to introduce us to a new woman in Kirk's life...T'Cel the Vulcan. I won't ruin any of the plot concerning her other than to say that she starts off as a very interesting character with a great character dynamic that works well with Kirk. For some strange reason, as the story unfolds through the years, nothing of any interest is done to really develop this relationship beyond their wonderful early encounter set prior to Kirk`s promotion to Captain. There is a thinly veiled surprise hinted at during the final quarter of the story concerning T'Cel that should make Kirk proud, but it seems to be an afterthought by Claremont that simply doesn't work well in context with what was given in the earlier stages of the plot.
The big alien threat used as a catalyst in the story was rather unoriginal, uninspired, and not very well fleshed out. This is perhaps where the story falters the most...it forgets the most important STAR TREK directive of all as it deals with wholesale slaughter ala James Cameron's ALIENS and never establishes any kind of dialogue or motive for the invading creatures, irritatingly referred to as "critters" countless times over. The game here is to wipe out the threat, not to find an alternative solution to it. Every time the story focused on a sequence with these "critters", I felt as though I were reading a generic rip-off of the aforementioned sci-fi franchise above. Speaking of being unoriginal, there's even an out of place STAR WARS super weapon thrown into the mix for good measure!
Claremont's plot may have suffered from both trying to hard in some areas, while completely missing the point in others, but one place where this effort is an overwhelming success is in it's artwork. The badly designed "critters" aside, I had never seen a Trek comic book (at least not up to this point) that had utilized artwork which so well captured not only the likeness of the cast members, but of the actual ships themselves. It truly is as close to watching a film unfold as one could ever hope to get in a comic book. Artists Adam Hughes and Karl Story deserve plenty of accolades! Also, be on the lookout for an always great looking cover by accomplished artist Dave Dorman.
All in all, I only recommend this for STAR TREK fans. There are far too many nods to the past for any casual reader to get as much out of it as they could, then again, that could be a blessing in disguise! Overall, four stars for the beautiful artwork and two for the story.
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