After a long hiatus, the promenade is full of people again and Quark’s bar is open, offering watered-down drinks for exorbitant prices, beautiful Dabo girls, and lively conversation with Morn. Feels good, doesn’t it? IDW Publishing brings DS9 back to comics this week with the first issue of a new mini-series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Fool’s Gold. Spoilers ahead.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Fool’s Gold #1
written by Scott and David Tipton, art by Fabio Mantovani
A rough-looking pair of travelers arrive at Deep Space Nine. After giving up their weapons to Odo, they make their way along the crowded promenade. Kira wants to know when docking pylon three will be back in service. O’Brien is trying to explain. Two kids, a human and a Ferengi, run past. The med center is busy. Quark’s is open. In the command center, Sisko tells Jadzia Dax that the quiet is making him jumpy. Kira is worried about an unusual increase in visitors arriving, but Sisko dismisses her concerns. Odo wants Quark to explain why he’s so busy. Kira and Odo are convinced that something is up. O’Brien learns that visitors are rummaging through bulkheads and storage lockers. A fight breaks out at Quark’s. Shots are fired and a young man is hurt. His father apologizes to Kira for not respecting her instincts. And he’s furious. Stardate 48987.3
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is easily my favorite followup to the original television series. Episodes tied together in continuing story arcs, touching on politics, faith, relationships and even baseball, not to mention all things Trek, were fascinating to me. For that reason, I have high hopes for this series, because the Tipton brothers, Scott and David, have already demonstrated a good feel for the original series. I trust they’ll bring the same sensibility to the station formerly known as Terok Nor. I also know that might be difficult. DS9 was such a nuanced series that there wasn’t much middle ground for Star Trek fans. Most of us either loved or hated the show. In this issue, the Tiptons show us what looks like an ordinary hectic day on DS9; a little friction between Sisko and Kira, Odo suspicious of anyone loitering, and trouble at Quark’s. I like the setup and I’m ready for the next installment.
Morn!!!
Artist Fabio Mantovani has a difficult job. He has to show us familiar characters, the exotic architecture of the station, a wildly varying human, Bajoran and alien population, plus a spaceship or two. All of the major characters are recognizable in closeups, but a little inconsistent in lean-out views. Kira has hair issues in this issue. She changes hairstyle more often than your average local television news anchor, but she did the same throughout the seven-year run of the television series. Her Bajoran militia uniform is sprayed on, revealing the voluptuous figure that I always imagined she had. It’s a little distracting, but I’m willing to cut Mantovani some slack on this one. Overall, Mantovani, who had help with coloring from Davide Amici, nicely captures the gritty, busy feel of the station and the rough-and-ready nature of its inhabitants.
Jake!!!
Fool’s Gold #1 has three covers. The first of two regular covers is by the Sharp Brothers (Joe and Rob) and features Sisko, flanked by several members of his crew. David Messina and Giovanna Niro (colors) provide a stunning portait of Captain Sisko with a graphic of the station in the background for the second cover. This motif will be used for other covers in this mini-series. The retailer incentive cover features their artwork without trade dress.
Cover A: The Sharp Brothers, Cover B: David Messina, Giovanna Niro
Cover RI: David Messina, Giovanna Niro
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Fool’s Gold #1 is in local comic shops today, Wednesday December 16th. If you can’t make it out to the promenade in person, you can spend your credits online at TFAW.
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As always, this series will also be collected in trade paperback, but you’ll have to wait until July 2010 for shipment.
Mark Martinez is an obsessive-compulsive Star Trek comics reader and collector. You can visit his website, the Star Trek Comics Checklist for more than you ever needed to know about Star Trek comics.
looks awesome
I’m pickin’ it up. DS9 is a great show. Very underrated.
DS9 was the best!!!!!
I’m glad somebody is doing something
with this series – my favorite of all
the Trek franchise….
DS9, in my opinion, was far more successful than any of its sibling series. It had far less stinkers; was far more consistent; and had the best ensemble cast.
Of all the TREKs, DS9 got the least respect (well, except maybe for Enterprise). AND it is the TREK I miss the most (and I miss all of them).
I’d love seeing more continuing stories of one Captain Benajmin Sisko and his crew.
#5
I’m not going to knock DS9 that badly; I recently caught up on the whole series through Youtube, and comparing it to Voyager, they were almost polar opposites: Voyager had (in my opinion) better plots but lousy writing and thus lousy characters, while DS9 had somewhat conventional plots in its later seasons but had much better characters overall.
That said, the later seasons bother me because it feels too scripted; it’s almost as in some scenes you can hear the chairs being moved and the producers saying, “Ok, so we need to get things to Point B because for Act II…” Examples: Winn and Dukat’s sudden changes from realized characters, then to complete bad guys, in the space of just a few episodes (actually, really only one: “The Reckoning” and “Waltz”, respectively). The producers knew where they wanted to be and artificially pushed things faster than they should have gone. If they had wanted it to be more natural, they shouldn’t have wasted all those hours with Vic in the holosuite. Utimately, despite being a fine series overall the ending was rather poor in my opinion.
(I’m starting to suspect part of the problem was Allan Kroeker, who they got to direct the finales for DS9, VOY, and ENT. And all three were poor. Hmm…)
I’ll be getting this as well, DS9 is still the best Trek show IMO.
Wow! Kira is drawn totally HOT!
I loved DS9 and ranked it second only to TOS. I’ll be picking this up when it hits trade format. Just don’t live close enough to a comic store to pick it up monthly.
I’m going to knock DS9 but I just never was able to get that into it. That’s mostly because it was bounced around between two local stations and various time slots. I’ve tried to catch up with DVDs but have grown weary of it, especially the Klingons. That being said, there are excellent episodes but I think I just want to jump ahead to the Dominion War. When does that start?
Sorry, I meant to say I’m NOT going to knock DS9 (very much).
6
DS9 is my favorite of the new treks, and while I love it, I think made an accurate asessment. All 4 of the new treks have their flaws, but when I want to watch one of them the only one I reach for is DS9 because watching the characters go about their fantastical lives feels like going home.
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12
Sorry, I meant to type ” I think YOU made and accurate asessment”
Will someone get a message to Paramount and JJ that DS9 reboot would be awome!!!
I’d like to take that Kira to the holosuites!
DS9 was “rebooted” it was called Battlestar Galactica..lol
Love DS9. Still my fav, after TOS.
I’ll probably pick up this series, but I’m not totally sold on the artwork. Quark just looks freaky, and I’m pretty sure that Kira wasn’t quite so…er… well-endowed. :)
Kira got a boob job.
The artwork looks top grade on those screens, like they really captured the characters without just drawing their own version of them. As for DS9, its 2nd to last Trek series I have yet to see all of, but I want to. I still think that TNG was a better series, but DS9 was the last good and solid Trek. Voyager had its moments and was built on an awesome idea but stumbled around with a few good and great episodes here and there. Enterprise I think was hugely underrated but suffered horribly from the temporal cold war plot for the first 2 seasons. I’m glad to see all of these comics popping up, for me they give something that the Star Trek books lack to the universe as Star Trek was a very visual series.
I’ll put it this way, for the Next Genners, because I love Next Gen, too, so much, and I’m naturally inclined to embrace amazing Trek and not nitpick favorites, since there wasn’t that much overlap (and the overlap between DS9 and TNG was fun episodes anyway!) …
At the end of All Good Things … I was grinning ear-to-ear, and I said “Awwwwww ….”
At the end of What You Leave Behind … I wanted to cry. And I’m a stoic dude.
So I’m pleased to see some more adventures during the course of DS9, and even more pleased to see some decent artwork in a license comic.
I haven’t picked mine up yet, but bring on the Dabo girls! I personally don’t think DS9 needs a live action reboot. It had the best cast it could ever hope for, seriously! I’d love to see some more pre-Federation stories and see more of the occupation. Let’s also dive deeper into Garak’s world on the station shall we? I hope IDW is reading this!
DS9 is my all time favorite Trek series with a close second being TNG.
Very pleased with the first issue of this series. I think this issue or series takes place at the end of season 3 since we have yet to see Worf. The attention to detail with the art is very good and I’m looking forward to seeing the Defiant. The characters feel good and I hope the Sharp Brothers continue to do the covers. This series shows promise.
It feels good to be on the station again!
DS9 the sole Trek series without any wasted characters in the ensemble. Everyone was fully realized and the scenes between the regulars just seemed to write themselves. It also finally gave us well written teenagers — Jake and Nog made up for Wesley — and really benefitted by having so many voices and points of view from outside the Federation.
Just Quark and Garak’s inconsequential discussion about root beer is one of Trek’s greatest scenes.
May I say I like that panel shot of Kira.
I wonder why? >_>
-cs™