Star Trek: Starfleet Academy by Mike Johnson and Ryan Parrott continues the Star Trek saga. This one combines familiar characters from the movie reboot with new characters. In Star Trek: Starfleet Academy we follow two storylines, set 3 years apart. In one, Starfleet Cadet Nyota Uhura is trying to solve a mystery. She discovers a garbled transmission in the Starfleet logs and is determined to figure it out, with the help of some familiar faces we know and love from the USS Enterprise. In the second, set three years in the future, Vulcan T'Laan is planning on leaving Starfleet Academy. She doesn't feel like she has anything in common with her fellow cadets and thinks it would be better to go to New Vulcan with the remaining survivors. Her advisor, who doesn't want her to go, offers her a compromise: compete in the Inter-Academy Exploratory Competition, a competition between the various schools across the Federation, and he will approve her transfer. The competition is hosted by Starfleet and coincides with the Centennial Celebration of the formation of Starfleet Academy.

This story took a minute for me to really get into. You have to get pretty far into the story before it starts to make sense how these two stories even connect. I did find myself pulled in by T'Laan's struggles. Her feelings of being an outsider and not being understood (or understanding those she works with) are ones that many can relate to. T'Laan's teammates are also great characters. I want to read more about this group.

(In the interest of full disclosure: this title was archived before I had a chance to download it, so I purchased a copy for myself and that’s the one I read.)

I LOVED this. Starfleet Academy stories of any kind are my jam and this is exactly what I expected it to be. The main story, set after the events of the 2009 film, connects with the secondary plot line involving Uhura, Kirk and Spock, set during their time at the Academy. Each story develops independently and then ultimately they join up and culminate in a very satisfyingly typical Star Trek way. I enjoyed this glimpse into the school life of characters I know and love while also getting to know new characters. I especially enjoyed following T’Laan on her quest for purpose and belonging (Vulcan diaspora stories are also my jam).

I definitely recommend this for anyone curious about what it would be like to go to Starfleet Academy, or how the Academy began; or who just wants a Star Trek story both fresh and familiar.

I really enjoyed the art but the plot and the writing were just ok. There are better comics to spend your time on

This graphic novel took me a while to get into and felt disjointed from going back and forth between 3 time periods. I did enjoy the new characters from the academy that were built in to keep the story going in new and exciting directions.

Following two groups of cadets (the one that we know from the JJverse movies and a new group of cadets who are going through the academy a few years later) this graphic novel of the mini-series is a nice look into the larger world of this universe. Though the plot skews young, the new characters work well together and it is always nice to get another look at cadet Kirk, Uhura, McCoy, etc.