Star Trek: Khan is a six part miniseries detailing the back story of Khan Noonien Singh, a major villain in the Star Trek universe and the main bad guy played by Benedict Cumberbatch in Star Trek Into Darkness. This past Star Trek movie didn’t go into great detail about the origins of Khan, especially for people who aren’t familiar with the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This miniseries is an attempt to fill in the story.
The comic initially takes place at the end of Star Trek Into Darkness, where Khan is on trial for his crimes. He talks about being a boy on the streets of India in the early 90’s and how he was kidnapped into a school for children who are genetically altered to be superhumans. Eventually he breaks out, and to make a long story short, he and his friends attempt to take over the world. This is what is referred to in the Star Trek universe as the Eugenics War, and is kind of a big deal.
Which brings us up to speed for issue #3, Khan sits back and watches as his superhuman friends start fighting each other off to expand their territories. This is like a friendly game of Risk gone bad. Anyway, all the normal people in the world are sick of these superhumans, so they develop a virus to kill off Khan and his friends. This causes Khan to make the decision to leave Earth and go into outer space.
The strange thing about this series so far, is that they’ve shown Khan as the original Ricardo Montelaban of Star Trek II, 90’s Khan is obviously Indian, and “on trial” Khan is Benedict Cumberbatch. The artists have shown three very racially different Khans so far, and I’m wondering if this will be explained soon. From what I’ve seen in other reviews, this has really put people off of this series. My best guess is that it has something to do with the time rift created by Spock in the 2009 movie Star Trek which reset the timeline and would have changed the events of Star Trek II. I don’t know for sure, so only time will tell.
All confusion aside, I give these first three issues a B+ average.
Star Trek: Khan is published by IDW and is written by Mike Johnson with Roberto Orci. Pencils and Inks are done by David Messina, Claudia Balboni, Marina Castelvetro and Luca Lamberti.
