“Prime Directives” – December 1996
As you may recall from my review of that Riker comic, this is the series that featured the unnecessarily busty Andorian. Another refugee from Marvel’s short-lived Paramount Comics imprint, Starfleet Academy is pretty clearly an attempt to have a Gen13 series set in the Star Trek universe. Needless to say, it doesn’t really work. Now, it isn’t terrible by any stretch of the imagination and given that it’s a series that co-stars Nog, the annoying Ferengi kid from DS9, that’s really saying something. Basically, it’s series about a group of ragtag cadets, including the latest in the line of Deckers, a Vulcan lady who’s really a Romulan spy, Nog, and, yes, our favorite Andorian and Caitlin Fairchild stand-in, Pava, who totally shows up naked during the issue (as if you weren’t expecting that). There really isn’t a lot else to say about the story. In a way, its surprising (and a bit disappointing) that it isn’t more spectacularly bad. The art, meanwhile, which is serviceable if more than a little in the Image knock-off vain, turns out to be by Chris Renaud, the dude who directed this summer’s Despicable Me. I know. I’m pretty surprised, too, and I find myself wishing he’d done this book in a more cartoony style that would have at least given it more of an identity of it’s own, but, again, Marvel clearly wasn’t as interested in The Star Trek Adventures as much as they were NCC 90210.
