Year Five #12: The Mission Who Walks Like a Man, part 2 preview

Out this week from IDW is Star Trek Year Five #12, the second half of the Gary Seven story The Mission Who Walks Like a Man. This story resolves the tease from the very first book in the Year Five series, and so acts as something of a mid-series finale (and a very satisfying one too), with another twelve issues still to come to fill out the final year of the USS Enterprise's TV-era five year mission under Kirk.

The book is written by Year Five showrunners Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, with a host of artists contributing: Kieran McKeown is credited for pages 1-11 and 17-20, Silvia Califano for pages 13-16, and Stephen Thompson for page 12. Colours are also a jumble of contributors, with Thomas Deer on pages 1-11, 17-18, and 20, John-Paul Bove for pages 12-16, and 19, and Charlie Kirchoff for page 12. That twelfth page does represent that tease page from the first issue, so that explains some of multitude of credits in this issue!

Following the usual format for the series, the book is available in two covers: Either the main cover, with a menacing shadow of gun pointed at Kirk, by Stephen Thompson, with colour by Charlie Kirchoff. Or there's the retail incentive cover from JJ Lendl, who continues their travel poster series with Circe V, the planet the USS Enterprise escape pods ended up landing on.

Continue below to check out the covers and a five page preview, plus some other comics updates.

You can continue reading the rest of the book by picking up a copy at your local comic book shop (if they're open right now), or from online retailers like these: Amazon, Ebay, Things From Another World, Forbidden Planet, Barnes and Noble, iTunes.


In other Year Five updates, several of the artists from the series have been sharing their work, including Silvia Califano who gives us a glimpse into the future with her work illustrating Harry Mudd! At first I thought this meant a Disco-Mudd comic was on the way, but in fact Mudd is due to arrive in a story starting with issue #15 - Mudd has been an age old dilemma for Star Trek comics, as his likeness in the guise of actor Roger C. Carmel has never been approved, forcing artists to reinterpret the character - Even photo-comics apparently had this issue, pushing John Byrne to ingeniously recast Mudd as William Shatner in an innovative issue of his New Visions series. It would appear Rainn Wilson's take on the character in Discovery has allowed for a new workaround to this problem!

Also teased by Califano is a cameo by the horned Alfa 177 dog of The Enemy Within!

Looking back to older issues Califano recently shared a bit of behind the scenes from issue five, where it seems the decision was made to change locations of one scene, requiring a switch out backgrounds:

From a more recent issue, just the previous one, artist Stephen Thompson and colourist Charlie Kirchoff both shared some examples of their work from issue #11, showing pages before and after colouring:

To keep track of all the latest Star Trek comic releases, hit the comics button on my 2020 schedule page. You can also find reading lists for several Star Trek comic series on my Trek Collective Lists site.