This trade paperback is a collection of the five-part comic series published by IDW Publishing in the months between March and July of 2008. Written by Star Trek and comics veteran Peter David, and drawn by Steve Thompson, Turnaround is the second outing of David’s long-living non-canon New Frontier series in comic form, after Wildstorm Comics’ Double Time in 2000.
In Turnaround, Mackenzie Calhoun and the Excalibur crew have to deal with Admiral Jellico, who has obviously gone rogue and has stolen a prototype Starfleet vessel. But is everything really as it seems at first glance?
First, a little disclaimer: I’m not really that much into comics, so my review might not be that in-depth, since I have no real background knowledge to draw from to make comparisons to other comics.
Let’s start with the art. In my opinion, Thompson has captured most of the characters rather well, and I can easily imagine them looking like they are shown here. The only real exception would be Burgoyne; somehow s/he looks a bit too human in this comic for my taste. But that’s only one of a huge cast of characters, so I would say he has a pretty good hit/miss ratio. The strongest part of the artwork would be the facial expressions, though. In my opinion they capture the mood of the scenes and convey them to the reader very well, and definitely add to the story. Overall I would say Steve Thompson did a good job on his part of the comic.
The story itself works rather well in this omnibus edition, although I have my doubts that it worked as well in five separate issues, since the breaking points just don’t seem to be cliffhanger-ish enough to spark much interest for the next issue. That is maybe a by-product of the really nice flow this story has when read as one big story. Actually, I would argue that this is one of the best NF stories of the last few years. Certainly, some of the story elements (like the time ship) wouldn’t really fly outside the New Frontier universe, but hey, it’s Peter David. One thing I was positively surprised by is that the story actually ties in to previous stories and moves the story of the novel-line forward a bit.
Overall, an entertaining book, and one not only recommended to the comic-savvy New Frontier fans. For this reviewer, it’s actually a story that kind of restored some interest in the New Frontier series.
Turnaround (by Peter David; art by Stephen Thompson, Leonard O’Grady, John Hunt) was released by IDW in October 2008.
