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Star Trek: Red Shirts #1 is by Christopher Cantwell, Megan Levens, Charlie Kirchoff, and Jodie Troutman. It takes readers behind the typically nameless faces inside the Red Shirts and humanizes them. Yes, we do lose some Red Shirts in the issue, but what it really accomplishes is embracing the idea that Red Shirts are more likely to die. This runs counterpoint to a Facebook post from 2024 that “busted” the Red Shirt myth. The post used statistics of mortality rates in Star Trek projects to make the point that Red Shirts don’t have a higher mortality rate than any other Star Trek officers. But Star Trek: Red Shirts #1 tosses this debate to the trash bin and embraces Red Shirt deaths.
Red Shirts Die A Lot In Star Trek, And That’s Okay!
The opening pages of Star Trek: Red Shirts #1 show all the gruesome ways that Red Shirt officers die in the line of duty. We’re talking death by gun ray blast, head squished by a robot, falling off a cliff, head pounded by an alien, evaporating, body turned to jello, and eaten by a giant ant-looking creature. One by one, a Red Shirt falls. Star Trek: Red Shirts leans into the popular trope that all they do is die. Honestly, it’s probably what the majority of the readers picking up the book at their local comic book store are expecting, and the main reason why they bought it.
We learn that the Starfleet handbook basically dictates that Red Shirts must be cannon fodder. “Security is the first line of defense in Starfleet,” Ensign Chip Miller says. And he should know, since he almost had his eye ripped out by a mugato on his first security assignment as a Red Shirt. It left Miller with permanent scars over his right eye. He then gets recruited on a mission to Arkonia 89, where Starfleet is trying to sniff out mysterious spies. In true Red Shirts fashion, the team can’t merely teleport to the surface. No, they have to do something outlandish, like being shot onto the planet’s surface while inside torpedo casings.
