Star Trek: Lower Decks' security chief Shaxs lives his best, violent life in a new one-shot comic this fall
Star Trek: Day of Blood - Shaxs' Best Day writer Ryan North spills the beans to Popverse
After three seasons, it’s time for one of Star Trek’s bravest warriors to finally get the spotlight — and the unrelenting battle — that he’s longed for, with IDW Publishing announcing a Star Trek: Lower Decks one-shot comic centering around Lieutenant Junior Grade Shaxs… the finest Bajoran warrior on the USS Cerritos.
As the name suggests, the issue — wonderfully titled Star Trek: Day of Blood - Shaxs’ Best Day — isn’t just a chance for Lower Decks fans to see the security chief in solo action, doing what he does best. (That is: fighting.) It’s also part of the Day of Blood event that’s running between IDW’s Star Trek titles. The publisher’s official description of the issue runs, “You’ve seen Captains Benjamin Sisko and Worf with their crews of the U.S.S. Theseus and Defiant stop the fascist, god-killing clone Kahless II from declaring war on non-followers across the galaxy in a brutal battle on Qo’noS. But you haven’t seen it from the eyes of the man, the myth, the legend, Lieutenant Junior Grade Shaxs!”
The issue is written by Ryan North, who wrote the 2022 Star Trek: Lower Decks miniseries for IDW, with art by Derek Charm, North’s partner on the latter half of Marvel’s Unbeatable Squirrel Girl series. Charm and Robby Cook both provide covers for the $5.99 issue, which you can see in the gallery below.
“I was asked if I would be willing to write a Star Trek comic where Shaxs got to live his absolute best day and go completely ham on a bunch of fascist Klingons, and I said yes before our editor, Heather Antos, was even part-way through asking me,” North told Popverse. “And it was only more exciting when I learned Derek Charm was on board to draw it — we'd been trying to find a way to work together again since Squirrel Girl ended, so this was just great.”
Fans of Star Trek: Lower Decks — either the Paramount+ animated series or North’s earlier IDW comic book based on the show — should know what to expect from this one-shot, which North describes as “an oversized one-shot comic done in the Lower Decks animated style showing a single day in Shaxs's life that just happens to be his best day ever: he gets to kick fascist butt, ride an exploding starship, save the Defiant, invent a new way to use bat'leths in battle, and tons more.”
The one-shot also manages a rare balancing act, being at once a standalone one-shot and a tie-in to the crossover event running in both the core Star Trek series as well as Star Trek: Defiant. “It answers some really fascinating questions, such as ‘How did Shax get so covered in blood during the titular Day of Blood, did he take it really literally or what,’” North promises, adding, “It was great to get to work so closely with the architects of that event —Christopher Cantwell, Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly — to make sure it everything fit together with a satisfying click, that we could have this comedy action book living right in the middle of their epic adventure and it would all somehow make total sense. If you haven't read our Lower Decks comics, or any Star Trek comics, you'll still be at home! It's Trek with an infinite battle budget!”
More importantly, North says that he had the best time creating the book. “I've never written a comic that was non-stop fight scene before and now I never want to stop,” he joked. “Shaxs might be the perfect character??”
Star Trek: Day of Blood - Shaxs’ Best Day will be released September 27.
Want to know more about Star Trek: Day of Blood? We’ve got everything you need, right here.
