Although manga has been around for decades, Star Trek is still pretty fresh to the genre. With last year's debut release "Shinsei Shinsei," Tokyopop gave us a nice opening salvo in the manga line. With the second volume — "Kakan ni Shinkou" — we have an even stronger release. The name, by the way, means roughly "To Boldly Go."

As someone who has never read manga prior to these Star Trek releases, but is aware of all the anime tie-ins such as Naruto and Cowboy Bebop, and stand alones titles such as the "Blade of Heaven" books, I've enjoyed getting into these easily consumed tales. For the record, each book has five manga stories, plus a promotional fiction excerpt from an upcoming book, courtesy of Pocket Books.

This second volume has the addition of "chibi" mangas of "The Trek Life" and a new, self-explanatory concept called "The Red Shirts"; all of these conceived, written and inked by our own David Reddick (shameless plug!). Chibi, for the unitiated, are short comic strips with more charicatured, often smaller proportioned characters. And I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't also point out that the first story in the new volume was penned by none other than Wil Wheaton. The story, "Cura Te Ipsum" ("heal thyself," basically) is about a plague-ravaged civilization. A point of note: All the lead characters in this story, Kirk, Spock, etc., appear to be about 16 years old! I know it's partly the manga style, but it deserves mentioning. The visual styles vary from story to story, with subtle variations. Depending on the strip, the characters may appear more fleshed out, or have sharper, squarer features.

Many Star Trek fans, myself included, are big anime fans, and with the new Star Trek manga, we can now count ourselves genuine converts!

[Tim]