Murder on Deep Space Nine! And who is the prime suspect? None other than the station’s shape changing security chief, Odo. Surely he can’t be responsible for the death of an already dying Cardassian, who was returning to the station to spend his final days there anyway?

The story in this issue, Old Wounds, is a clever little locked room mystery, which also does a good job of delving into a bit of Major Kira’s backstory. As part of this, we get a glimpse at just how brutal the Cardassians were, in the years before Benjamin Sisko’s arrival on Deep Space Nine.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; Malibu Comics really did a great job of adapting Deep Space Nine to the comic book medium, and the (mostly) one-and-done stories are excellent at shining the spotlight on different characters in each issue.

Due to the page count of a standard comic book, there’s no fluff and the story races by, with a great setup, a satisfying mystery to solve and a neat wrap up, all in a little over 20 pages. It’s an excellent companion to the show’s first few seasons, and helps to flesh out a brilliantly diverse and interesting cast of characters.

While there are a few signs that writer Mike W. Barr was working with limited information, given that he was writing this as the first season was only just underway (and it was published just after the second series had begun on TV), it still doesn’t feel out of place, and no one feels too out of character, alongside the show’s early episodes.

My tendency to hunt for cheap back issues occasionally results in me uncovering hidden or forgotten gems, and Malibu’s Deep Space Nine comics definitely fit that description, alongside titles such as Troublemakers, from Acclaim/Valiant.

The early 90s were not exactly the best time for comics with substance, or even comics that were particularly well written, but the Deep Space Nine series demonstrates that there were still excellent titles out there, beyond the silly gimmicks and grimdark fare that filled the shelves of comic book stores at the time.

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