REVIEW: Trekker #4

Created, written and illustrated by Ron Randall
Review: Will Dubbeld

Every Wednesday brings new comics to the shop and an old comic to the HCB's Dollar Box. This week's pick happens to be 1987's Trekker no.4.
I've a long history with Trekker and the books' contemporaries at Dark Horse, first discovering the comic during my introduction to the medium.
Trekker is the story of Mercy St. Clair, a young lady in a future not quite dystopian, just a bit unsettled. Mercy is a bounty hunter, or 'Trekker' per the parlance of the book, and the series largely focuses on stories that balance her professional and personal lives.
There are some larger overarching themes in Trekker, but the bits where the book shines deal with the interpersonal relationships with her uncle Alex and her boyfriend Paul, both police officers, and her roommate Molly.



Issue 4 from finds Mercy and her (somewhat hapless) boyfriend embarking on an interplanetary pleasure cruise for some presumably well-earned r&r. Whilst Paul is in awe of the alien and interstellar sights presented, Mercy seems distant and unimpressed. Tensions between the couple rise, but as things seem to be on the mend their romantic hot-tub liaison is interrupted by the murder of a Martian.
Furthermore, said Martian is able to zot Mercy with a 'retta-charge', implanting certain sensitive information in her brain.

Soon after, Paul is whisked away on police business, and Mercy runs afoul of some diplomats embroiled in an interplanetary conflict. The book hones in on some political intrigue and our heroine soon finds herself in the thick of things, at odds with the law and still uncertain of the information she received from the retta-charge. Issue 4 ends with a cliffhanger, and I'm gonna have to dig out the rest of the arc from my library. Having not read the book for over 20 years, I can't recall how it ends up and I'm anxious to reread the resolution.

Trekker is a perfect balance of storytelling and art in my opinion. Ron Randall has a great eye for design, from architecture to spacecraft, and especially fashion. The character wardrobe is an eye-catching melange of 1980s contemporary and futurist design and says a lot about the particular characters' personality.
Mercy is sexy as hell without being a sex object and shows a depth of character that wasn't often seen in the late '80s and is still sometimes difficult to find.

Nostalgia aside, Trekker is a great piece of storytelling, which I highly recommend to all readers. Ron Randall has taken to the Internet with his creation, archiving the entire run at trekkercomic.com with weekly updates. I'm hoping the serialized web comic will find a hard copy release, but until then I'll be following along digitally.