Maybe Spock will get to crack skulls this movie.

The cover is extra-misleading this time: "Spock the Barbarian!" is sadly nowhere to be found this issue. From 1981, Marvel's Star Trek #10, "Domain of the Dragon God!" Written by Michael Fleisher, art by Leo Duranona and Klaus Janson.

With Admiral Kirk out with a flu, he doesn't get to go on a survey mission of Barak-7, a planet with an exceptionally strong magnetic field. Which doesn't seem like a job for an admiral, even one as hands-on as Kirk. McCoy says he'll keep Spock company, and Spock successfully stifles any emotional complaints on the topic. As usual for any incarnation of Star Trek, the shuttlecraft crashes, engines clogged by magnetic dust.

Instead of the uninhabited sector they were supposed to survey, they land near the barbaric inhabitants, as they're about to engage in a little ritual sacrifice. Prime Directive or no, McCoy can't let them murder a girl; but the matter is taken out of their hands when the sacrifice makes a break for it and runs into them. Spock and McCoy stun several of the angry tribesmen, before the magnetic dust clogs both their phasers and communicators. Spock holds them off so McCoy and the girl can escape; but is captured.

Taking the girl to her tribe, McCoy proceeds to further mangle the Prime Directive, teaching them the bow so they can fight the bad tribe. Spock has been forced into slavery, and the chieftain is using said slave labor to carve his face into a mountain. When McCoy and the "good" tribe attack, the chieftain is murdered, a new one is named, and he promptly declares the old chieftain's wife should be the next ritual sacrifice to the "dragon god." Spock is not especially surprised by this egregious display of dickery.


Before the tribesmen decide to put Spock and McCoy on the chopping block, from the Enterprise a modified shuttle arrives to save them. Kirk asks them what went on down there, and what was up with the half-carved face in a mountain: McCoy just says it's a monument, to "the more things change, the more they really remain the same." Spock appears to invoke some logical bro code to not narc McCoy out for all the Prime Directive violations, but maybe he's just used to Kirk doing it all the time, and thought McCoy could get at least one.

Star Trek: Into Darkness opens today! I probably won't get in until the weekend, but I really, really, want to go. Now.