Hugos 2025: Star Trek: Warp Your Own Way by Ryan North and Chris Fenoglio

Star Trek: Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way

Published: 2024
Acquired: December 2024
Read: April 2025

Written by Ryan North
Art by Chris Fenoglio

Colors by Charlie Kirchoff
Letters by Jeff Eckleberry

I received this book as a Christmas gift from my wife and kids, but was given a bump to actually read it when it was selected as a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story—the first Hugo finalist I'll be writing up on this blog. It's a choose-your-own-adventure-style comic book set in the world of Star Trek: Lower Decks, where you play as Ensign Beckett Mariner. (This makes it the first Star Trek tie-in to be a Hugo finalist; I really must update my Star Trek at the Hugos post.) Writer Ryan North is the perfect man for this project, as both a longtime comics writer who knows how to work within constraining forms and wrote a choose-your-own-adventure version of Hamlet.

It's very cleverly done, much more cleverly than it needs to be, to be honest. I'm going to spoil the whole thing here, so if that bothers you, don't read the rest of this post.

The book begins with you waking up; you can elect to bother Tendi and Rutherford in Engineering, Boimler who's off-duty, or your mom on the bridge. Depending on what you do, different bad things happen: a Borg attack, a tribble infestation, and so on. I ended up in the various paths around the Borg attack initially, and quickly came to realize they all ended with everyone dying... except that if you had only known the Cerritos's prefix code, you could have (for some reason) saved the ship. Eventually I went down one path where there were a pair of voices talking after you died about obtaining the prefix code, and about how you only ever went for a very limited range of choices.

Eventually, I exhausted all the paths, but skimming through it, I could see there was a lot of the book I hadn't gained access to yet. I started just flipping through, and eventually I found a page where instead of being able to pick between coffee and raktajino for breakfast (which is how the book begins), you were also able to pick tea. With a little bit of detective work, I was able to figure out how you ought to be able to get there" the mysterious voices say at one point that they can't introduce new choices but it is possible to add existing choices. If you add together the coffee page number with the raktajino page number, you get to the tea page—and that unlocks a whole new network of choices.

What you start to figure out is this is all a holodeck simulation, explaining why different bad things happen if you make different choices. There's Star Trek explanations for the whole structure and format of the book, justifying the form in terms of the content. It's very cleverly done! You as the reader also begin to participate in book, talking to Mariner about what she's doing and why. You have to help Mariner figure out a way out of this situation, which begins to turn even more grim than you might have imagined. There's another bit where you have to do math to make a jump from one part of the book to another, this one cleverly done, where on one bad ending, Mariner gives you half of a math problem, and you have to play out another bad ending to get the other half of the math problem, so that you can put both those things together and finally get to a path that allows you to play out a good ending.

So yeah, it's put together incredibly well (see my diagram of it on the right), using Star Trek tropes to explain a lot of choose-your-own-adventure tropes, and pushing the form into interesting, unusual directions. The ending is even kind of moving, as you save the Cerritos, but the crew of the ship don't really understand what actually happened. This was my first Best Graphic Story finalist, and I wouldn't have guessed it going in, but upon finishing it, it immediately felt like the one to beat!

I do have one very pedantic complaint: for a book where page numbers are essential, they are printed annoyingly small! It's harder than it needs to be to flip through this book, and you need to flip through it a lot.

William Shakespeare Punches a Friggin' Shark by Ryan North

William Shakespeare Punches a Friggin' Shark and/or Other Stories by Ryan North

Each of Ryan North's "chooseable-path adventure" Shakespeare adaptations came with a bonus electronic adventure. To Be or Not To Be came with the prequel Poor Yorick, while Romeo and/or Juliet came with That Time Samuel Ampson Got His Thumb Bit, which was both a prequel to Romeo and/or Juliet and a sequel to To Be or Not To Be. This small book collects both of them, with a frame story where you play as William Shakespeare. Along the way, you find yourself writing Poor Yorick and Samuel Ampson and thus playing them; you may also elect to punch a friggin' shark.

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2013-17
Acquired: December 2017
Read: June 2023

It's basically fine. If you've read North's other Shakespeare adaptations, you know how the joke works by now. I didn't bother to replay Poor Yorick, not having found it terribly exciting the first time, to be honest. The punching a shark joke isn't very interesting to read about, but I did enjoy the bit where Shakespeare is attacked by a robber and pays him off by writing poems. Samuel Ampson was fine, but again, it's jokes you know already if you've read the two full-length Shakespeare books. The best jokes here are the book's spine (seriously!) and some of the sentences in the back of the book, which you can (ostensibly) cut out and paste into other parts of the book to change the narrative even more.

So if you're a Ryan North does Shakespeare completist, pick it up I guess (I did after all), but if not, you're not missing out on much.

Review: Poor Yorick by Ryan North

Published: 2013
Acquired: September 2013
Read: October 2020

Poor Yorick by Ryan North

This is a prequel to To Be or Not To Be, North's "chooseable-path adventure" take on Hamlet; it is a short ebook (just 35 pages) that was available to Kickstarter backers. I read it very, very belatedly. You play as Yorick, trying to get a job at Elsinore entertaining Kid Hamlet so you can fulfill your role in his story-- dying so that he can hold your skull during Act V and pontificate on death.

It does not have the sprawling complexity of To Be or Not To Be or Romeo and/or Juliet. Instead, it's very linear; you are consistently presented with three choices, two of which will kill you, one of which will let you keep playing. North is a funny writer, so I was entertained, but I found that even at this brief length, the joke wore thin. Nice to read but I wouldn't rush out to find a copy. (I don't think you can get the ebook version anywhere anymore anyway, but it was reprinted as part of the collection William Shakespeare Punches a Friggin' Shark and/or Other Stories.)

Review: Romeo and/or Juliet by Ryan North

Before we get started, here's my most recent Bernice Summerfield review: Legion.

Trade paperback, 400 pages
Published 2016

Acquired June 2016

Read March 2018

Romeo and/or Juliet: a chooseable-path adventure by Ryan North and William Shakespeare and You because you decide what happens next not to mention all the Artists who made some great illustrations so really there's a lot of credit to go around here and that doesn't even mention the editors, designers, and typesetters all of whom do important work that goes unacknowledged all too often

I was effusive in my praise for Ryan North's previous William Shakespeare chooseable-path adventure, To Be or Not To Be. I was much less into Romeo and/or Juliet. What I don't know exactly is why. Romeo and/or Juliet was interesting and fun, but it felt more like work and less like joy than To Be or Not To Be. Was I in the wrong mood? Did the gag wear thin? Or is Hamlet just that much more bonkers than Romeo and Juliet, and thus a better target for Ryan North's irreverent reverence? Two teens so in love that after one day and one fuck they decide to commit double suicide seems bonkers, and North plays with a lot of the story's contrivances, but the book's bizarreness felt staid compared to the previous volume. Also some of the jokes are overused-- okay, breakfast, haha, yes I too love brunch. And while the chooseable-path-adventure-within-a-chooseable-path-adventure of The Murder of Gonzago was completely appropriate for Hamlet, the inclusion of three different ones here felt like irrelevant padding. (They're based on Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the latter has Pyramus and Thisbe nestled within it.)

That said, there's plenty of fun to be had. My favorite part was the secret character; if you "beat" the "game," you get to play as Rosaline, the woman Romeo is in love with before he meets Juliet. Rosaline's narrative is a first-person hard-bitten noir pastiche, trying to solve the mystery of why Romeo's mother conveniently died offstage just before the final scene, and it is fantastic.

I did diagram the novel again, and it did make me appreciate intellectually the work North put into the book, even if aesthetically I was less intrigued by it this time around.

Review: Marvel Rising by Devin Grayson, et al.

Marvel Rising is a five-part story that confusingly runs through one #0 issue and four #1s; it's hard for me to imagine someone outside the comic book faithful being able to figure this out. I mean, what's the different between Marvel Rising: Squirrel Girl & Ms. Marvel #1 and Marvel Rising: Ms. Marvel & Squirrel Girl #1, and why do they contain parts 2 and 3 of an ongoing story, which also has a part 0? The story unites Ms. Marvel, Squirrel Girl, America Chavez, and some guy called (for real) Dante Inferno who I never heard of; despite the covers, Captain Marvel, Falcon, Spider-Gwen, and whoever the girl wearing purple with purple hair is never put in appearances.

Since the closure of ComicsAlliance, I barely consume comic book news anymore, so I wouldn't have known this comic even existed if my local comic shop owner hadn't stuck Marvel Rising: Alpha #1 in my pull list on the basis that I read Ms. Marvel. He's always doing stuff like this, and I'm forever telling him that no, I don't want any Transformers comic that's not Lost Light, but this time I was happy to go for it, since Marvel Rising is partially co-written by G. Willow Wilson, writer of Ms. Marvel.

It's a fun enough story, and I'm glad I read it. The best parts are probably the first couple installments. In her civilian identity of Doreen Green, Squirrel Girl is volunteering at a coding camp for high schoolers, which Ms. Marvel is attending in her civilian identity of Kamala Khan. It turns out that one of the other classmates is a budding supervillain, with the ability to make things in computer games come to life.

Thus we get a lot of secret identity hijinks, as Kamala must fight back without her teachers figuring out she's Ms. Marvel, and Doreen must fight back without her students figuring out she's Squirrel Girl. Writer Devin Grayson is good at capturing the charming side of both characters, and it's especially well done when in part 2, Ryan North and G. Willow Wilson step in to write the segments featuring their own characters themselves. In part 3, there are lots of good jokes about videogames, and Kamala's enthusiasm for them. Also, North's comedic captions are super-fun, and you have to love the way having the powers of a squirrel is taken semi-seriously.

Additionally, I really like the artwork of Irene Strychalski, who draws the North-penned Squirrel Girl segments in parts 2 and 3; it has some nice cartoony energy to it, and I'd read an ongoing comic about any of these characters drawn by her. (Cover-wise, the covers by Gurihiru, who I primarily know from their work on Avatar: The Last Airbender are excellent, particularly the video-game themed ones, but my favorite of all the covers was the one by Elsa Charretier on part 3, which is the one I've emphasized at the top of this page. I wasn't previously familiar with her work, but it's clearly excellent. I'm less enamored with the variants by Rian Gonzalez, but thankfully I only ended up with his work on part 4.)

Unfortunately, the last couple parts don't quite deliver on the potential of the first couple. The characters spend much of the second half trapped in a videogame world; this concept has been done worse than this, but it's still somewhat flat. I did like that the story focused less on "if-you-die-in-the-game-you-die-in-real-life!" perils, and more on the attempts of the group to break the parameters of the game in order to escape, but the rules still came across as arbitrary. Also, in part 2, there's this whole subplot about how the villain can't create matter, just borrow it and change its characteristics, but by parts 3 and 4, this clearly is not the case, and none of the ideas referenced in part 2 ever come up again, so I'm not sure why they were included to begin with.

Being a miniseries outside of the characters' main series means that this can never have the impact that a "real" Ms. Marvel comic has, and it has less of her civilian life too, but it still captures what I like about her and by extension the rest of its cast of characters. This is a fun comic that's worth your time if you have an interest in any of the four central characters, just 1) don't be fooled by the characters on the covers, and 2) don't be confused by the bizarre numbering.

Marvel Rising was originally published in Marvel Rising #0, Marvel Rising: Alpha #1, Marvel Rising: Squirrel Girl & Ms. Marvel #1, Marvel Rising: Ms. Marvel & Squirrel Girl #1, and Marvel Rising: Omega #1 (June-Nov. 2018). The story was written by Devin Grayson (parts 0-4), Ryan North (parts 2-3), and G. Willow Wilson (parts 2-3); illustrated by Marco Failla (part 0), Georges Duarte (parts 1 & 4), Irene Strychalski (parts 2-3), Ramón Bachs (parts 2-3), and Roberto Di Salvo (part 4); colored by Rachelle Rosenberg; lettered by Clayton Cowles; and edited by Heather Antos and Sarah Brunstad.

Review: To Be or Not To Be by Ryan North

Trade paperback, 740 pages
Published 2013

Acquired August 2013

Read June 2014

To Be or Not To Be: a chooseable-path adventure by Ryan North, William Shakespeare, and YOU

OH MY GOD. This is the most entertaining book I've read in a long time-- a "Choose Your Own Adventure" version of Hamlet. Except way more fun than I remember any of those books actually being. You can play as Hamlet, Ophelia, or dead King Hamlet, trying to avenge the murder of King Hamlet. The book has a lot of fun mocking Hamlet; if you follow the "path" that Shakespeare himself did, the narrator constantly mocks you for your bad decisions. This is the only version of Hamlet that I know of not to omit the pirate battle. There is a part of the book where you are in a 1980s interactive fiction game ("look room"). If you play as Ophelia you get to invent central heating or participate in a dating simulator or play a death-chess match. If you play as King Hamlet you can use your ghost powers to revolutionize the world. If you play your cards right, you can even travel in time! And, best of all, The Murder of Gonzago is a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book within a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book! But if you die in the book, you die in real life! The delights just pour off the page again and again; if you are married, your spouse will tire of you telling them all the good bits. And so I will avoid telling you all the good bits, so you can discover them for yourself.

Also there is a picture for every possible ending, and they are delightful; a veritable cornucopia of webcomic artists provide them, from Jeph Jacques to Kris Straub, from Kate Beaton to Randall Munroe. (North himself writes a webcomic, but there's no art from him because that webcomic is Dinosaur Comics.) They're even in full color! You can get a lot of joy just paging through this and looking at the pictures.

I was so fascinated with the way this book works that I actually diagrammed it. (I think Ryan North sells diagrams, but that seems too easy. By the way, if you ever want to make a flowchart, yED Graph Editor is a great piece of free software; it was better than I could have imagined.) This gave me a new appreciation for the book, and the close reading it necessitated allowed me to uncover even more awesome features. Click on the picture, if you dare. (Minor spoilers, I guess? If looking at a bunch of numbers is spoilers?) You will note the following:

• Shapes
• Squares = normal pages
• Ovals = endpoints
• Diamonds = normal pages within The Murder of Gonzago
• Colors
• Gray = outside the game
• Blue = Hamlet
• Yellow = Ophelia
• Orange = dead King Hamlet
• Green = Claudius
• Purple = Horatio
• Parts of the book that I think of as "minigames" (tightly networked sets of small choices) are clustered into boxes.
• The path marked with skull logos (the path of the original play) is the thick line.
• Pg. 195 is where you go if you take the choice to actually kill Claudius. You will note that you get that choice a lot. But for some reason you never do it!

I mean, look at that thing. It's incredible! What an intricate achievement. When North crowdfunds Romeo and/or Juliet, I will be ready with my money.