Marvel's Star Trek Comics (1980-82)

[JonnyQuest037]

According to Mike W. Barr's article on Star Trek comics in Back Issue magazine #5, there was some doubt as to whether or not Spock would be able to use a mind meld in issue #5 until it was remembered that Spock performed a mind meld with V'Ger in TMP. Barr also alludes to there being "some sort of legal action between Marvel and Paramount Pictures that forbade Marvel from using any aspect of Trek that had not appeared in the movie."

[Pauln6]

Strange. TMP was a heavily merchandised movie - I loved that as a kid. Still, why would you want to limit the creativity of the comics by being so unduly restrictive. There does still seem to be a degree of paranoia & greed about franchising even today. The owners of the intellectual property do seem to believe that the merchanidising is worth a lot more than it really is, which seems to mean that we get very little overall because merchandisers just can't make a decent profit.

The new 'canon' game is an interesting twist though. If the actors' images can be digitised and used in CGI 'stories' they might be able to milk the nu-Trek franchise even after the actors have moved on and the movie franchise is dead again.

[Steve67]

Pauln6 wrote:

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Strange. TMP was a heavily merchandised movie - I loved that as a kid. Still, why would you want to limit the creativity of the comics by being so unduly restrictive. There does still seem to be a degree of paranoia & greed about franchising even today. The owners of the intellectual property do seem to believe that the merchanidising is worth a lot more than it really is, which seems to mean that we get very little overall because merchandisers just can't make a decent profit.

It's even more strange when you consider how big a success Marvel's take on Star Wars was. Apparently, Lucasfilm often signed off approval without even looking at what Marvel was doing (until relatively late in the run, when they saw that the Lahsbees looked a bit too much like the upcoming Ewoks). Paramount should've let Marvel work its (then) magic, but I guess Paramount's dreary corporate countenance was in keeping with TMP's lifeless tone.

[inflatabledalek]

They seem to have been fairly incosistent about what was and wasn't allowed as well, the most overt example beingthe same issue that they couldn't use Medusans in is a sequel to Where No Man Has Gone Before with another trip through the Great Barrier resulting in madness. Though I suppose it's possible that whoever approved that one didn't remember the Barrier from the show...

[Pauln6]

Star Trek has a history of introducing a new aliens when an existing one will do. They did use the shape-changing aliens that sent Captain Garth insane in one issue though so that would seem to be a departure from the licence.

I wasn't a great fan of the Rand story. I love the character and was pleased to see her get more than one frame in the transporter room but the story didn't ring true on a lot of levels. Plus she went from being a Chief Petty Officer in TMP to a Lt-Commander in the commic in just a few years. She almost makes NuKirk looks slow in the promotion stakes.

[inflatabledalek]

Pauln6 wrote:

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I wasn't a great fan of the Rand story. I love the character and was pleased to see her get more than one frame in the transporter room but the story didn't ring true on a lot of levels.

Yeah, it's got some nice ideas in it with the aliens who can cope with intergalactic travel, but the whole idea that Rand would manage a relationship with something so different that would also require her to renounce all human contact for the rest of her life even though her beloved is going to be plugged into a spaceship so they'll never properly be together anyway... Well maybe it could be done convincingly but not in the page count required. And her dumping him at the end when he's now mentally damaged makes the whole relationship seem even more insubstantial.

I found the best issue to be the Joanna one, as someone said upthread, the idea of her dating a Vulcan is genius, and Spock and McCoy have a lovely moment at the end.

[Pauln6]

It did have some fun issues though. I liked the one with the slugs and robots - even Chief DiFalco got some action in that story. Scotty being beaten up by the Black Annis was fun, even if the resolution of the story was cheesy. The transporter origin story could have been a nice horror story if it had been spread over several issues. I think most of the stories suffered from being single issue adventures. A few of them didn't finish soon enough.

I noticed that Joanna was a nurse in the older story and a doctor in her more recent appearance in the Lost Years mini series. Sadly, they contradict each other in more ways than one.

[Steve67]

inflatabledalek wrote:

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I found the best issue to be the Joanna one, as someone said upthread, the idea of her dating a Vulcan is genius, and Spock and McCoy have a lovely moment at the end.

As a kid, I liked this one best because of all the disintegrations! There's an insane hand-phaser battle in this one. I also liked the inhabitants of the planet having had artificial intelligence implanted in them...it's like what we had done to us here on Earth.

[JonnyQuest037]

Pauln6 wrote:

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Strange. TMP was a heavily merchandised movie - I loved that as a kid. Still, why would you want to limit the creativity of the comics by being so unduly restrictive.

Two guesses:

1) Paramount didn't want Marvel emphasizing TOS elements at the expense of TMP. Remember, TMP was the new product that Paramount wanted to support & merchandise, and presumably the subsequent movies were expected to follow in that direction. And who knew in 1979 how much life TOS still had left in it?

2) Marvel didn't want to bother paying extra for the rights to TOS when TMP contained most of the major Trek elements they needed to do a comic adaptation. And when you factor in all the walk-on characters & aliens that were in TMP, they really had a wealth of material to work from.

[BillJ]

Of course issue 9 had a pre-refit Constitution on the cover:

[inflatabledalek]

[QUOTE=BillJ;5025752]Of course issue 9 had a pre-refit Constitution on the cover:UOTE]

And features within it as well. One of the covers also has the Phase II Enterprise on it (via it basically being a copy of the early Movie Poster that used it).

[Steve67]

JonnyQuest037 wrote:

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1) Paramount didn't want Marvel emphasizing TOS elements at the expense of TMP. Remember, TMP was the new product that Paramount wanted to support & merchandise, and presumably the subsequent movies were expected to follow in that direction. And who knew in 1979 how much life TOS still had left in it?

Seems as though Marvel was limited in their other short-lived (1979-81) sci-fi/fantasy comic from that same time, Battlestar Galactica. According to this site:

"Starting with #6, the series ignores the rest of the events of the television series and begins completely original stories (Marvel's contract with Universal specifically did not allow them to use anything from the television series that followed Lost Planet Of The Gods)."

Marvel had a two-headed monster of misfortune on its hands during that time, though their original stories for Star Wars were often fantastic, at least to my then-youthful self.

[JonnyQuest037]

Steve67 wrote:

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Marvel had a two-headed monster of misfortune on its hands during that time, though their original stories for Star Wars were often fantastic, at least to my then-youthful self.

Well, tough to go wrong with Archie Goodwin writing your comic book. Particularly when the great Al Williamson is drawing the movie adaptations!

[Christopher]

^I felt each of the regular writers of Marvel's Star Wars comic was an improvement on the previous one. Roy Thomas < Archie Goodwin < David Michelinie < Jo Duffy. Not that I had a problem with Goodwin's writing, I just found his successors' work even more satisfying.

[Admiral James Kirk]

Christopher do you really prefer Jo Duffy to David Michelinie? I mean isn't that like comparing grape juice to a bottle of Dom? Sure grape juice is nice but Dom Pérignon is Dom Pérignon! I can't imagine preferring the creator of Lahsbees and Huks to the creator of Shira Brie and the Tarkin.