Funny, odd, amazing things in the ST Comics

I just got the Complete Collection DVD (all issues from 1967-2002), and find many interesting, funny, and odd things in the earliest comic books already.

(Mods, please advise: Is sharing individual panels or parts of pages ok?)

In the very first issue, Spock uses colorful language, and they destroy a whole planet with their lasers!



In the Goldkey timeline, number 45 (which we've caught up with and passed in real life) was this guy:



And Kirk doesn't know basic astronomy



The Enterprise nacelles also are called and look like rockets, and the consoles have levers, 60s radio mics, valve wheels,... slowly, issue by issue, the bridge looks more like in the show, but Kirk has a pink chair.

I love it, it's hilarious to read these alternate universe stories 50 years later!

 

Yes the Gold Keys and the UK comics are crazy! My go to example though is one of the first few issues of DC’s TNG comics where Picard and crew actually, literally, meet Santa Claus.

 

I remember an issue from Marvel's first run post-TMP where Kirk and crew caught with Knomes. And another where Kirk became a Egyptian Pharaoh lol

 

That's when they lose control and are pulled into it

 

Those were bad plants

 

I love Gold Key. Blond Scotty in Green?

I read there was an IDW Waypoint one-off in Gold Key style, and I've really got to hunt it down one day.

Also the early UK comic strips starring Captain Kurt (no, really. And they were a licensed product!), who was a redshirt, the Enterprise landing.

Oh, and an Enterprise that looked like THIS:

(Fun fact, at infants school there was a Dinky Toy U.S.S. Enterprise I ALWAYS played with. Someone had painted the whole thing red and I never understood why. Once I saw this, I wondered if it was what they recognised the toy from and "fixed" the colour!)

Then we move to the first DC Next Gen miniseries, where everyone was a beefcake and had every issue had at least one meme-able moment:

 

Too bad the UK strips aren't on the DVD

A new gem from Goldkey

 

A Space Station Odyssey.....





Gay senoritas in old California XD

And that would've been so much better than ENT's decon jelly rub chamber

 

I love that Peter David included characters from Bloom County in one DC Comics run and Spaceman Spiff from Calvin and Hobbes in the next.

 

From Star Trek (DC) #51 - first series

 

Early on in the pandemic, I bought a couple of facemasks with Gold Key Star Trek artwork. One of the masks has the Enteprise and the unfinished 2001 space station.

 

Mr Scott looks very much like Mr Spock.

 

In an issue written and edited by Marv Wolfman, who was also editor of Marvel's Star Trek comic that picked up after TMP. So it was a cross-promotion. By the same token, Marvel's version of Dracula appeared as an illusory character in Star Trek #4-5 (well, one of the two, I forget which).

 

Everyone remembers Captain Kirk. Everyone remembers Captain Archer. Everyone knows Captain Pike.

But what about the Enterprise's Captain Zarlo from Gold Key? I wanna know more about this guy and his obsession with N.M.E. drills

 

Possibly. Movies were in theaters far, far longer then, often for months. And despite its reputation, I believe that TMP was actually the most successful Trek movie at the box office (correcting for inflation) until 2009. Though that's partly because it was in theaters so long.

 

Not quite an illusion. They never explained exactly how the Klingon thought-enhancer works, but Dracula was real enough to murder the Regulun ambassador and to register as a solid, living being on the tricorder.

Interestingly, Kirk and Spock both refer to the Dracula legend, indicating that in the Star Trek universe, Dracula originated from folklore instead of a novel.