And yet, mine doesn't ship until the 11th... 
Star Trek comics on DVD
- Thread starter mmtz
- Start date
Well, I've been reading stuff on the DVD at random as the mood takes me, stuff I haven't read before. I just read The Gorn Crisis at last. This was one I didn't pick up when it came out, because I felt it got the history wrong. The Gorn characters spoke of their failed invasion of the Federation a century before, foiled by Kirk -- but in "Arena," it was the Federation that unknowingly intruded onto Gorn space. A misunderstanding, not an act of Gorn aggression. But since elements of TGC have been alluded to in the novel continuity, I decided to give it another look. It's actually pretty good; I particularly like the way Riker is characterized in his interactions with the Klingons. As for the bit about the Gorn invasion, all the mentions of it come from a militant Gorn splinter faction, so it's possible that the inconsistency is the result of this Gorn faction rewriting their history, using the fiction of a past foiled Gorn invasion of the Federation to stir up their followers to launch another one. So it can still work, and it's a worthwhile tale.
I also read the "Mirror, Mirror" special Tom DeFalco wrote for the Marvel/Paramount Comics run. It's a very different take from Dave Mack's followup to "Mirror, Mirror," or Mike Barr's from the DC comics, but it's a pretty interesting alternate interpretation. The way Spock resolves the threat to the Halkans is actually quite clever.
I also read the "Mirror, Mirror" special Tom DeFalco wrote for the Marvel/Paramount Comics run. It's a very different take from Dave Mack's followup to "Mirror, Mirror," or Mike Barr's from the DC comics, but it's a pretty interesting alternate interpretation. The way Spock resolves the threat to the Halkans is actually quite clever.
My copy came today, and I'm running around in it as happily as can be. There are two or three comics from the declared period that don't seem to be in there--the X-Men crossovers aren't there, and at least one of the Power Records stories isn't either ("In Vino Veritas"--no Coriolanus Quince!).
But what's left is voluminous, and I feel like I'm eight again. I'm making all these wonderful little discoveries I didn't get to read the first time around (because, you know, young kid, no money). Even the Gold Key stuff! There's a nice little "illustrated history" sequence from Enterprise Logs Vol. 4 called "From Sputnik to Warp Drive" which, while outdated, is a neat little summing up of the core "Trek hopeful future."
But what's left is voluminous, and I feel like I'm eight again. I'm making all these wonderful little discoveries I didn't get to read the first time around (because, you know, young kid, no money). Even the Gold Key stuff! There's a nice little "illustrated history" sequence from Enterprise Logs Vol. 4 called "From Sputnik to Warp Drive" which, while outdated, is a neat little summing up of the core "Trek hopeful future."
I was pretty big fan of the 90s Marvel era. Some good, original stuff in there. Highly recommend Starfleet Academy and Early Voyages. Also, their one-shots usually proved interesting...with exception of Operation Assimilation. In it, the Borg invade the Romulans. Pretty interesting, right? Well...it had no ending. It just ended with the Borg coming down on some more Rommies. Never had a follow up.
Actually, In Vino Veritas never had an accompanying comic book -- it was the only Power Records story that didn't.
I think the followup was "The Neutral Zone." It seemed to be a prequel showing how the Borg harvested the border outposts as seen in that episode. As for the ending, it had one; the story was structured more as a character study than a plot-driven tale. It was the story of a Romulan commander who's proud and secure in her superiority over others and who then learns the harsh reality and meets an ironic fate.
No, unfortunately.
Is it just me, or is anyone else annoyed by the fact that the DVD opens up a new PDF file every time you click on a selection?
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I like that feature. It makes it easier to switch between menus.
Good news: the DVD includes the DC trade-paperback collections, complete with the celebrity introductions. I was afraid those wouldn't be there.
I've just read the first two Power Records stories, "Passage to Mouav" and "A Crier in Emptiness." They were better than I expected, though still pretty lightweight. The substitutions are weird -- a blonde Uhura, a black Sulu, a M'Ress who looks more like Marta the Orion dancer, and a whitebread Mr. Collins substituted for Mr. Arex. But aside from that, the art's pretty good. Even surprising. The "Uhura" and "M'Ress" in "Mouav" are rendered in a way that I'm amazed they allowed into a kids' comic, although they've given Uhura a much more modest neckline in "Crier." I think I've seen scans of those pages on this BBS before, probably courtesy of Therin, but it still, err, has an impact.
Ah, no wonder. When I was a kid, I only had the LPs (which didn't come with the comics versions like the 78s), so I just assumed there were comics out there somewhere for each.
Hmm, turns out there are two different sets of comic/record stories. The ones from Power Records are mostly by Alan Dean Foster with art by the likes of Dick Giordano and Neal Adams, and are set in the TOS/TAS era with the blonde Uhura and black Sulu. There are also a couple of others from Peter Pan Records which must've come out in 1979 or later, since the characters are in grey TMP uniforms, except the ship still looks the same and Sulu is somehow an ensign (although at least he and Uhura are the right ethnicities). Those stories are much worse than the Foster ones, and the ST Comics Checklist site lists their authors and artists as unknown.
Lame-sauce! That is a bummer, I was so stoked the first time I found the mp3s for these stories, I'm a big fan of the Gorillaz, and I was even more enthused when I realized that they had used soundbites from these old Power/Peter Pan records in their music.
Sad to say, I've discovered that the copy of Marvel's Star Trek Unlimited #3 scanned by the DVD's makers is apparently missing several pages. Both the TOS and TNG stories have abrupt jumps in the narrative about four pages before and after the center staple, so it seems that the sheet of paper those pages were on was either torn out or omitted from their copy.
^^Well, yeah, what else would they be? After all, most of these comics were published decades ago before there was any form of digital storage. Scanning them is the only way to archive them. And it has the advantage that you get everything that was in the original, including letters, editorial columns, and ads, so it's more thorough than the kind of thing you'd get in a TPB reprint. The catch is that it's only as good as the copies available for archiving, so sometimes you get wrinkles, tears, smudges, or in this case, missing pages.
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Luckily, I already have ST:U #3, but yeah, that's disappointing. 
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