Over the years there have been many incarnations of Star Trek in comic book form, from Gold Key to IDW - let's discuss...
Comics.
- Thread starter Mirren Audax
- Start date
I'm not impressed by the current Nero series from IDW -- I was likewise unimpressed by the Countdown movie prequel from the same creative team.
Let me be more specific: I really dig David Messina's art, but the scripts don't do much for me.
I have liked all of John Byrne's IDW work however. Good stuff!
I agree. Byrne seems to have found a second act to his career by making beautifully detailed and developed Trek comics. His Crew series was amazingly well-crafted. I'm looking forward to his upcoming Romulan series, Schism.
The Countdown, Nero and Spock series have been a mixed bag but still pretty fun to read.
The Alien Spotlight one-shots are hit-or-miss but should be commended if only for giving us the KRAD-written Klingon issue -- a high watermark for Trek comics published by any company.
I hope that IDW continues its reprint program -- especially the omnibuses. I LOVED the Early Voyages omnibus and hope to see an omnibus for Marvel's Starfleet Academy series in the coming year. My only complaint is the dreadful looking coloring with their DC reprints. I don't know if the problem rests with the source material or their copying process but the ultimate result is quite poor.
The Countdown, Nero and Spock series have been a mixed bag but still pretty fun to read.
The Alien Spotlight one-shots are hit-or-miss but should be commended if only for giving us the KRAD-written Klingon issue -- a high watermark for Trek comics published by any company.
I hope that IDW continues its reprint program -- especially the omnibuses. I LOVED the Early Voyages omnibus and hope to see an omnibus for Marvel's Starfleet Academy series in the coming year. My only complaint is the dreadful looking coloring with their DC reprints. I don't know if the problem rests with the source material or their copying process but the ultimate result is quite poor.
Actually, who here REMEMBERS the Gold Key comics, and not just in anthology form? In the UK, Gold Key stories were edited into 'annual' format, often a hard-back Christmas stocking filler. Living in the US when I was much younger, I found the comics, which I still have, with the ads for x-ray specs, sea monkeys and Parker Stevenson posters.
Then there's the fact that they aren't paying royalties to the original creators of the comics they're reprinting....
If you can manage to get the Star Trek comics DVD ROM, you'll get scans of all those comics, including all those ads. It can be tricky to get from outside the USA, though.
I still remember the horror that was the Marvel comics run in 1980. Now I will have to pull them out and reread them. The DC run that included the Mirror Universe story was very good. I especially liked how they would have to interweave the movie stories into the ongoing comic run.
Where did that come to light?
I loved Ricardo Villagran's draughtmanship, especially as he had interesting views of the starships! He also would work 'Las Islas Malvinas' into some frames as he was Argentinian, protesting Britain's war with his homeland over the Falkland Islands - Las Islas Malvinas.
Mike Barr's website, IIRC. He had a blog entry suggesting that fans think twice about buying the omnibus reprints until IDW agrees to pay something to the original writers and illustrators.
There was a comic where Kirk meets a Vulcan woman during his run on the Farragut, then years later finds out that she was a Romulan spy....
I read it some years back as a graphic novel, but I forgot the name of it. (I thought it was called 'The Modala Imperative' but that wasn't the correct name).
If someone can help me jog my memory...
I read it some years back as a graphic novel, but I forgot the name of it. (I thought it was called 'The Modala Imperative' but that wasn't the correct name).
If someone can help me jog my memory...
^That was the graphic novel Debt of Honor by Chris Claremont, Adam Hughes and Karl Story, published in hardcover by DC Comics.
The Modala Imperative was a pair of 4-issue miniseries, one TOS, the other TNG, depicting two visits to the same planet a century apart. It was the first TOS/TNG comics crossover.
The Modala Imperative was a pair of 4-issue miniseries, one TOS, the other TNG, depicting two visits to the same planet a century apart. It was the first TOS/TNG comics crossover.
Debt of Honor!
I'm going to check to see if my local library has it before I see if I want to purchase it.
Thanks, Christopher.
I'm about to get the comics CD-ROM.
Is the post-TMP Marvel series really that bad? I'm also planning on reading the Enterprise-A DC stories. I'd read all the DC one's but I just can't get my head around the retconns to the movies that I'd have to accept with all that interweaving. (Kirk commands the Excelsior
)
I'm also really looking forward to reading most of the Wildstorm stuff. I wish that had continued, but I'm glad IDW is doing all they're doing now also.
Is the post-TMP Marvel series really that bad? I'm also planning on reading the Enterprise-A DC stories. I'd read all the DC one's but I just can't get my head around the retconns to the movies that I'd have to accept with all that interweaving. (Kirk commands the Excelsior
)I'm also really looking forward to reading most of the Wildstorm stuff. I wish that had continued, but I'm glad IDW is doing all they're doing now also.
Pretty much, yeah.
In 1979, Marvel getting the licence seemed like good news. Gold Key was still publishing its comic but it had long been an uneven series, aimed too much at kids and, in its early years, produced by people who knew nothing about the TV series. Marvel, which produced a lot of the best comics of the 1970s, and which had tie-in experience aplenty (2001: A Space Odyssey, Logan's Run, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica) had to do a better job. Hell, it would probably be amazing.
Then the comics started coming out, and all that optimism faded quickly. The movie adaptation was a sloppy-looking rush job. And then the first three issues of the comic, as I mentioned above, just reprinted that adaptation, giving us stuff we already had and didn't like that much the first time. The first original story was about a haunted house in space, a two-parter that was begun by Marv Wolfman but finished by Mike W. Barr, who (IIRC) wasn't told how Wolfman had planned to end the story. Not a good sign. There were a lot of changes in creative staff over the fifteen issues of original stories. Writers included Wolfman, Barr, Martin Pasko, Tom DeFalco, Michael Fleisher, Alan Brennert, and J.M. DeMatteis. There was a similar number of artists. With that kind of turnover in that short a time, there was no way the comic could maintain any kind of consistency, much less develop any kind of vision or story arc, and on rereading this collection, I found, ironically, that some of the better stories read and felt a lot like the better Gold Key comics. And the worst didn't have the so-bad-it's-good appeal of the worst Gold Key comics.
Then the comics started coming out, and all that optimism faded quickly. The movie adaptation was a sloppy-looking rush job. And then the first three issues of the comic, as I mentioned above, just reprinted that adaptation, giving us stuff we already had and didn't like that much the first time. The first original story was about a haunted house in space, a two-parter that was begun by Marv Wolfman but finished by Mike W. Barr, who (IIRC) wasn't told how Wolfman had planned to end the story. Not a good sign. There were a lot of changes in creative staff over the fifteen issues of original stories. Writers included Wolfman, Barr, Martin Pasko, Tom DeFalco, Michael Fleisher, Alan Brennert, and J.M. DeMatteis. There was a similar number of artists. With that kind of turnover in that short a time, there was no way the comic could maintain any kind of consistency, much less develop any kind of vision or story arc, and on rereading this collection, I found, ironically, that some of the better stories read and felt a lot like the better Gold Key comics. And the worst didn't have the so-bad-it's-good appeal of the worst Gold Key comics.
I'd read all the DC one's but I just can't get my head around the retconns to the movies that I'd have to accept with all that interweaving. (Kirk commands the Excelsior
Too bad. There were some really good stories in that era.
It had its moments. Issues 6 and 17 by Mike Barr were fairly interesting. Tom DeFalco's issue 7 was okay. The final issue, #18 by J. M. DeMatteis, wasn't bad. Generally the Martin Pasko issues, especially the later ones, are pretty silly, but one of Pasko's issues, #13, is pretty much the high point of the entire series. It's a story featuring McCoy's daugher Joanna, and its last couple of pages are some of the best Spock-McCoy writing I've ever seen.
I'd like to see that remedied as well. Soon as they get it squared away...
I quite enjoyed most of them. I really loved buying them each month, and when it went bimonthly it was an agonizing wait between comics. None of the stories were as silly as the Gold Key titles had been, and I loved the way many Marvel issues made use of the new TMP Federation alien races.
I actually stopped buying them after a dozen issues or so, and didn't bother getting the issues I missed until a few years later. But then I thought some of them were indeed sillier than the later Gold Key comics, and often with worse art.
Similar threads
