I read the first when it came out and enjoyed it, and read the second a couple of weeks ago and also enjoyed it. Generally I found the stories in the second a little less interesting, but there was still some good stuff. My favourite was "The Trial", it was by far the most engaging and interesting. The idea of following up on Uhura's Nomad induced brain-wipe in "Communications Breakdown" was a good one, but I didn't really think the story that came out of it was that great. The Vulcan story with lashings of Le-Mantyas was a much more enjoyable story. All in all, not bad, but could have been better.
I read it today, actually. None of the stories were fantastic, but they were all enjoyable. Wheaton's "Cura Te Ipsum" was my favorite; I think he perfectly captured the TOS feel. "The Trial" and "Communications Breakdown" were pretty good, too.
I was disappointed in Diane Duane's story. It seemed cobbled together from bits of other, very well known, TOS staples. Very un-original. There was even a very similar story in VOl. 1. The Manga really didn't make the most of the opportunity to have non-humanoid aliens. But I liked that they put stardates on all the stories.
No, much to my disappointment. My review, in two halves: Part 1: Wellman; Wheaton Part 2: Benjamin; Duane; Boylan
Ian, I can't really fault Duane's story for not including her gaggle of characters. If their appearances had served the story and moved it forward, then sure, they should have appeared. But would devoting a page to Harb Tazner have added anything? I have my doubts. Fanwank wouldn't have been appropriate here. I will, however, fault the story for its artwork. It wasn't manga-stylized. I don't read manga because I want artwork that looks realistic. The artwork for Duane's story wouldn't have been out of place in a DC Trek comic. In Kakan ni Shinkou, though, it was completely out of place.
Hey, I agree with you. As I said in my review, hoping for familar characters was just setting myself up for disappointment. The obvious person to tour the alien queen around was Harb Tanzer, I suppose, but then he'd be doing McCoy out of a main role, and most ST fans would want to read about McCoy over the lesser known Chief of Recreation. And that was my complaint overall with the ST mangas so far. If they are going to be just like DC, Marvel or IDW ST comics, then I'd really prefer them in full colour. A few of the stories in this issue seemed to have one or two guest characters with anime-styled wild hair, but everyone else looking like they stepped out of a DC Comic. And the queen's high-heeled pumps looked really out of place - anywhere in space! Reading the ST mangas on a train, at night, congested with a head cold, was causing me terrible eyestrain, too. I much prefer "normal" sized comic pages for my Star Trek stories. As I said in my review, "The art (on the Duane story) was nice and bold... and a more enjoyable read because of that." But yes, I probably found that story more comfortable to read because it wasn't manga style. (Thanks to Don Hudson & Steve Buccellato.) I was suffering a terrible dose of the flu at the time, and reading fine, b/w linework with blurring eyes is torture. For a b/w ST experience, I much prefer going back to the old "LA Times" post-TMP comic strips!
Maybe not. Vol 1 had three: for comic shops, bookstores and a convention exclusive. But my Vol. 2 (from my comic shop) is the same Uhura cover as Amazon is selling online.
I'm not a huge fan of manga in general (though there are exception such as Battle Royale). I was curious to see what the fuss was about with the Trek manga, but I really couldn't get past the art which aside from having the manga style that I'm generally not enthused about, it also looked like amateurish manga. I thought it was just me so I asked a friend who is really into manga (I mean, REALLY) and he also said the art didn't stack up. Now this was based on the first manga that came out a year or so ago. Maybe the current art is better (and there is manga art that I like; see, again, Battle Royale) but I haven't been back. I know the story should be more important than the visuals, and that's perhaps true in television and certainly in books (i.e. a great book can have a crappy cover -- just ask fans of Catcher in the Rye), but in comics the art really is the pin that holds the reader's interest, because it is very much an art-based medium. (You can still follow a TV program in most cases even if you don't watch it.) Perhaps I might have forced myself to become more interested in Trek manga if they hadn't launched a traditional-comic Trek series afterwards. Cheers! Alex
The art in volume two is pretty much of the same level as that in the first-- aside from Duane's story, which as Allyn pointed out above, isn't manga-style at all. And in comics, the story is not more important than the visuals.
^I agree. While I enjoyed the two volumes because I enjoying seeing stories with those characters, the stories weren't very manga at all. In manga, the art is used to create a visual tone, or atmosphere, and meters at a slower pace with each panel illustrating from the macro to the micro, or the reverse. The closest this came was in the Wil Wheaton story where there was a four-panel insert over a larger panel that depicted Spock's famous brow going up. Instead of shorter stories, they should think of doing a larger story in the next volume and get a writer and artist who understand the techniques of manga and how it uses atmosphere to create story.
^ My favourite ST Manga has been the unlicensed "Star Trekker" parody comics by Atelier Lana: traditional "Astro Boy" eyes; wacky sense of humour; reversed pics inside due to original Japanese printing; and huge sound effects. They also made great use of the TMP aliens! They also had an Andorian engineer named Shran, in comics drawn in the early 1990s.
It always amazes me how often that happens. Unless of course the name Shran comes from something I'm not aware of, then I could understand.
Well, considering that the first Andorian we met onscreen (in "Journey to Babel") was named Shras, it's not surprising that various different people would tend to come up with something similar for their own Andorian characters. And "Shran" sounds better than just about any other "Shra_" name (Shrav and maybe Shraz are the only other ones I can think of that wouldn't sound either too harsh or too silly), so it's understandable that it'd be chosen more than once.
Oh, I that does make sense then. I never realized that was his name. Is that the one who turned out to actually be an Orion?