Reading Marathon: Kelvin Timeline Comics (and Novels)

[Stevil2001]

Once again, I am embarking on a long journey through my unread Star Trek books!

In this case, I've been collecting (the collected editions of) most of the so-called "Kelvin timeline" comics as they've been released, with just a few gaps I need to plug in. But all I have ever read is Nero! (And, I guess, Spock: Reflections and Countdown, which lead into the Kelvin timeline, but don't take place in it.)

So in this thread, I am going to chronicle my reading of all of those stories, from Star Trek: The Official Motion Picture Adaptation #1 to Star Trek: Boldly Go #18. On the way, I'll take in IDW's sixty-issue ongoing Star Trek volume 1, the two original Kelvin timeline novels released by S&S, various Kelvin timeline miniseries (e.g., Countdown to Darkness, Khan, Manifest Destiny), Alan Dean Foster's novelization of Star Trek Into Darkness, and the two Green Lantern crossovers. Me being me, I'm going to do my best to read it all in chronological order (thanks to this thread and Memory Beta).

Since I've already read Nero (and Foster's novelization of the 2009 film), my journey begins with Star Trek: The Official Motion Picture Adaptation. I will report back here once I have read it!

I feel like these comics overall garnered very little discussion here on TrekBBS, but they must have sold decently well to last sixty issues plus assorted other things, so I would be happy to see others chime in with their takes as I go. Please attempt to avoid future spoilers, though; I have some broad knowledge of where the comics go, but that's it.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

And the YA series? Those were pretty good.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (2010 novel series)

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is a young adult novel series published under the Simon Spotlight imprint of Simon & Schuster. The series is set in the alternate reality established in the film Star Trek, the novels being the first original tie-ins based in that continuity (following the placing on...

memory-alpha.fandom.com

 

[Miami Vice Admiral]

I only read the first volume of Bodly go but I read all the countdowns and the ongoing comics. I enjoyed them quite a bit. I read them when I was younger and they definitely helped Spark my love of Star Trek.

There’s some cool episode remakes and character backstories that added a lot to the universe. Made me wish they’d had been able to make more movies.

 

[Stevil2001]

And the YA series? Those were pretty good.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (2010 novel series)

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is a young adult novel series published under the Simon Spotlight imprint of Simon & Schuster. The series is set in the alternate reality established in the film Star Trek, the novels being the first original tie-ins based in that continuity (following the placing on...

memory-alpha.fandom.com

Literally nothing about these appeals to me. I know I am a crazy completist, but I do have my limits!

 

[Miami Vice Admiral]

Literally nothing about these appeals to me. I know I am a crazy completist, but I do have my limits!

Ditto.

 

[Christopher]

Literally nothing about these appeals to me. I know I am a crazy completist, but I do have my limits!

I've read at least three of the YA Academy novels, and I thought they were okay. Nothing special, but no worse than a lot of the Kelvin comics.

 

[Markonian]

I enjoyed how the Kelvin comics fleshed out the crew by giving them more than just the movies.

 

[Stevil2001]

Star Trek: The Official Motion Picture Adaptation #1-6 (Feb.-Aug. 2010), reprinted in Star Trek: The Official Motion Picture Adaptation (2010)
screenplay by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman, adaptation by Mike Johnson & Tim Jones, pencils by David Messina with Claudia Balboni, inks by Gaetano Carlucci, colors by Giaovanna Niro and Ilaria Traversi, letters by Robbie Robbins and Neil Uyetake

I was kind of worried about this book going in; in my experience, most comics adaptations of films are not up to much, often reading as a condensed version of a story optimized for a different medium.

To my surprise, then, scripters Mike Johnson & Tim Jones and artist David Messina deliver a pretty strong retelling of the 2009 film. I mean, it won't knock your world alight, but it does a good job of hitting the beats of the story via the medium of comics. Probably this is at least partially because it's been given a whole six issues, so (mostly) it's not too compressed. But also Johnson/Jones/Messina have good pacing instincts, sometimes piling a lot of panels into a single page, sometimes using double-page spreads in order to capture a key moment. Clearly also some thought was put into putting issue endpoints at key moments, so that each issue works as a unit.

The result is an adaptation that reads fairly genuinely as a comic. It's probably at its best when covering the earlier parts of the story; it's not until the end of issue #3 that Nero's attack begins, so the early parts of the book have a lot of space to unfold key moments like the destruction of the Kelvin or the reveal of the Enterprise in space. On the other hand, moments like Kirk's and Spock's fight on the bridge are given numerous panels on a single page, really giving them an impact.

Indeed, issue #4 is probably the one compression hurt the most; the drill battle is just not interesting in this format, with key moments like Sulu's unfolding sword going by too quick to leave an impact, and I found the death of Amanda way too rushed to give it the impact it needed, and then the issue's final panel, weirdly, does not clearly communicate the destruction of Vulcan. The unnecessary Galaxy Questeseque second climax of the film, where the Enterprise is almost pulled into a black hole, comes across as even more unnecessary here.

The book's solicits trumpeted the inclusion of cut material, but this mostly seems to just be a couple lines of dialogue here and there. David Messina is a longstanding Star Trek artist for IDW, and he mostly does a good job here, though I struggled a bit with his likeness for Bruce Greenwood's Pike. Overall I think this does exactly what it needed to, and did it well. Probably the best comics adaptation of a Star Trek film other than the two by Peter David.