Star Trek: Save What From Heaven... Fan Comic

[Mark R. Largent]

Hi everyone!

Wanted to share with you a project my pal Mark McCrary and I are working on. We've been friends for over 30 years and we both have been Trek fans for even longer.

We're also fans of comics and making comics, so it was a natural for us to have made some Star Trek comics over the years.

There was one that always stood out for us and when we were discussing doing an online Star Trek fan comic recently, McCrary suggested we go back and complete it.

"Save What From Heaven Is With The Breezes Blown" was originally written and pencilled in 1992. It began in late 1991, shortly after the TNG episode Unification aired. We were both thinking that it seemed like Kirk was no longer alive in the TNG time and we decided to do our own version of what had happened to him.

As such, this story was written before much of the continuity was established that would make it no longer fit. That might have been why we dropped it after the pencil stage, but I honestly don't remember.

It was too long ago.

So, fast forward to now and we are having a great deal of fun inking, coloring and lettering the story.

It's sixty pages long and despite having sat in boxes for over 20 years, we have all but six of them. McCrary is going to redraw those lost pages.

As a fan comic, we can't make money off it (of course) and we're nowhere close to deciding how to make it available for people to read. (We'd welcome opinions on how to best present it and promote it.)

In the meantime, I've set up a Facebook page and have uploaded the first seven pages as a teaser of sorts.

Timeline-wise, this story has a framing sequence that takes place shortly before the TNG episode Unification and then the bulk of the story takes place 37 years before.

Not sure how many Trek stories have been done when all of the major characters are in their extreme old age, so this probably sets this story apart. :-)

I can't yet post images, but I can put this link to the Facebook page.

I hope you will check it out and let us know what you think!

 

[MadMan1701A]

I think it looks great!

I'd love to read it, when it's finished. I suppose the easiest way to publish it would be a PDF or a CBR, if you just wanted to distribute it digitally.

-Ricky

 

[Mark R. Largent]

Thanks, Madman! I like the idea of a downloadable file, but I'm not sure of where we could distribute it. If we just set up a website, there's the matter of trying to let people know about it. Not to mention the potential cost.

 

[Rattrap]

You're doing the best kind of marketing right here. With fan productions, a good preview and a link to the download site are all you really need.

As for the site itself, there are any number of providers who can set you up with a basic site and a custom URL for a reasonable rate. It's mostly just a matter of shopping for them.

 

[B.J.]

I really like the artwork, it looks quite professional to me! And the story sounds interesting too. But I'm having quite a bit of trouble parsing that title.

 

[Mark R. Largent]

Thanks, guys!

Rattrap, I was thinking this time we'd look at options with social media. Try to put the pages out in several locations that people might have a better chance of stumbling upon.

B.J., I blame youth for the title. :-) It is a seriously weird experience to pick up a script you wrote almost half a lifetime ago (I was 25 then and I'm 47 now.) It's almost like reading something written by someone else. "Save What from Heaven is With the Breezes Blown" was a line from a poem that I came across in a college literature class and wrote down, thinking it sounded like a Star Trek title. (It's from Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats.) I'm sure it reminded me of some of those lengthier Trek titles like "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky." I think it makes sense in the context of some of the latter part of the story, but I don't think I would have used that title now ....and I've been trying to abbreviate it wherever I can. :-)

Although McCrary and I have never done professional comics work, we've enjoyed doing our own stuff over the years. We've got two graphic novels up on our website, Greyhawk and the Starbucklers. The first one starts here, if you want to check it out. It's a space pirate comic set in the 17th Century. The title character was raised as a pirate on Earth and uses it as his home base. It's fun space fantasy stuff, mixing swords and sailing ships with aliens and spaceships.

 

[Danlav05]

I love the whole 'TOS lot in TNG era'

5 seconds on I'm literally OBSESSED with this already. Will be watching developments with a very eagle eye!!!

 

[Mark R. Largent]

Thanks, Danlav05!

We're having a lot of fun revisiting this project. McCrary just finished inking page 17 yesterday and I'm lagging behind a little coloring page 12 (having to make all those confounded screen displays for the bridge!)

 

[Mark R. Largent]

Just wanted to post an update that pages 8 through 14 have been added to the Facebook page!

I am planning on making a website for this, but I'm waiting until it's completed. I don't want to impose any artificial deadlines on this. After all, we're just doing this for fun.

 

[Mark R. Largent]

Pages 15 through 21 are now up on the Facebook page!

 

[FormerLurker]

The art is well done, and you've captured the cadence of the characters' voices very well, I hear them as I read their dialog.

A couple of nits. Kirk was ordered to attempt to breach the barrier. He didn't make the decision to do so on his own, which is how you make it sound. And Mitchell was either the same age or just a year younger than Kirk. Remember, Prime Kirk entered the academy early.

That's it for now.

 

[Mark R. Largent]

Thanks, FormerLurker!

Was Mitchell's age being the same as Kirk's ever established anywhere? Mitchell was a student of Kirk's at the academy, Mitchell being a cadet and Kirk being a Lieutenant. The actors themselves are six years apart in age.

I don't ever recall anything episode-wise that said that Kirk was extra-young when he entered Starfleet Academy ...and this was written in 1992, long before there was such thing as a "prime" universe. :-) My impression of the 2009 movie was that version of Kirk was late to enter the academy.

Kirk may have been under orders to leave the galaxy (he doesn't say so in the episode which starts with them getting the distress call from the Valiant), but clearly as a starship captain, when given the evidence they recovered from the Valiant, he could have made the decision to turn back. In fact, he uses that evidence as his rational for doing it, saying they need to discover what's out there because other ships might go in blind.

Since so much continuity since then has made our story apocryphal, we've just been calling it an imaginary story, but at the time of writing it, we were trying to make it fit. :-)

 

[FormerLurker]

It's been part of Kirk's backstory that he graduated from the Academy early from the beginning. This has led to speculation, supported by vague references by folks like Gene Coon and Bob Justman, that Kirk enrolled in the academy early as well. As for Kirk being a lieutenant, TWOK establishes that Academy cadets can hold rank at least that high in Starfleet proper, as with Lieutenant Saavik.

Kirk's opening log begins with "The impossible has happened. From directly ahead, we're picking up a recorded distress signal. The call letters of a vessel which has been missing for over two centuries. Did another Earth ship once probe out of the galaxy as we intend to do? What happened to it out there?..." I'd call that pretty definitive that Enterprise was under orders to probe the barrier, rather than doing so because of the intercepted signal.

Be that as it may, I look forward to reading the rest of your story. Even if it's apocryphal, it's very well done, and your ability to capture the nature of the characters involved is better than many, if not most, of the official product I've read over the years.

 

[publiusr]

Star Trek: 300

That's the vibe I get.

 

[Sgt_G]

As for Kirk being a lieutenant, TWOK establishes that Academy cadets can hold rank at least that high in Starfleet proper, as with Lieutenant Saavik.

I disagree. I do not believe that Saavik was a brand-new cadet but rather an officer with a few years of service going back for a Command & Staff school.

 

[FormerLurker]

You're entitled to your own head canon. I was going by what we saw onscreen. Saavik had never piloted a starship out of spacedock, for instance. Not to mention the earlier draft the novelization was based on was more explicit about Saavik being a near-graduate level cadet, who had earned the Lieutenant rank already.

 

[Sgt_G]

Saavik had never piloted a starship out of spacedock, for instance.

That in and of itself is not much to go by. It's not like they do that maneuver every day. And it's possible and even likely she wasn't a bridge officer prior to this. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't graduate-level for when you go back for a master's (or above) degree. Again, consistent with my theory. A compromise theory would be that she was selected while in Academy to stay on to work on the higher degrees.

 

[FormerLurker]

You're confusing the Academy with going to college. By near-graduate, I mean Saavik was nearing the end of her Academy training, and was about to graduate. Indeed, most of the trainees, as Spock called them, were wearing officer's uniforms, including the guy Chekov replaced at weapons, and that blond guy that was next to him. They may have all been close enough to graduation (near-graduate) to have already been given a rank for when they receive their first posting after graduating.

And it was pretty plain that Saavik had been receiving bridge officer's training. That's why she was taking the Kobayashi Maru test, and why she was assigned the Navigator station for the training cruise. Like I told you, you're entitled to your own head canon. But most of us go by what is actually there on the screen, and that's that Saavik is still a cadet.

 

[Mark R. Largent]

Just a quick update. It's taking longer than expected to finish this (a side effect of it being just a hobby project), but there are now 45 pages up on the Facebook page. There are only 15 more pages to go and they're all inked. Just waiting for me to finish coloring and lettering them!

 

[F. King Daniel]

This looks cool! I'm looking forward to reading it. Old futurefic exploring the fate of the classic characters fascinates me.