TOS Comics....

[JD]

The Complete Comics Collection DVD. (The MA article says forthcoming, but it actually came out a year or two ago) It contains every Trek comic up until IDW got the license.
EDIT: Bah! I type to slow.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Oh, and since I didn't mention Mission's End earlier, I may as well now. It was ok, but I wasn't wild about it. As a wrap-up of the 5YM, I'm a much bigger fan of "The Final Mission" from DC's second Star Trek Annual (The Enterprise finds that Koloth & his Klingon crew have taken over Talos IV!).

 

[BillJ]

Oh, and since I didn't mention Mission's End earlier, I may as well now. It was ok, but I wasn't wild about it. As a wrap-up of the 5YM, I'm a much bigger fan of "The Final Mission" from DC's second Star Trek Annual (The Enterprise finds that Koloth & his Klingon crew have taken over Talos IV!).

Star Trek Annual #2 is the definitive 'Five Year Mission Finale' tale.

 

[Warped9]

Back in the '80s and '90s I didn't much attention to Trek comics. Maybe I should peruse some of those trades.

 

[BillJ]

Back in the '80s and '90s I didn't much attention to Trek comics. Maybe I should peruse some of those trades.

This is the issue you're looking for:

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/The_Final_Voyage

 

[Davros]

The only Star Trek comics I ever read were published by Gold Key.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

The only Star Trek comics I ever read were published by Gold Key.

Those are about the only Trek comics I've never read. I've flipped through the recent trades, but I've heard so much about how far off base they are, it makes me pretty reluctant to actually buy them.

There are some great Trek comics out there, though, Davros. I'd recommend the first DC series from the 1980s, Marvel's Early Voyages series from the 90s, and the recent IDW stuff.

 

[RookieBatman]

The only Star Trek comics I ever read were published by Gold Key.

Those are about the only Trek comics I've never read. I've flipped through the recent trades, but I've heard so much about how far off base they are, it makes me pretty reluctant to actually buy them.

You got to at least read some of them for the cheese value.

But seriously, I read a number of them a while back, and I remember thinking that a decent handful of them probably could've made quite good stories, if they had just done another rewrite or two, just tried a little harder to get all their ducks in a row (kinda like many third season episodes).

 

[Christopher]

I think the best way to approach the Gold Key comics is not to worry about their consistency with Star Trek but simply experience them as generic '70s sci-fi comics stories, which is really what they were, since their writers weren't particularly familiar with ST. From that perspective, they're goofy fun and some of them are fairly interesting.

And they do start to get more ST-consistent in the later years, particularly the issues that a young Doug Drexler consulted on.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Just for laughs, though - where the f-k would one put the Gold Key Treks in a Star Trek timeline? The sequels to "City on the Edge of Forever", "Metamorphosis" (is that James Cromwell??) and a few others are obvious. But the others? And those early UK comics? Madness. Glorious madness.

 

[Warped9]

^^ I wouldn't even consider trying to fit them into TOS continuity. For me they were one-off stories from some sort of elseworld.

 

[Ward Fowler]

^^ Yeah, one should just enjoy them for what they are.

 

[Warped9]

Anyone with opinions on Star Trek: Klingons - Blood Will Tell and Star Trek: Alien Spotlight?

 

[Therin of Andor]

Anyone with opinions on Star Trek: Klingons - Blood Will Tell and Star Trek: Alien Spotlight?

They are both excellent. There are now two volumes of "Spotlight", but keep in mind they're not all TOS stories.

The post-movies framing story for "Blood Will Tell" is weak, but it's the individual TOS stories you'd want it for.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Klingons: Blood Will Tell is very good, but I think it falls short of greatness.

On the plus sides -- David Messina's artwork has never been better than here. It's interesting to see Star Trek history from the perspective of the Klingons. It's nice to see the role that TOS-style Klingons play in the movie era.

On the minus sides -- The framework of the story results in a disjointed and unbalanced narrative, because the flashbacks are all to a concentrated period of three years, thirty years in the past, as if those were the only important Federation/Klingon incidents. It might've been better if the writers had invented an incident (or three) that involved another ship or another time.

Still, it's good, and I like it, and I'd place it in the top half of IDW's Trek output, but below anything that Byrne touched.

Alien Spotlight -- Assuming you're talking about the trade collection of the first series...

I thought it was okay. The three that stand out in my mind are Romulans (which is the first chapter of Romulans: Pawns of War), Borg, and Orions. Borg is interesting, and I'm not sure that I have the brain power to entirely process it; Borg from the future attempt to assimilate time itself. Orions had good art and Christopher Pike.

 

[Warped9]

^^ I might give these a try. I'll also look up DC's Annual #2 for the Final Voyage issue.

One of the things that turned me off many of the comics I've seen over the years as well as most of the novels is that they seem little more than continuity porn, just trying to cram as many references as possible to previous things. Just tell a damned story. The ship and characters and universe are all the continuity you need. How often tell TOS episodes make references to prior episodes? Hardly ever.

 

[Therin of Andor]

^Sequels, prequels and returning guests from canonical ST do tend to sell better when done as tie-ins, AFAIK, and give marketing people a "hook".

 

[Allyn Gibson]

^Sequels, prequels and returning guests from canonical ST do tend to sell better when done as tie-ins, AFAIK, and give marketing people a "hook".

Also, it helps to consider who comprises the market for tie-ins.

The television episodes and movies should ideally be for as broad an audience as possible, from the hardcore fan to the granny who's never seen another episode in her life.

The people buying the tie-ins are the fans. They've invested their time and mental energy in the franchise. Now they're investing their money in the ancillary products. Sequels, prequels, and returning guest stars don't necessarily sell better, but there's certainly going to be more interest from the fans in seeing the old familiar places again.

 

[Warped9]

^Sequels, prequels and returning guests from canonical ST do tend to sell better when done as tie-ins, AFAIK, and give marketing people a "hook".

Also, it helps to consider who comprises the market for tie-ins.

The television episodes and movies should ideally be for as broad an audience as possible, from the hardcore fan to the granny who's never seen another episode in her life.

The people buying the tie-ins are the fans. They've invested their time and mental energy in the franchise. Now they're investing their money in the ancillary products. Sequels, prequels, and returning guest stars don't necessarily sell better, but there's certainly going to be more interest from the fans in seeing the old familiar places again.

I disagree. I want to see something new. Take me to the "strange new worlds" and show me things we haven't seen before. For me that was a HUGE appeal of TOS and continues to be when I read and watch good science fiction.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I disagree. I want to see something new. Take me to the "strange new worlds" and show me things we haven't seen before. For me that was a HUGE appeal of TOS and continues to be when I read and watch good science fiction.

I don't disagree, Warped9.

One of my concerns with Titan when it began was that it didn't live up to what Marco had billed it as -- "TOS in the TNG era." I asked him at a convention how he could balance that tagline, which implied strange new worlds and all that rot, with a series that kicked off with a sequel to a movie, a sequel to a novel, and a sequel to an episode in its first three novels. TOS had shown us new stuff all the time, while Titan appeared to be "kisses to the past." Marco's answer was that audience today expect more continuity than they did forty years ago, and that a sequel to Nemesis was unavoidable because any Titan series was going to have to deal with the ship's mission to Romulan space. (And I admit that Orion's Hounds isn't really a sequel to "Farpoint," though at the time I asked the question Orion's Hounds hadn't been published and what little we knew about the book was the starjellies.)

I guess it's a question of how you use the past. Is it an excuse for the story, or is it a springboard to another story?