|
Post by codystarbuck on Aug 30, 2021 22:40:00 GMT -5
I didn't regularly read it. never got my hands ont he Gold Key ones, in the wild. A friend had some, but he was a big Trek fan and got a ton of Trek stuff, between he and his brother.
My first was the Marvel Star Trek TMP adaptation, which got a little confusing, at parts, since they couldn't convey some of the visuals, of the film (the wormhole sequence is one that I recall). I was in college by the time the DC stuff was going and busy enough that I mostly just glanced at them. I was busy with other parts of the indie comic world and DC's post-Crisis frenzy.
Picked up debt of Honor, both because of Claremont and Adam Hughes. Loved the art and the mixing of old Trek characters; but, did not care for Claremont shoehorning Alien into it, like everything else he was doing.
I have it all on digital, now, but haven't gotten around to perusing the stuff.
|
|
|
Post by profh0011 on Aug 30, 2021 23:20:29 GMT -5
I often have a slight problem with the artwork in movie or tv adaptations to comics: it seems as if the artist is trying a little too hard at times to capture the features of the actors. My favorite TV-based comic was probably when Dave Gibbons did DOCTOR WHO. He was the artists for the Tom Baker era, and did the 1st comics story for the Peter Davison era. (This was all years before he did his first work for DC on GREEN LANTERN.)
|
|
|
Post by tonebone on Aug 31, 2021 8:13:38 GMT -5
My brush with comics fame... and Star Trek. A few years ago, I had the honor of working on a Star Trek VR game, Bridge Crew. There were two releases, the first being in the "Kelvin" timeline, with the added bonus of being able to play The Original Series Enterprise. The second release was the much-asked-for The Next Generation version. For the Kelvin timeline, we were tasked with designing a "hero" ship, the Aegis, that would be the team's "home ship". The interior needed to look like the Kelvin Enterprise, but the exterior had to NOT look like the Kelvin Enterprise. The ship we designed (my design, finished by another artist) was supposed to be an experimental "stealth" version of the "constitution class" ship, but with the familiar fuselage, saucer, and two nacelles. We tried to make it sleeker, more faceted, and more stealthy-looking. I dropped the nacelles to hide behind the saucer, and pulled the main fuselage up closer to the saucer. The impulse engines had special louvers to hide the energy output. I designed a few more ships, like the Saladin, which was based on old blueprints released from the Original Series, which only had a saucer and a nacelle. I had to "Kelvinify" the look. Anyways, as our game was wrapping up, the Beyond movie was released, and SPOILERS the Enterprise was destroyed. Then IDW launched the Boldly Go comic, and, much to our surprise, CBS had sneakily fed our ship designes to IDW and they appeared in the comics (the first 5 issues). Man were we excited about that! Our designs were canon! This is the first page of the first issue... and our "Aegis" design. This is the "Saladin" class design I did, which was more difficult than it looks. The ship gets sliced to pieces in the story, but gets to show off the underside a little. A nice image of the back view of the Aegis class, with a Romulan design that I can't remember if we were involved in. The second release was a TNG version of the game, and we designed a handful of Romulan ships for that. If you have an Oculus Rift, or Playstation VR, get the game, and get 3 other people to get it. You play as a crew of 4, commanding the ships through all kinds of cool missions.
|
|
|
Post by brutalis on Aug 31, 2021 9:58:34 GMT -5
That's the Federation for you. Make a "stealth" ship which utilizes standard known Federation design and plaster it's name an registration NCC on the hull for all to see.
|
|
|
Post by majestic on Aug 31, 2021 10:51:20 GMT -5
I love the original Star Trek and TNG. Read a lot of the novels. But never really got into the comic books. Not sure why.
|
|
|
Post by MWGallaher on Aug 31, 2021 19:15:48 GMT -5
My first Star Trek comic came too late to be part of my Golden Anniversary reviews, and it's one of the few of those early comics that I can't (yet) identify: one of the Gold Key issues from '72 or '73. I remember being greatly disappointed by it, so much so that it didn't stay in my collection. It may have been one of the only Gold Key comics I bought, and I didn't like the squared off word balloons or Western Publishing's distinctive approach to coloring. I'm not sure what it was, but it seemed like they were using a different ink than the Marvels and DCs published in Sparta, Illinois, so the colors always looked off to me. And there always seemed to be so much magenta! I was definitely on the DC bandwagon when they got the Trek license, and I loved those Barr/Sutton/Villagran issues, especially when they were filling in the gap after the movies destroyed the Enterprise. I've got one page of original art from DC's run, not because it was Star Trek, but because it was the only piece of Dan Spiegle original art I could find for sale.
|
|
|
Post by Nowhere Man on Aug 31, 2021 20:02:24 GMT -5
I love Star War and Star Trek, but I've always had this block to them in comics. I've also never read any Star Trek novels (or Star Wars). It's a bias that I have that just seems wrong, but I can't shake it. It irritates me. I suppose I have this odd stance that a creative property belongs in the medium that it was originally designed for. I think it's why on the very rare occasions when an adaptation supersedes my expectations (Superman: The Movie, BTAS) in other mediums I latch on to them.
|
|
|
Post by String on Aug 31, 2021 21:18:01 GMT -5
I love the Trek, possibly even more than I love the Wars. I watched all the series faithfully, all the tech manuals I still own along with all the encyclopedias, the trivia books, behind-the-scenes books, even a star charts book. Then there is all the novels I've own & read (and I will say, any Trek novel written by David Mack is a must-buy, must-read for me). But for some reason, when it comes to Trek comics, eh, not so much. The first Trek comic I remember reading is: From the late 70s, I believe. Two good stories with some great art yet I have no idea how I got it back then in my youth. I want to say either as a birthday present or a Christmas present so I must've liked the Trek even at that early age (probably 7-8 at the time). I still own it and even got William Shatner to sign it a few years back when I saw him at a GalaxyCon event (yes, I picked to see, get autographs and have a photo taken with Shatner over David Tennant. Sorry, Tennant, love your Doctor but been a fan of Shatner for far longer). But it wasn't till the early 80s, around the time of Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock that my interest really took off for the franchise. A local TV station was airing the TOS on a more frequent basis which I perused on my first ever personal TV, small and black & white as it was though (and yes, had to adjust the antenna to ensure proper reception). So I was thrilled when DC released their first Trek series back in '84. They followed the movies more strictly but even within that confine I think they did an excellent job. In fact, #9-16 remains one of my all-time favorite story arcs: Say what you will about the possible over-use of the Mirror Universe in the shows but here, Barr crafted an excellent story featuring an invasion by the Terran Empire. I don't know why but yes, Sutton & Villagran CLICKED on the art in this arc and throughout their time on the series. Their panel layouts, shots of the ship action and scenes on the bridge, it evoked a certain feeling that somehow captured the essence of the show and franchise. In fact, I recently acquired a TPB of this Mirror Universe arc published by IDW some years back even though I still own my original issues. This trade and another trade released by Titan Books which collects the first six issues of this DC Trek run are the only collections I know of portion of this series. A shame I think, the whole series needs to be collected. That being said, for some reason when TNG started up soon afterwards and DC released their second Trek series in late '89 which wasn't as tied into the overall TV shows like the previous volume was with the films, I kinda bowed out and have only sporadically checked in ever since. Maybe part of it is because, due to my childhood watching, I fell in love with the franchise with Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the Original crew. So I think I have more of a soft spot for TOS in the comics than the other sub-franchises.
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Aug 31, 2021 21:29:54 GMT -5
I love Star War and Star Trek, but I've always had this block to them in comics. I've also never read any Star Trek novels (or Star Wars). It's a bias that I have that just seems wrong, but I can't shake it. It irritates me. I suppose I have this odd stance that a creative property belongs in the medium that it was originally designed for. I think it's why on the very rare occasions when an adaptation supersedes my expectations (Superman: The Movie, BTAS) in other mediums I latch on to them. Trek fared better in novels, in my opinion, while I think Star Wars, visually, lent itself better to comics. I recommend any Star Wars comic written by Archie Goodwin and and novel by Alan Dean Foster (which means the Star Wars novelization and Splinter of the Mind's Eye) and Timothy Zahn; but, most of the rest of Star Wars prose I read was middling, at best. No consistency in how the Force works and they tended to lack the swashbuckling element. I have heard that Mike Stackpole's Rogue Squadron books are pretty good, for that sort of thing, but never read them. For Trek, if Peter David was writing, it was usually pretty good and Claremont was fine, before the Alien stand-ins turned up. I haven't read a ton of Trek comics, though. I have read several novels and they vary, though anything by David Gerrold is good, the movie novelizations, by Vonda McIntyre are always good and expand on the film and Greg Cox' Kahn trilogy was very good and incorporated a lot of stuff from various series and films. It brought back Gary 7 and Roberta Lincoln, giving a taste of what that series could have been, if it had sold, used the Air Force pilot who accidentally got beamed abourd the Enterprise, the guy who gets the secret to transparent aluminum, in ST4, tech from the DS( episode where Quark ends up at Roswell) and other elements. There is one about the Kobayashi Maru test, by Julia Ecklar, that was very good. It relates what happened when others took the test, as well as how Kirk cheated (different than the Abrams Trek version). The command crew are stuck in a disabled shuttle, with no transporters and declining environmentals and a wounded member and McCoy teases out of them their stories, to distract them from their likely deaths. Scotty's demonstrated he was a born engineer, not a ship captain, Sulu's shows an alternate way to view the exercise, and Chekov is spectacularly blown up, but the test leads to a bigger one, where he learns the value of teamwork and leadership. Funny, thought-provoking and consistent with the characters. Peter David's books are usually good and he did one that dealt with Q and the Squire of Gothos, making the obvious connection.
|
|
|
Post by tonebone on Sept 1, 2021 14:29:35 GMT -5
That's the Federation for you. Make a "stealth" ship which utilizes standard known Federation design and plaster it's name an registration NCC on the hull for all to see. As with modern stealth aircraft, the idea isn't so much to make it not optically visible, but more to make it invisible or hard to track by radar, etc. It's to hide it's physical form and energy signature from sensors. Most aircraft battle is conducted out of visible range, today, and would probably be so in the Star Trek universe, even though they always show the ships nose-to-nose for drama. It still has to have markings to align with treaty conventions and to be identified as friend or foe. And, actually, in our game it had an "X" designation, since it was experimental.
|
|
|
Post by tonebone on Sept 1, 2021 14:52:15 GMT -5
I was a big fan of the Marvel series that continued the era started in Star Trek the Motion Picture. A lot of the stories were "is the ship haunted, no it's a psychic!" type thing, but there was a nice variety of artistic teams through the couple of years it ran. Gil Kane, Dave Cockrum, Klaus Janson, Gene Day, etc. I guess I was of the age where the stories hit me in just the right spot. I recently bought the "Omnibus" edition from IDW. It's smaller than a regular comic, is missing the first 3 issues, the adaptation of the movie, and has the WORST reproduction of any comic I have ever ever seen. It's easy to see the pages were scanned from the original newsprint comics, but they were digitally "cleaned up" until they are barely legible. In the collection's credits, they should have a credit for "art ruiner". It's that bad. Here is one of the pages, but it's not even one of the bad ones. I do still love it, though. My introduction to Trek was the movie, and I had never seen the Original Series on TV, but I was aware of it. This series was the REAL Star Trek to me until I got older.
|
|
|
Post by tonebone on Sept 1, 2021 14:59:45 GMT -5
Let this be the Tribble Hole we fall into traversing into a Mirror Universe where Trek, NOT Wars is the STAR topic of comic book discussion. Published through various companies, the pride of the Federation, the Starship Enterprise remains THE Premiere science-fiction comic book series. From Dell[edit: Gold Key doh], to Marvel, to DC, to Malibu and now with IDW, there is plenty of Trek for us to discuss. From the good, to the bad, to the ugly (you have to admit Klingon's aren't all that beautiful) no matter what comic book version you prefer reading, there is a galaxy full of excitement and adventures to explore. Put on your Red Shirt, beam up and Warp Speed ahead! Arguably, Gold Key's Star Trek was closer to the source than most would know (at a glance). For one, consider how the "world" was described: Gold Key comic's use of more "space age" descriptions mirrored the early episodes of the TV series, where technology such as the transporter (referred to as a "materializer in "Where No Man Has Gone Before"--the second pilot) or "Starfleet" were not yet firmly established, so very 20th century terms were used.
Of the numerous Star Trek comic books published over a half century, most of the art was shockingly shoddy--hardly the best treatment of so popular a franchise. Interestingly enough, it was when ST was in its infancy as a network series--and in its early 70s syndication years that it enjoyed some of its best artwork. From Nevio Zeccara to the grossly underrated Alberto Giolitti (and other artists working for his studio in Italy) Gold Key's artists lent the same, lean realism applied to endless Western Publishing cowboy and fantasy comics to ST, giving the adaptation the kind of non-superheroic approach that would be lost in adaptations in the decades to follow.
There was an energy to Golitti's ST work, always keeping the story moving to make up for the medium's inherent shortcomings in adapting film and TV, as seen in a page and original art from Star Trek #7 (March, 1970):
Gold Key's Star Trek was fairly popular--one of the few TV adaptations to last more than a decade. In that time, its status granted it a second and third life in other publications. First, there were two abridged reprints as part of 1974's Dan Curtis Giveaways, a collection of 6" x 3" mini comics:
DCG featured some of the publisher's most popular titles, including Ripley's Believe it or Not, The Twilight Zone, The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor, and Dark Shadows--the latter an adaptation of the famous gothic horror soap opera created by Dan Curtis, hence the name of this collection. It has been theorized that the collection was named for the producer/director not only due to the Dark Shadows phenomenon, but at the time, he was very popular as the director of several TV adaptations of classic horror literature (e.g., The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray, etc.) and produced 1972's The Night Stalker, once the highest rated TV film in history.
Star Trek's entries in the collection included a reprint of issues 13 and 14.
In the 1970s, paper and hardback collections of monthly comics were a successful, growing category, and Gold Key's Star Trek did not miss out on the action. Between 1976 and 1977, Golden Press published four volumes of Star Trek: The Enterprise Logs:
Each volume contained 224 pages of reprints, plus new (and very imaginative) in-universe profiles of Kirk and Spock (called "Psychofiles"), a history of how humans progressed from early space exploration to the era of the U.S.S. Enterprise ("From Sputnik to Warp Drive") and a three-page profile of Alberto Giolitti's life, work and artistic process. With little question, The Enterprise Logs pointed to just how popular Gold Key's adaptation had been, and for anyone around in 1976 (when Star Trek celebrated its first decade), they would have seen TEL everywhere, and as I recall, often sold out.
While not a perfect adaptation, Gold Key's Star Trek was one of the most enjoyable versions of the TV series from any publisher.
That first volume of The Enterprise Logs was the first "Trade Paperback" I ever saw. I was about 8 years old and had a visit to the dentist. At the end, he always invited the kids to pick something out of the "treasure box". Beyond the vampire teeth, wind up teeth, toothbrushes, and other tooth-related "treasures", could see something like a magazine laying on the floor of the box. It was that first volume, and, unlike the other junk, actually earned the name "treasure". It was my first TPB and it was a great one. I had never even heard of Star Trek, and had no idea it was a tv show until I was a teen.
|
|
|
Post by profh0011 on Sept 1, 2021 16:20:32 GMT -5
I said the Gold Key stuff had gotten more popular over the years since it ended.
I just remembered another comic... the one in MAD back in '66 or so. Probably with Angelo Torres art.
"RUMBLE!!!!!" "What was that?" "That-- was a 6.892 amplitude earthquake." "How do you know?" "See this instrument? The little hand fell off Donald Duck."
|
|
|
Post by tarkintino on Sept 1, 2021 18:12:11 GMT -5
Another chapter in Star Trek's (the original series) reach was a serialized comic strip appearing in the British TV-oriented magazines TV21 / Joe 90: Top Secret, and Valiant. Beginning only a few months before the TV series made its UK debut, the strips ran from 1969 - 1973, often boasting some of the best art (e.g., Harry F. Lindfield, et al.) ever to grace a Star Trek comic, as seen in the examples. Generally, accuracy to the source was fairly tight, with some interesting exceptions, such as the cover of TV21 (above, right) with its redesign of the shuttlecraft. The stories were another matter; from time to time, the characters mirrored their TV counterparts, while other scripts had more of an older style of sci-fi storytelling in Star Trek trappings. A decades-long interest to many Star Trek comic collectors, the British strips were finally collected in three volumes by IDW (from 2016-17) titled Star Trek: The Classic UK Comics. I've read the UK strips, and while they're not perfect, they are a very important part of Star Trek's comic history, during those all-important early syndication years.
|
|
|
Post by SJNeal on Sept 1, 2021 20:28:33 GMT -5
|
|