Yesterday was the anniversary of the airing of the first episode of Star Trek back in 1966. It seems like a good time to talk about some Star Trek comics.
The earliest Star Trek comics were from Gold Key. They are pretty goofy for the most part, and the characters don't resemble their tv counterparts at all, but it's always interesting to see tie-in media from an age when there was very little of that media out there. These all have been collect in archives from IDW.
The Marvel Comics series of 1980-1982 is better than the Gold Key series, though it mostly fails to feel particularly Star Trekian. When it does, the episodes that inspired it are pretty obvious. It probably didn't help that Marvel was prohibited from using anything that wasn't in the first movie. IDW has collected much of the early Marvel stuff in an omnibus (now out of print).
DC had the Star Trek license for quite a while. Their output was on par with the best of the Marvel issues on average and better at times. Much of this has not been reprinted in a while (though there are Best of Peter David archives and other themed archives). A graphic novel by Chris Claremont and Adam Hughes Debt of Honor has been reprinted in a facsimile edition.
I had that Marvel comic with the evil gnomes (and have written about it in the past): left an indelible impression on my memory!
ReplyDeleteThere was also a DVD published with all of the Star Trek comics published. It also included the Marvel/Paramount co-branded comics, which were very good and DS9 comics published by Malibu. It's a great collection if you can find it somewhere.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've got that set. It's great.
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