In order that I don't fall into my usual trap of getting jaded and annoyed by a longer run of comics, I'm breaking up Hard Time with some other stuff I stumbled upon as I was revamping my filing system last week. When my brother was downsizing and moving, he bequeathed to me all of his I.D.W.-published Star Trek comics, of which I have only read one. So when I flipped past these, I thought that I'd have a look.
This was a pretty good comic, very much in line with the style of storytelling the original series is known for. We even had a redshirt getting left behind and then killed, with Kirk and the crew showing just as little emotion over the fact as they did in their live action incarnations. And speaking of that incarnation, this comic isn't really going for that particular aesthetic of Star Trek. The art style is much more influenced by the cartoon that followed the last of the live action series, a fact I noticed almost right away from the very rigid construction of many of the characters. At first I wasn't sure if this was the fault of a less-talented artist, until I realized that Mr. Conley was actually going for the aesthetic of the cartoon, which is famously a very poorly-animated show. After that, the comic fell into place for me. I'm hoping that the series, such as it is at only six issues, maintains its "one and done" style - I was rather happy to get a complete story this morning that really did feel like it could have been a 30 - 45-minute episode of a television series. It was also lovely to see some of the non-human characters from the animated series being deployed. While I get that there were budgetary restrictions, I've always felt that the lack of non-humans on board the original Enterprise was one of the aspects of the series that kept from really immersing myself in it. A universe filled with only, or mostly, humanoid creatures just seems very boring to me.
A bit more Star Trek tomorrow, and then back to Ethan and his hard time.
More to follow.
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