The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1824: Star Trek Year Four #3, September 2007

I will post a picture here when I've got my electronics all figured out - can't make them talk to each other for some reason.

https://www.comics.org/issue/381201/

I really enjoyed this comic, and I think I'm definitely going to have to track down the other three issues of the series. Today's comic gave us a great science fiction story, one where we think one thing is happening, but it's actually something entirely other. As I mentioned when I read the first issue, the format of the comic allows for the Enterprise to really encounter strange new life forms, not just the humans with funny foreheads that tend to dominate in the television series. The viral lifeform encountered by the crew in this story is an excellent idea, and the symbiotic relationship that they have with the crew of the Enterprise, even though the crew don't realize it at the time, is an interesting way of exploring the universe. While perhaps not a completely new idea, the execution of it was great.

Gordon Purcell's art is very good as well, quite different from what I remember from Gammarauders. And not that I want to come down on him again, but I think that the more animated style of art from Steve Conley over the last couple of issues suited the series more so than Purcell's. The series starts out in the aesthetic vein of the animated series, which did for a while continue the 5-year mission, so to have the art jump from the cartoonish to a slightly more realistic depiction throws things off, for me at least. Which I think is almost the same critique I had for his work on Gammarauders. What I really have to do is see if I can find a comic that starts out with Mr. Purcell - then I won't have anything to compare it to and can appreciate it on its own merits.

Well, as much as we can do that with anything, if Derrida is to be believed.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1823: Star Trek Year Four #2, August 2007

Damn, but this is a good series. At first I wasn't on board with the art, but parsing it in terms of the animated series, it's fantastic.

But, oh shit, Kirk is a goddamn sexist bastard. The first page has him referring to one of the female servants on a particular planet as part of the planet's "natural resources." I'm hoping that this is a conscious decision on the part of the writer, David Tischman, demonstrating an understanding of Kirk's character in the original series. I'm hoping it's not, from a 2007 comic, a declaration of sexism on a level that we really ought to have moved past. Again, call me an optimist (those who know me laugh now), but I'm hoping this is narrative sophistication rather than social crudeness on display.

I've got one more issue of this series, and it only ran 6 issues, but I really think I may have to track it down. Perhaps it's the length of time since I've actually seen/read Star Trek, but this comic, and, based on yesterday, this series, really are excellent. Tischman and Conley have managed a really good adaptation of a particular era of the series, one that doesn't simply attempt to be an episode of the television series, but that instead transfers the atmosphere and narrative-style of the series to the two-dimensional medium of comics.

Was supposed to get back to Hard Time tomorrow, but we'll see about maybe reading the next issue of this series. Gordon Purcell is the artist, and the last time I saw him on something, it was Gammarauders, and I wasn't a fan of his style on that series. Interestingly, he's coming in in the next issue to replace an artist whose style is much more stylized that Purcell's, much like he did with Martin King in Gammarauders, so we'll see if that shift affects my enjoyment of the series. I'm so fickle :D.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1822: Star Trek Year Four #1, July 2007

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.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1191: Star Trek Alien Spotlight: The Gorn, September 2007

Today is my Mum's birthday, so I thought I'd do a bit of a tribute. Back when I was much younger, my Mum and Dad used to drag us from flea market to flea market as my Mum tracked down every Star Trek paperback novel that had been published up to that point. This was all the old ones, like Spock Must Die and the adaptations of the TV and cartoon series. While I may not have appreciated it at the time, I think much of my collecting practice these days comes directly from those trips. I've learned that in the dusty corners of these kinds of markets, the most wonderful treasures can be found.
And more, I remember back in 1987 when The Next Generation started airing, and we would gather on a Saturday afternoon (I think) and watch Picard and crew have amazing adventures. Basically, my Mum was the template of my geekiness. She even loves, to this day, to regale me with stories of having sat and read old Superman comics at the shop around the corner from her, back in the dawn of the Silver Age. Basically, I come by how I am quite honestly. One day I'll tell you about my Dad's proclivity for organizing the data he collects, and I'll come completely into focus.

So Happy Birthday, Mum!

But as for the comic...it was amazing. Totally not what I was expecting, though I'm not actually sure what I was expecting. First and foremost, this was a great example of not judging books by covers, or comics in this case. The Gorn prove themselves a very interesting species, a reptilian version of the Klingons, perhaps. It was delightful to see a comic in which the first reaction of an ostensibly alien species to a human incursion is to render aid, rather than to attack. I'm sure there's been quite a bit written about them, but I kind of prefer getting bits and pieces, like this comic or the episode it carries on from, and having the race be more mystery than interlocutor.

There's also a really tragic aspect to the comic, in that the Federation crew that we see are actually the doomed crew of the Reliant, the ship that Khan commandeers in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Though it's nice to see Captain Terrell demonstrating exactly why he's in charge of a ship, the knowledge of his fate ads a bittersweet melody to this tale. As usual, what I'm curious about is the reaction to this comic of people who don't know Terrell's fate. It would be a very different reading experience. I guess that's kind of what Stanley Fish's reader response theory gets at.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of Pride month, so I'll be doing some special things to celebrate, not least of which will be a comic that somehow intersects with queerness, either explicitly or implicitly, each day of the month.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1148: Star Trek #6, July 1984

One last little bit of Star Trek, but I think we'll be back soon.

Though today's cover makes it look like the duplicated Kirk will be the main thrust of the issue, it's little more than an inconvenient circumstance that occurs late in the comic. Where other stories might make the shape-shifting assassin the primary focus of the story, it's really the reasons for the assassination attempt that are the salient aspect. The politics of the story is the important part. Further, the familial relationship between the assassin and target reveals a far less utopian society that the television series (well, TOS and TNG, at least) show us. There are those within the Federation who disagree with that body's policies and actions. It seems to me that the utopian aspect perhaps tends to the more basic needs, the lower tiers of Maslow's hierarchy, whereas the higher levels, dealing with morality and governance, are still very much areas of debate. As they are in our own time. In the way, the Star Trek comic is doing what TV Trek, and any good science fiction, does very well: turns a mirror upon us and asks what we see.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1147: Star Trek #5, June 1984

One of the things that Jim Kirk is known for, within and without the fictional universe, is breaking (or bending, as he would say) the Prime Directive. This tenet of non-interference drives the exploratory wing of Starfleet, but what Kirk's experiences nicely demonstrate for us is that no rule can be absolute. There's always going to be a time when disregarding, or creatively interpreting, a rule is necessary.

Kirk excels at this. Not so much the man up there on the cover who, at no time, does anything remotely like what he's doing there.

I don't remember how much of the series deals with these kind of surreptitious incursions onto less-developed worlds, but it will be interesting to see how the colonial aspect of Starfleet is parsed through these encounters.

A further aspect of this is that in today's issue, Ensign Bearclaw is said to have had a "traditional Indian upbringing," a term that just seems highly inappropriate to the ostensibly utopian universe of the Federation. There's no real acknowledgment of how Bearclaw might react, given his traditional upbringing, to the work of Starfleet and the Federation. And I think the real problem here is not so much the depiction of Bearclaw as a tracker - that's something that is rather believable of someone of his background. But there's a lack of any other representation, the Indigenous person who isn't a tracker. I was talking to my students about representation and the danger of stereotyping today. Hopefully Mike Barr will be able to steer away from stereotyping.

It's very "thinky," this Star Trek comic.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1146: Star Trek #4, May 1984

Our story concludes, with the Excalbians facing off against the Organians. There's something interesting being said in this comic about the nature of Good and Evil. The Excalbians simply do not see their role as Evil, and Kirk plays on this in his solution to the problem of the story. It's true that the bad guys never think they're the bad guys. Well, hardly ever.

Reading these comics is like half-remembering a dream. I've read them before, numerous times, but it really has been so long that when I read a story, some details come back, but not all of them.

A couple more issues of this series, a taste of where Barr, Sutton, and company are going to take us, then we'll boldly go somewhere else in the collection.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1145: Star Trek #3, April 1984

Though TNG claimed that Worf was amongst the first, if not the first, Klingon to serve aboard a Federation vessel, there is also the case of Konom. Where the action of this storyline is the usual Federation versus Klingons, the threat of war, etc., the story of Konom actually gives us some emotional depth. Yesterday's comic was titled "..the Only Good Klingon," of course trading on the usual completion of that phrase "...is a dead one." However, what the title actually refers to is a Klingon who cannot stomach the killing and bloodshed that define his civilization. It is Konom who gives the Enterprise the first clue as to the Klingons' new tech, and he assists Kirk and Bryce in escaping the space station. Konom remains an important character throughout this series, and there's some excellent stories dealing with the prejudicial treatment he receives. His first friend is Ensign Bryce, whose father was killed by the very regiment to which Konom was assigned. Their relationship is a nice way of looking the reparation of long-burned bridges.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1144: Star Trek #2, March 1984

The tag line at the top is a little disingenuous. Yes, Kirk's there, but so are Saavik and the newly-introduced Ensign Bryce, who, along with her other new recruit cohort, is amongst the reasons I love this series so much. The opening of the first issue shows the death of two characters named Bearclaw and Bryce aboard the ship that the Enterprise is investigating. Similarly, as the Enterprise leaves Earth, two new recruits bearing the same names are aboard. The drama that unfolds between these two ensigns is excellent, and gives us a perspective on a few things that we don't often see in Star Trek. First, there's some generational trauma going on here, as Ensign Bearclaw blames father's death on Bryce's father. Bryce, on the other hand, claims her father did his job, and couldn't have done anything more. Add to this the fact that Bearclaw is an Indigenous person, and you've got some interesting commentary, both on recent and historical traumas. I'm curious to see how Barr and co. handle Bearclaw's portrayal. The second interesting thing these characters do for us is show us what life is actually like aboard the Enterprise. They're bored a lot of the time, or just fed up with one another - there might be a lot of people on board, but a small population is a small population. There was a Star Trek: TNG episode ("Lower Decks"?) that attempted something similar to this, but the advantage of the serialized comic medium is that a story is often going to be more drawn out that on television, leaving more space for the development of ancillary characters.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1143: Star Trek #1, February 1984

The edge of my copy of this comic, just over by where Uhura is on the cover, is quite damaged, torn and split and worn. That's because I've read and re-read this series many times over the last 34 years. My copy of this comic was first purchased by my Mum, who collected comics right along side me for quite some time. It was she who picked this one up, and the first issue of Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the first issue of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. She wasn't a fan of Miller's take on the Dark Knight.

But she did like this series, and collected all 56 issues, along with the film tie-ins and annuals. And then she gave them to me. Which I'm totally fine with, because I really, truly love this series. Mike Barr and company perfectly translate what's great about Star Trek to a different medium. They work within the boundaries of the films that were coming out at the time, but tell remarkable stories that capture the action and the thought of the original series, while also embracing the serial nature of the medium.

I'm going to have many things to say about this run, I'm sure. But for today, let me just say I'm really excited to be delving back into it. It's been ages since I've read it.

And it makes me think of my Mum.

More to come...