T.J. McLean Writes

A longtime showbiz journalist and fan's thoughts on comic books, movies and other cool stuff.

Tag: Gene Day

Comic Treks: Star Trek (Marvel) #16 (Oct. 1981)

By

On June 10, 2022

In Bags and Boards

“There’s No Place Like Gnomes!” (22 pages)
Writer: Martin Pasko
Pencils: Luke McDonnell
Inks: Gene Day & Sal Trapani
Letters: Janice Chiang
Colors: Carl Gafford
Editor: Allen Milgrom
Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter
Cover artists: Luke McDonnell & Allen Milgrom

This post has been in draft form for months, mostly because this issue is a real chore to get through.

Why?

Just take a look at the cover, with the awful brown color hold background and the strange proportions of the attacking gnomes versus the one in Spock’s hand.

It gets just a little bit better on the first page, which is nicely colored.

Star Trek #16, Page 1.
By far the best-executed page in the book. It’s all downhill from here …

The story begins with Kirk, Spock, McCoy and some guards beaming down to the planet Valerian — Pasko must be a fan of Christin and Mezieres — for an annual check-in with Federation colonists who have not replied to hails.

Scans on the surface and from the bridge show there are humanoid life forms, though they are only 15 centimeters high — too small to be part of the Andorian colony — and they’re coming from beneath the surface.

Star Trek #16, Page 3, panel 5.
Is Chekov a serial harasser? Or is he the victim of bad writing? You decide!

The encampment is abandoned and Chekov comforts Themon, a female Andorian who is on her first planetside assignment. Pasko was clearly trying to echo the season two episode “The Apple.” Today, Chekov’s pattern of romancing junior female officers during landing party missions just looks creepy.

Star Trek #16, Page 5.
I don’t know where to begin outlining what’s wrong with this page.

A shambling humanoid creature appears, trying to speak. He’s zapped with some kind of energy flare, and McCoy takes him back to the ship for examination. Just then, similar creatures grab Themon, Chekov fires his phaser, and a fight breaks out. The creatures, however, appear only interested in disarming the Starfleet officers.

Star Trek #16, Page 6.
Kirk fights an ape-like creature, which is good. The gnomes coming out of the ground are just bad. And it’s a shame there’s no equivalent to “red shirt” for this era of Trek (at least that I know of).

Back at the beam-down point, security guard Sternbach is watching over the supplies when gnomes rise up through the earth and toss him into a tree.

This continues for a few pages, with the humanoids at one point dragging away Themon by her hair (or perhaps her antennae), and gnomes popping up out of the ground wielding crossbows and hammers.

They drive off the humanoids, which Spock identifies as trolls and the little people as gnomes. Back on the ship, McCoy’s annoyed to find his patient is shrinking in height.

Star Trek #16, Page 9.
The inking on this isn’t bad. It’s definitely got a Terry Austin influence to it. But the anatomy is strange, and Kirk and McCoy both look deformed in the first and last panels.

Kirk is bemused and annoyed by the whole thing. Me too.

The crew checks in with Sternbach and decide to take the supplies back to the ship. Once they beam up, though, a little armed troll on a flying bat escapes from the boxes and starts wrecking the transporter room.

Star Trek #16, Page 11.
Security is just as weak as it’s always been on the Enterprise. Imagine how bad this would have looked with 1960s or 1970s-era special effects if this was a TV episode!

On the surface, Kirk and Spock meet with the gnomes and Spock deduces that this alien race must have visited Earth in the past and inspired the legend of the gnomes. This is another of Pasko’s echoes from the original series (“Who Mourns for Adonais?” for example).

The bat-mounted dude on the ship makes it to the bridge, where he dive-bombs Uhura’s station and is at last captured by security. He starts speaking Irish-accented English and surrenders, but communications are out with the surface.

Down below, Kirk, Spock and Chekov follow sensor readings for Themon into a cave populated by Trolls, who attack.

Star Trek #16, Page 15.
Do universal translators even work with dialects like this? I may use that scan of the last panel to reply to online trolls — perhaps the only lasting contribution this issue makes to, well, anything.
Star Trek #16, Page 16, panel 1.
Someone’s reference model was built incorrectly.

Back in space, aboard a ship that bears no resemblance to the USS Enterprise, McCoy and Chapel’s patient continues to shrink. The bat-riding critters are put in the brig, and when zapped by the force field, lose their red caps and transform back into regular looking gnomes.

The landing party finds Themon, who’s just fine. McCoy calls and says the creature he beamed up had an alien virus that caused his transformation. He’s got a cure, of course, which returns the troll to his natural form as a human. He beams down and gives the cure to the trolls, who are revealed as the missing Andorian colonists.

I can’t even begin to summarize the ending of this issue, but it turns out that there’s only two gnomes, and their caps give them powers of illusion, etc. Kirk puts on one of the hats and beats the little shits at their own game, then high-tails it out of this miserable issue.

Star Trek #16, Page 21.
Thank god they did this story in the days of one-and-done issues. Today, this would have been six issues and cost you about $24 to “enjoy.”

Closing it off is a terrible pun from Scotty, again an echo from the final scene in “The Trouble With Tribbles,” though completely lacking in humor or originality.

Star Trek #16, Page 22.
Scotty, you’re demoted.

There’s no letters page this issue, because it’s clear the series is on its last legs awaiting cancelation. Only two more issues to come, but this one is clearly the nadir of the series.

I don’t have much to say about the art. It’s not the worst art I’ve ever seen, and a lot of the time it’s recognizable as Star Trek of this period. But it’s not good, either.

I have to say that I’m glad later versions of Star Trek were able to move past the original series’ predilection for tales in which Earth fantasies turn out to have been inspired by real aliens in space. I know that budgetary and technical limitations drove the need for those stories, but they generally do not hold up well as TV shows or comics.

And with that, I can at last file away this ugly cover and stop looking at it. Blech!

Comic Treks: Star Trek (Marvel) #14 (June 1981)

By

On August 31, 2021

In Bags and Boards

Cover to Star Trek #14
Cover to Star Trek #14. Art by Ed Hannigan and James Sherman.

“We Are Dying, Egypt, Dying!” (22 pages)
Writer: Martin Pasko
Artists: Luke McDonnell & Gene Day
Letters: John Morelli
Colors: Carl Gafford
Editor: Louise Jones
Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter

Parallel civilizations became a Star Trek cliche during the run of the original show. Episodes like “Who Mourns for Adonais?” “A Piece of the Action,” “Patterns of Force,” “Bread and Circuses,” and “Spectre of the Gun” established the convention firmly within the Star Trek premise.

Of course, the reason for doing this was obvious: It saved the production lots of money. Any time they could use stock sets or costumes instead of making new ones, the show saved money. Within the limitations of 1960s TV production, the show did as much as it could with this trope to good effect — mostly.

One of the advantages of doing any sci-fi or fantasy TV or movie property as a comic has always been that those restrictions were nonexistent. It costs just as much to make a comic with new costumes as it did anything else. In fact, it was probably easier, given that there was no need for the artists to research something vaguely accurate. They could just make it up.

But here we go again, anyways. This time, it’s ancient Egypt, and this comic is lot more fun if you imagine the Star Trek crew is raiding the wardrobe and sets of the 1963 classic Cleopatra — perhaps to avenge Star Trek alumna Joan Collins’ losing out on the lead part to Elizabeth Taylor.

Kirk strikes a pose, but Spock is not impressed.

The story starts off simply. The USS Enterprise arrives for the first time at Zeta Reticuli II, and discovers a civilization similar to that of ancient Egypt on Earth. A meteoroid shower composed of siderites will bombard the planet within two days. Made mostly of iron, they will strike the planet’s surface with catastrophic effect. The crew needs to warn the inhabitants of their impending doom — and save them, if possible.

All this is established in only two pages. It seems like today’s comics would spend half an issue on that. As Bill Clinton sort of said, it’s about economy, stupid!

The rapid storytelling continues as Kirk leads a landing party and discovers a burial chamber with statues of Khnum, the Egyptian god of creation, and lots of mummies.

Star Trek #14, Page 3
Bones has been working out! Plus, some solid telling of a pretty strange story. And that odd bit of Kirk’s finger just barely breaking the panel border is distracting to people like me who notice such things.

Of course, there’s technology behind the ancient gods, in the form of a powerfield! And then a giant statue comes to life — that’s comics for you. Kirk stumbles and grabs Khnum’s scepter and it transforms him according to an ancient prophecy. Again — that’s comics for you. The statue zaps some security guards while Chekov rants in transliteration of his accent while he, Uhura and Sulu manage to destroy it. But then, the transformed Kirk shows up.

Star Trek #14, Page 6
Solid art on this page, though not really consistent with the overall Star Trek look.
I especially like the last two panels.

Back on the ship, Spock and Scotty are tracking the meteoroids, and check in with the overdue Kirk. The captain, alas, is possessed by an ancient spirit and now wears a nemes. Spock and Scott notice the change.

But not as much as they notice down on the planet. Kirk announces he’s Menteptah II, descendant of the pharoahs, and he will to save his people from the death that comes from the sky.

I can’t help but read this page and think of how great it would have been on the original series to have William Shatner play Kirk as King Tut from the Batman TV series, a la “The Enemy Within.” It would have been epic on TV. But here, it’s pretty meh.

Star Trek #14, Page 8
Luke McDonnell and Gene Day obviously like McCoy. They give him lots of visual attention.

Kirk confiscates the communicators, but misses one that Bones collected from the killed security guard. While Kirk destroys what he thinks are all the communicators, Spock is slowly reaching the conclusion he needs to beam down to find out what’s happening on the surface.

And then it starts to get both weird and predictable. Kirk prays to a statue of Khnum, which responds in a voice I personally hear as the same as that of the Guardian of Forever from “City on the Edge of Forever” when I read it. He explains, in pure Erich von Daniken mode, that the people of Zeta Reticuli II originated on Earth and traveled across the galaxy on a spaceship and would one day return to their homeworld. Of course, it also evokes Jack Kirby’s work on The Eternals, etc.

Star Trek #14, Page 10
Very strange for Star Trek, but I rather like the inking on this page. It’s very 1970s, Terry Austin stuff.

So it turns out Khnum has chosen Kirk to lead the people of Zeta Reticuli II back to Earth. And if it hadn’t started to unravel by now, the story is definitely unraveling now. Spock gets through to the communicator McCoy took from the security and receives a call for help. So of course, McCoy gets caught and Spock beams down to the planet to help — all by himself.

Meanwhile, Kirk takes Uhura as his “queen.” This is not explained. But they take the now-captured McCoy to join the other landing party members, who are laying on stone slabs with intravenous contraptions that infuse them all with the “Elixir of Obedience.”

Right.

Star Trek #14, Page 14
Comics are sometimes produced in a rush that doesn’t bring out the best work from creators. This page might qualify, based on that terrible version of the Enterprise in panel two and what seems like off anatomy in panel four.

Spock arrives and hears from Scotty that a beam from the pyramid is shrinking the Enterprise, but not its crew. That means everything’s becoming more intimate by the second — and Kirk’s not there to enjoy it! Also, wouldn’t the air pressure increase to the point that people would be crushed?

Spock and Kirk fight it out, while McCoy slips free and makes the ensorcelled Uhura take him to his medical kit — so he can giver her a shot of cordrazine that returns her to normal. Of course, there’s only one drug anyone remembers from Star Trek, and that’s cordrazine. Thank you, Harlan Ellison.

Cramming this much story on one page is a sure sign of an overstuffed plot.

Spock breaks free of Kirk’s death grip long enough to grab a phaser and take out the statue of Khnum. Kirk’s now free, but the ship is still shrinking, and McCoy has freed the rest of the landing party.

At this point, not much sense remains of the plot. Whatever decent ideas it once may have contained are now just tossed out for any reason that will wrap this up by page 22.

Star Trek #14, Page 19
Bring out your dead!

It’s mummy time. The mummies were actual aliens in suspended animation and they come to life to attack the infidel invaders. This scene reminds me of a much better comic, X-Men #56 (May 1969), the first issue of that series with art by the great Neal Adams.

Giants on one side, a shrinking ship on the other! Who doesn’t love this?

Of course, Spock looks at the alien technology and figures out how to reverse the ray affecting the Enterprise, while Kirk “reprises” his role as Menteptah II to get the mummies to stand down.

At long last, page 22 arrives. The landing party beams up, the Enterprise destroys the approaching asteroids and a lame joke from McCoy at Spock’s expense wraps up yet another weak issue of Star Trek.

Star Trek #14, Page 22
At least the Enterprise isn’t massively deformed on this page.

This issue sports a letters column, with several missives complimenting the improved artwork on issue #11, and more than a few complaining about the high prevalence of Star Trek cliches in each issue. (They’re not going to find much improvement by this issue.) There’s no reply from editor Louise Jones, who bows out with this issue to focus on more successful Marvel titles, like The Uncanny X-Men and Star Wars.

Comic Treks: Star Trek (Marvel) #10 (Jan. 1981)

By

On June 12, 2021

In Bags and Boards

Cover to Star Trek (Marvel) #10 (Jan. 1981).
Art by Frank Miller and Gene Day.

“Domain of the Dragon God!” (17 pages)
Writer: Michael Fleisher
Artists: Leo Duranona and Klaus Janson
Letterer: Rick Parker
Colorist: Carl Gafford
Editor: Louise Jones
Editor in Chief: Jim Shooter
Cover: Frank Miller and Gene Day

“From the Files of Starfleet Command Headquarters” (5 pages)
Artist: Dave Cockrum

Based on the page count, this must have been an inventory story commissioned before Marvel raised its page count starting with issues cover-dated September 1980.

I’m not too familiar with the creative crew on this issue: Micheal Fleisher was best known for his work at DC on characters like Jonah Hex and The Spectre. Leo Duranona was from Argentina and worked in the 1970s on comics stories for the Warren line of magazines before working as a storyboard artist in animation and returning to comics in the 1990s to do some Predator work at Dark Horse. Janson, as finisher/inker on this issue, makes it look consistent with Marvel’s other Star Trek comics.

A decent splash page, but these shots of the USS Enterprise lack drama unless something’s happening to the ship. Also, I wonder how Gene Roddenberry felt about his name being so small and Stan Lee’s so large on the page.

This starts with the Enterprise orbiting Barak-7 to investigate the strange properties of its magnetic fields. The fields make it impossible to transport to the surface or use communicators. Kirk is recovering from the flu, so Spock and McCoy take it upon themselves to head up the short surface survey needed to complete their mission. Of course, the engine filters get clogged and the engines overheat, forcing the shuttlecraft to land. Thanks, Obama!

Not sure where this shuttlecraft design comes from. The one that appears at the end of the story is based on the shuttle design from the original TV series.

Spock says he can unclog the filters, while McCoy spots a tribe of primitive humanoids who are about to sacrifice a young woman by tossing her into a pool of hideous reptile creatures. McCoy wants to help her; Spock says they can’t violate the prime directive.

The girl breaks free and runs for the hills — right into Spock and McCoy. The tribesmen attack and the officers defend themselves with phasers set on stun. Spock decides to hold off the attack so McCoy and the girl can escape. Spock is soon overwhelmed by their numbers and captured.

Meanwhile, McCoy gets a history from the girl, whose name is N’Shulu. She say her brother and his followers are trying to destroy the evil ruler Ragnok, whose minions were the ones who just captured Spock.

Solid, but not very dynamic.
The bottom panel is as close as this issue gets to fulfilling the promise of the cover.

Spock meets Ragnok, who sentences him to work as a slave shaping a mountain into a likeness of Ragnok. Back on the Enterprise, Kirk is worried for two thirds of a page.

Spock makes friends and enemies by showing the workers how they can use leverage to lift large rocks more easily. A fight breaks out and Spock gets clubbed.

McCoy meets N’Shulu’s brother, K’Barrgh, and decides the only way to save Spock is to teach these people how to fight. So he creates a bow and arrow and shows them how to use archery to attack from a distance.

McCoy easily and completely violates the prime directive.

Now Kirk is really getting worried, taking a whole page this time asking the crew to find ways to contact Spock and McCoy.

Back on Barak-7, K’Barrgh’s people attack with arrows, and K’Barrgh defeats Ragnok in battle to become the new leader of both tribes. Spock and McCoy are reunited, though disappointed to find out that K’Barrgh’s first act is remake the mountain visage of his defeated foe into a tribute to his own.

The story’s climax is something no one who bought the issue wanted to see: The non-exciting final battle between Ragnok and K’Barrgh! Thanks, Barak-7!
Also, what’s with the random panel break on the left side of the page?

The tribes all turn on McCoy and Spock, who make a break for it and are rescued by the arrival of Kirk in a shuttle modified to not get its engine filters clogged. He picks up his pals and they pass the mountain visage of Ragnok as they head back to the Enterprise.

This is the least interesting story to date in Marvel’s version of Star Trek. It offers very little in terms of plot, character or action. The art by Duranona and Janson is solid and professional, but lacks excitement and drama. This issue is so bland that it’s hard even to make fun of it.

Three Dave Cockrum model sheets with detailed info on the uniforms of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

The last five pages of this issue include some rather nice model sheets by artist Dave Cockrum that explains the various uniforms and their markings worn by the Enterprise crew. Cockrum did lots of sheets like this, and his “How to Draw the X-Men” series is like a master class in the art form. These are similarly useful and interesting for the level of detail put into the drawings and explanations.

There is a truncated letters page in this issue with a few short missives from fans and responses from Mike W. Barr, whose involvement in the series at this point is a mystery as even he writes that Martin Pasko is the regular scripter. The only bit of note is that one letter mentions a Spock reference to Sherlock Holmes, which Barr says he wrote in with the consent of editor Louise Jones and artist Dave Cockrum because it made sense that the Vulcan and the detective would be kindred spirits. This kind of foreshadows the more explicity Trek-Holmes connection with Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Lastly, the best part of the whole issue is arguably the cover. Frank Miller and Gene Day make a solid pairing and the cover copy promising “Spock — The Barbarian!” makes a great sales hook. Even the colors are nice, with the purple background, though the light yellow in the logo fails to pop as well as it could have.

Who remembers that Mandalorian boyo, Fenn Shysa?

By

On December 20, 2019

In Bags and Boards, Movies

I bought this copy of Star Wars #68 in 1985 on a bright sunny day at a comic shop whose name I forget but was located on Whyte Avenue in Edmonton, Alta.

With interest in Star Wars at one of its peaks thanks to the release of Rise of Skywalker and the success of the Disney Plus series The Mandalorian, it was only a matter of time before a humble blogger like myself dug up the long-forgotten tale of Fenn Shysa.

Who’s Fenn Shysa, you ask? Well, Mr. Shysa is one of 212 warriors whose mission of protecting the planet Mandalore got sidetracked when the Emperor commandeered those warriors to fight on his side in the Clone Wars. Only three survived, with the most senior officer, named Boba Fett, disenchanted with fighting for a cause, went into the bounty hunting business. That left the other two, Fenn Shysa and Tobbi Dala, heading back to Mandalore and fighting the slavers who had infested it.

They eventually ran into Princess Leia in Marvel Comics’ Star Wars #68-69 (Feb.-March 1983), who was searching for clues to whereabouts of Fett and Han Solo. The roguish Shysa was not an unappealing man, with his Irish brogue and handsome features, and he helped Leia find a clue to Solo’s location while defeating the slavers and setting back the Empire on Mandalore. It was not without its costs, however, as Tobbi Dala sacrificed himself for the cause.

Shysa later returned in the comic series post-Return of the Jedi as a member of the Alliance of Free Planets and Han Solo’s semi-serious romantic rival for Leia’s affections.

These comics are a bit pricey when it comes to originals, but interesting not just for the story, by comics veteran David Michelenie, but the art by Gene Day and Tom Palmer. Day’s breakdowns on 68 and pencils on 69 in particular were excellent and brought some real visual energy to the story.

Obviously, Shysa’s backstory for the origin of Boba Fett now clearly falls into the non-canonical Legends category, but he remains one of those memorable characters from that old Marvel run who wouldn’t be out of place getting a revamped or revival of some kind.

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