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

Month: June 2021

Comic Treks: Star Trek (Marvel) #12 (March 1981)

Cover to Star Trek #12 (March 1981). Cover art assumed by Comics.org to be penciled by Joe Brozowski and definitely inked by Tom Palmer.

“Eclipse of Reason” (22 pages)
Plotter: Alan Brennert
Scripter: Martin Pasko
Artists: Luke McDonnell & Tom Palmer
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Colorist: Carl Gafford
Editor: Louise Jones
Editor in Chief: Jim Shooter
Cover artists: Joe Brozowski & Tom Palmer

This issue is notable in that it’s one of the first comic book credits for Alan Brennert, who has written many fine novels and episodes of TV series like the 1970s Wonder Woman, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Twilight Zone and L.A. Law, for which he won an Emmy award in 1991. He also wrote episodes of Stargate Atlantis and Star Trek: Enterprise under the pen name Michael Bryant.

It’s clear this is a pretty difficult comic to write for, mostly because too many of the scripters are trying too hard to do a TV episode instead of a comic. It’s also a good example of the original series format creating too much of an echo chamber. There’s a lot of repeating in these stories and not a lot of original ideas coming through. Not that that’s not normal for comic books, but it’s not done with sufficient energy or verve to work here.

Not a bad splash page. Good details and likenesses. But I have no idea what that pyramid thing Kadan is in is supposed to be.
I don’t think any of the proportions in this panel are corrct.

The art struggles to keep up with the story. There’s some very nice work here as far as likenesses. Palmer, clearly, has a few moments to shine. But the rest of the story lacks clarity and dynamism, and in a few places, just looks like it was done under rushed circumstances or by an artist whose skills weren’t up to the task of, say, drawing the Enterprise correctly.

Storywise, this issue sees yet another Kirk romance gone sideways as he learns his former yeoman, Janice Rand, has fallen in love with and married a being of pure energy named Kadan of Phaeton. Kadan is captain of the USS Icarus, which is tasked with exploring beyond the energy barrier at the edge of the galaxy. Rand is going along with Kadan on this mission as the lone human aboard, tasked with doing what the bodyless Phaetonians cannot. The mission will take 1,000 years, so Rand will live out the rest of her life aboard the Icarus, with her husband, who will outlive her by many hundreds of years.

Sad, no?

Nice page, especially that middle panel. It’s well drawn and the color use is interesting, too.

The Enterprise regulars check out the Icarus to ensure it’s in good operating condition. Kirk confronts Rand about her radical choice, reminding her that she’s a woman and her husband doesn’t even have a body. (Kirk’s nothing if not subtle, right?)

After the farewell, the Enterprise heads off to its next mission, while the Icarus hits the barrier and it drives the Phaetonian’s insane and makes Rand telepathic.

The plot’s wonky, but I do like this page. It’s one of the few uncrowded pages in the entire series and shows that it is indeed possible to draw good-looking Star Trek comics.

Now, this is where you have to wonder about this plot. Clearly, everyone in this story remembers what happened when the Enterprise tried to pierce that barrier in the classic second pilot of the series, titled “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” That was the episode where Kirk’s best friend Gary Mitchell, played by Gary Lockwood, gains god-like abilities when the ship tries to pass through the barrier. He’s joined shortly thereafter by Dr. Elizabeth Dehner (Sally Kellerman), and Kirk is forced to kill them both before their powers go out of control. It was one of the best episodes of the show, and one whose message would be hard to ignore. But ignore it Starfleet does, and the results are equally disastrous.

Rand seeks out Kadan for help, only to find he’s gone mad and is projecting an image of what his body-bearing ancestors once looked like into her mind for added effect.

The Icarus quickly destroys a cargo vessel and heads on a direct course to the Phaetonian homeworld. Far away, Spock receives a telepathic message from Rand and passes on what has happened to Kirk, who cancels his current mission to help out.

That first line of dialog in panel three is unintentionally hilarious. It’s also unclear what exactly is happening to Rand.

Aboard the Icarus, Rand is trapped on the bridge when the crew shuts down the turbolifts and drives the ship into a “white hole.” The Enterprise follows and both ships enter a strange dimension and attempt to disable each other with phaser fire. Rand gets a signal through and tells Kirk the Phaetonians are like salmon swimming upstream — they want to return to their home planet and “land” the Icarus, meaning it’ll crash into the surface and the anti-matter explosion will kill billions.

Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Chekov beam over through a hole Scotty shoots in the Icarus’ shields and are trapped there as the Icarus damages the Enterprise and is able to speed off.

Another mix of good and bad art — so much so that this could have been a page from the old Gold Key comic book series.

The Icarus itself starts fighting the crew, which it has to because the Phaetonians have no bodies. That means force fields enacted, artificial gravity giving out and training devices attacking the crew.

Nice top panel, but the rest looks like it was adapted from a rejected X-Men story set in the Danger Room.

Rand detects her old shipmates and crawls through a Jeffries tube to reach them, while Scotty prepares the Enterprise crew for his new orders: Ram the Icarus to prevent it from reaching its homeworld.

Spock and Rand manage to telepathically communicate with Kadan and help him regain his senses at the same moment Kirk turns the gravity and life support back on — just in time to avoid a ramming from the Enterprise.

Um, yeah. No comment.

The story ends with less than a page explaining that the Phaetonians are off to an asylum on Elba II. Rand’s decided to seek an annulment and asks Kirk if she can have her old job back as the Enterprise transporter chief.

At least she’s not going back to getting Kirk coffee.

Rand’s story ends worse than it began. I get why that happens — characters like that might always be needed in the future and so you can’t really send them off on a 1,000-year mission. But nothing is added to her story. Her relationship with Kadan isn’t believable, nor her continued pining for Kirk. The captain fares no better, coming off as a complete jerk who expects Rand to be available to him on an ongoing basis — even though he has no intention of being with her at all.

And nobody else in this issue gets any more than that. The title lacks any kind of emotional connection with or between its characters and I can’t imagine that anyone other than a die-hard Star Trek fan finding much to enjoy with it.

I will add that this is one of several Marvel comics published this month that features the little gag at the end called “The Former X-Men,” which is a parody cover of The Uncanny X-Men #142’s cover. Cute.

Jim Salicrup and Terry Austin’s parody of the cover to The Uncanny X-Men #142.

One year out from the start of this series, it’s not looking good for its future. Star Wars was riding high, based on the success of The Empire Strikes Back and the anticipation for Return of the Jedi. It was hard at this time to think much of Star Trek: The Motion Picture or the future of Star Trek as a franchise, as The Wrath of Khan was still a year and a half away. But Marvel had another year on its license, so the comic book was still on track to publish through 1981.

Comic Treks: Star Trek (Marvel) #11 (Feb. 1981)

Cover to Star Trek #11. Art by Joe Brozowski and Tom Palmer.

“… Like A Woman Scorned!” (22 pages)
Writer: Martin Pasko
Artists: Joe Brozowski and Tom Palmer
Colorist: Carl Gafford
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Editor: Louise Jones
Editor in Chief: Jim Shooter
Cover: Joe Brozowski and Tom Palmer

A much better effort this issue, though the plots continue to be plagued by the embarrassing and not-very-interesting trope of the Enterprise crew encountering ancient Earth myths in the depths of space. Star Trek’s gone there on more than one occasion, but these are rarely the best episodes. Time travel and more straight-on, traditional sci-fi conventions that are integrated with character are the real hallmarks of Star Trek. And Marvel just can’t quite get there.

This issue we get a decidedly new look with art by Joe Brozowski and Tom Palmer. This is Brozowski’s first work on a Star Trek comic, not it’s not his last as he contributed to a number of issues in DC’s first series.

Tom Palmer is a legendary comic book inker. He’s inked tons of Avengers for Marvel, as well as having inked Neal Adams’ legendary run on X-Men. He also did finishes over Walt Simonson’s breakdowns on Marvel’s Star Wars. His work is detailed and organic, and his style is unmistakable and always welcome in any comic book I read. He has a real talent for likenesses, as well, which makes him well-suited to Star Trek.

Now that’s a splash page!

This issue starts off with a great image on the splash page of Starfleet officers dying of exposure to Berthold rays on the planet Andronicus. It’s dramatic, and exciting! There’s actually something going on this issue.

The officers died a while back, but the Enterprise is headed to Andronicus because it’s the home of a clinic founded by psychiatrist Carl Wentworth. The clinic had protected Wentworth and his staff from the Berthold rays with a transparent neutronium shield that is now failing. The Enterprise is to transport the doctor and his crew to Starbase 28.

I have to mention Wentworth for a moment, because he’s described before his appearance in this story as the founder of the “anti-apologists movement.” McCoy calls him a con artist, Kirk admits some call him a cult leader. And Spock describes his teachings as training people base their conduct on “enlightened self-interest.” McCoy remarks that he senses disdain in Spock’s voice, which he denies.

Lots and lots of words on this page.

Enlightened self-interest is a philosophy that dates back to Alexis de Toqueville as a kind of “treat others as you would have them treat you.” But it also evokes Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy, which uses the term “rational self-interest” to describe the idea that improving and enriching yourself is the best way to improve the world. Like everything associated with Rand, her views are controversial and evoke extreme devotion among a small set of devotees and general derision from the rest of the world. And of course any discussion of Ayn Rand and comics leads back to Steve Ditko and the controversies associated with his career. Let’s see what happens …

The first member of Wentworth’s party to beam aboard is a lovely woman in a tiny wisp of a dress named Andrea Manning, who shares some unpleasant history with Scotty that he’s embarrassed by.

All of this, by the way, happens in the first three pages of this comic!

En route to Starbase 28, Spock notes a decrease in Scotty’s efficiency, while Wentworth gets a tour of the ship. Of course, he’s dressed like a cult leader: robes, sandals, balding with long white hair and a beard. And, of course, an attitude. On the bridge, he gives Uhura an earful about following orders when she should decide what she wants to do on a moment to moment basis. She dismisses him as a kook.

What the heck’s going on here? At least the art is pretty to look at.

Then this story gets really strange. The intruder alert alarm sounds in engineering as a “witch-hag” appears and rips through crewmen as it goes after Scotty. The hag is pretty powerful, redirecting and amplifying phaser fire back at crew members, then enlarging a security guard’s phaser so much that he’s pinned underneath it. Kirk jumps in and is knocked back, while Spock’s nerve-pinch goes right through the hag’s shoulder and she makes him dance like he’s in a Beyonce video before disappearing.

Spock gets jiggy with it in panel 4.

In sickbay, Bones says Scotty shows signs of fear but otherwise should be OK. While he’s out, he whispers “Black Annis” and Spock heads off to look it up in the computer banks.

Wentworth, meanwhile, is in the recreation deck telling Uhura and Sulu they should follow their whims and change course to Drexler II for shore leave. Somehow, they find themselves following his lead. And Dr. Chapel checks in on Andrea Manning to find her downing a bottle of saurian brandy by herself and going off on how much she loved Scotty and how much she gave up for him, only to less important to him than a rivet on a baffle plate.

Andrea Manning’s apparently a lightweight when it comes to drinking. No wonder Scotty left her.

Spock learns Black Annis is a character from ancient Scottish folklore that used to eat small children. Then Kirk finds the ship’s off course and headed to Drexler II. Kirk orders security to the bridge to arrest Sulu and Uhura and put them in the brig. And then another intruder alert comes in as another creature from Scottish folklore — a birdlike creature called a direach — is attacking Bones, Spock and Scotty. Spock tries to nerve pinch it, but it responds by kicking his ass. Bones shoots it with a phaser, to no avail. Kirk then tries to throttle it. Yes, throttle it! At that moment, Andrea Manning passes out from too much brandy and the creature disappears.

This page is all kinds of crazy: Kirk throttling a mythical creature and Andrea passes out drunk.

Chekov then reports that a full-fledged mutiny is underway as Wentworth takes control of the Enterprise. He rants about having leaned mind-direction techniques from ancient archives on Andronicus and he plans to create a new base on Drexler II, with the Enterprise at its command. Spock decides to mind-meld with Scotty to erase his memories of Scottish folklore as a way to cut off the source of Andrea’s power, while Kirk storms the bridge. Wentworth appears to win over Kirk, Andrea wakes up ranting about how much she hates Scotty and the ship is rocked by a giant alien creature wrapping itself around the ship.

Wentworth looks a little like Hitler in panel 5.

As the entirety of Star Trek up to this point has made clear, the only thing Kirk really loves is the Enterprise and his mission. So he overcomes Wentworth’s influence and decks him with a left cross. He realizes the creature is, of course, the Loch Ness Monster. Bones knocks out Andrea with a sedative, and the monster disappears. The Enterprise drops off Andrea, Wentworth and the rest of their people at a rehabilitation center. Kirk notes no charges against the crew because they were under Wentworth and Andrea’s influence, and the ship warps off to the next issue.

As you might expect from what I wrote above about the artists on this issue, I like the way this looks. The problem is the story, which tries to pack way too much into a mere 22-page comic to work. There are quite a few seven-panel pages in this book, and one nine-panel page — just to keep up! There’s also a lot of script to explain things going on that the art can’t convey.

But it’s just a mess, overall. The folklore creatures, the mutiny, Scotty’s bad breakup, the heavy drinking, the cult leader — it’s all too much. None of it has space or time to develop into anything of note. And the villain, who’s clear from the start and about as one-dimensional as you can get, is practically squeezed out of his own story. It evokes enough Star Trek flavor to feel kind of like a Star Trek story, but it’s too crammed full of elements for the story to deliver anything more than a surface experience.

No letters column appears in this issue, replaced by a house ad for Spider-Woman.

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

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.

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.

Comic-Shop Memories: AAA Best Comics, 1988-1989, Phoenix, Ariz., Part 1

Completing my freshman year at University of Arizona, I returned to Scottsdale for the summer. I think I took a short visit back to Edmonton, and then returned to Scottsdale and secured a summer job in the engineering department at the Hilton Scottsdale Resort & Villas, located at 6333 N. Scottsdale Road. I remember getting my first check and heading to the comics shops, the closest of which that I knew to be a good one was AAA Best Comics, located at 9204 N. Seventh St. in Phoenix.

This was the shop to which Fog Hollow transferred its subscription accounts when it closed the year before. I don’t remember much about my single visit to the store the year before, but I do remember pulling up to AAA Best on a sunny morning in June 1988 and walking in to find an older woman sitting by the door and announcing to her son, the owner, that he had a customer. The man was Ken Strack, and he was a terrific comic shop owner who earned a lot of my business for the next five or six years.

Excalibur #1 (Oct. 1988). Art by Alan Davis and Paul Neary.

On that day, Ken was busy sorting and the new issues were just laid out on a table in near the front entrance. The store occupied a long and narrow space at the end of a strip mall structure. I distinctly recall Excalibur #1 was just out and I scooped it up ASAP to flip through the lovely artwork by Alan Davis and Paul Neary. The other book I recall grabbing, either on that visit or one shortly thereafter, was Marvel Comics Presents #1, with that cool Walt Simonson wrap-around cover.

Marvel Comics Presents #1 (Early Sept. 1988). Cover art by Walt Simonson (and friends).

This also was the summer when Marvel experimented with twice-monthly publication of its top titles, which included X-Men and The Amazing Spider-Man. The latter was, of course, drawn by Todd McFarlane and was taking off like a rocket.

I still visited other stores, most notably All About Books & Comics, during this time. But AAA Best was my favorite. Ken was quick to spark a discussion and recommend new books based on what he knew you liked. I looked forward to visiting the shop as much to talk with him about comics as to buy my weekly stash. I once was checking out with a large stack and as he rang them up, I said it should keep me busy for a week or so. His reply was something along the lines of “No way! You gotta grab a bowl of cereal and stay up all night reading them!”

I kept my subscriptions with AAA Best even when I went back to school in Tucson that fall for my sophomore year. I had a new place to live in a different part of town, but I also had a car and a girlfriend I met in traffic school that summer. She was starting as a freshman at U of A, but I was so insecure about my comics habit that I didn’t tell her about it until we’d been dating a few months already. I need not have worried. She thought it was kind of cool and even read some of the books — she liked McFarlane’s Amazing Spider-Man — when I’d acquire a new stack of stuff.

I had braces at this time, and at least once a month would come up to Scottsdale to have the orthodontist adjust them. He had office hours on Saturday morning, so after my appointment, I’d head over to AAA Best. One day in January 1989, Ken was on the phone when I walked into the store. He was having an animated conversation with someone about flying in for an event, weekend accommodations, etc. At the end, he pulled out a copy of The Amazing Spider-Man, #315, which was the most-recent issue at the time, to look up the circulation figures in the statement of ownership in the back, and said he’d be happy to pop a few copies in the mail. That was when I realized he was talking to the one and only Todd McFarlane. When Ken hung up, he looked at me and said, “You are sworn to secrecy!” He then told me that McFarlane was coming for a store signing that spring and that subscribers like myself would get a special poster signed by Todd, whether they could make the event or not. This was quite exciting news, to be sure, but it was easy to keep to myself since I knew almost no one who would have known who McFarlane was.

The front page of the Life & Leisure section from The Arizona Republic newspaper on March 23, 1989, featured this interview with Todd McFarlane.
He says at the end that he ultimately wants to do a gag strip like Garfield.

The signing itself was March 25, 1989 — a Saturday. There was an article with and interview with McFarlane on the front of the Life & Leisure section of The Arizona Republic newspaper on March 23, 1989, promoting the signing and, when I arrived fairly early on there was already a long line of folks ready to meet Todd. It took a long time, and I’m glad this was March instead of July. Todd at one point agreed to take a short break to review the portfolios of artists looking for feedback. But eventually, I got to the front of the line. Todd was sitting at a table in the back of the shop, with a stack of original Spider-Man art that was for sale, as well as copies of most of his books for sale at then-relevant prices. I regret not buying any of that art, but at the time $75 or $100 a page was out of my price range. I remember the guy in front of me bought a copy of The Incredible Hulk #340 for $10, and Todd teased him by saying he could buy 10 Spider-Mans instead for the same price.

My signed copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #300 (May 1988), which I’ve kept in a mylar sleeve for more than three decades now. It is not now, nor will it ever be, for sale.

I got my copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #300 signed — I’d never been to a signing before and hadn’t thought to bring more than the one comic for him to sign! He also signed the poster the store had printed up. That poster now hangs, framed, quite visibly near the dining table in my house.

My signed poster from Todd McFarlane’s 1989 appearance at AAA Best Comics. I have number 52 out of 2000 because my subscription box number at the shop was 52.

That summer, I worked again in Phoenix at American Express — this time tracking down, repairing and cleaning credit-card authorization. Not very exciting — and sometimes quite disgusting — but it did put me in position to visit All About Books & Comics and then swing by AAA Best on the way home. I remember buying a copy of Marvel Graphic Novel #5: X-Men — God Loves, Man Kills that summer at AAA Best, and being completely blown away by it.

And for those who don’t remember or weren’t there yet, 1989 was a huge summer for movies, starting with the release in May of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and followed by Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, License to Kill, Ghostbusters II and, of course, Tim Burton’s Batman. The rest of the summer was pretty good too, with Lethal Weapon 2 and James Cameron’s The Abyss. It was all very exciting at the time, even though most of those movies haven’t held up especially well. (One thing to remember is there was a writer’s strike in Hollywood in 1988 that limited rewrites on a lot of those movies, including most notably Batman and Star Trek V. The TV networks were so starved for cash, they started re-shooting old Mission: Impossible scripts as a new series, and Star Trek: The Next Generation used a few scripts that were originally written 10 years prior for the never-made Star Trek: Phase II series that eventually became Star Trek: The Motion Picture.)

The runaway success of Batman showed a comic-book property could result in a good movie and make a ton money at both the box office as well as with sales of T-shirts, toys, books and comics. The teaser trailer Warner Bros. released in early 1989 got everyone very excited and Batman comics started selling in big numbers, picking up lots of new readers. New comics at the time were still only 75 cents or $1, so they were cheap enough for kids excited by the movie to buy and read.

The movie came out at a good time for DC Comics, which had been doing right by Batman for a few years with things like The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, Batman: Year Two, Batman: Ten Nights of the Beast and Batman: A Death in the Family. DC’s investment in quality was really paying off for them.

Leading into the movie was DC’s celebration of Batman’s 50th anniversary with a really terrific story in Detective Comics #598-600 that was written by the new movie’s scripter, Sam Hamm, and drawn by Denys Cowan and Dick Giordano. (That writer’s strike idled Hamm, who I recall reading was quite pleased he was being paid to write comics when there were no movie or TV work to be had.) Issues #598 and 600 were 80-page giants, featuring lots of tributes in the back to Batman from top artists and writers in comics and beyond. I remember how impressive it was that the likes of Ray Bradbury and Stephen King, along with the unexpected tribute from Stan Lee, had classed up those books.

There also was a booming business in selling trade paperbacks of The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One. And Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s Batman: The Killing Joke was also in the mix, proving endlessly popular that summer with a spot-on $3.50 cover price because it was the closest of any of them to the movie’s plot.

And the public interest was extremely intense. Demand was so high for Batman T-shirts that there was a worldwide shortage of black cotton. (I read this in Variety years later in an article interviewing the then-head of Warner Bros. Consumer Products, but I don’t have the specific citation.) Every newspaper, TV station and radio outlet was doing something Batman related, from interviewing fans to “morning zoo” DJs joking about what kind of sound-effect would appear on screen when Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale got intimate.

I was late to the game on Batman comics, but Ken set me up with trade paperbacks and enough recent issues of Detective Comics and Batman to keep me happy. This was my first regular pathway into DC Comics, which were really strong in those first few years after the reset of Crisis on Infinite Earths. I discovered the Justice League comics by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis, and loved that affectionate and funny take on superheroes. I tried stuff like Emerald Dawn, which relaunched Green Lantern, but it didn’t take with me.

Marvel was, of course, still going strong with all the Spider-Man, X-Men, The Punisher, Silver Surfer and Avengers titles. I also really dug Marvel Comics Presents, an anthology that exposed me to a lot of characters I hadn’t read before, including Black Panther in an excellent 25-part serial by Don McGregor and Gene Colan.

When I went back to Tucson that August for school, I again had a new place to live, in a new part of town. I also had broken up with my girlfriend and was now intent on majoring in journalism. I don’t know why I stopped getting my new comics from AAA Best, but it was a temporary situation, to be sure.

More to come …

Comic-Shop Memories: David’s Used Books And Comics, aka Comics Corner, 1987-1988, Tucson, Ariz.

Picking up from where I left off: I left home in Scottsdale, Arizona, to attend the University of Arizona in Tucson shortly after my 18th birthday, in late August of 1987. My birthday gifts that year included a box of Tide powder, to do my own laundry with; and a dish-drying rack. All profoundly sensible items I needed and used.

I did not live in the dorms at U of A because doing so was so popular at the time that you had to apply a year in advance to get a spot. A year before, I still was in Edmonton, so my application was far too late to get me in. Instead, my Dad took me down to the Tucson sometime that summer and we found a two-bedroom apartment to rent and put out an ad for a roommate. I eventually got a response to the ad from a student coming to Tucson from New Jersey — also a freshman. We ate a lot of Domino’s Pizza those first months.

The apartment complex was quite nice. Our lower-level apartment had plenty of space and came furnished. There was a pool and hot tub in the complex, along with coin-operated laundry machines and grills for cooking. There were plenty of students living in the complex. A few fun girls, too. It’s still there, now called the Arcadia Park Apartments. There was an ABCO grocery nearby and bus lines we could pick up along East Fifth Street that took us directly to campus for classes. Neither me nor my roommate had a car.

I brought along my comics, and stuck them in my bedroom closet. I had maybe two and a half long boxes at this point. What I wasn’t sure of was where I could get comics in Tucson. Turns out, the answer was easier than I thought.

A quick look at the phone book revealed a comic shop within walking distance — not far from where I caught the bus to campus. It was called David’s Used Books And Comics most of the time; other times it was The Comic Corner. I don’t remember what the sign out front said, but I do remember it being in a small mall-type building at 5031 E. Fifth St. that is still there today.

The shop was set up in the standard way: New comics on racks around the side, with bins full of back issues in the center. There was a section at the back that had magazines, British comics and fanzines. The walls featured the usual higher-value back-issue comics, with the counter area at the front with display cases for the most-valuable and rare comics. This was all on the left half of the store as you walked in; the right side featuring mostly used paperbacks of all sorts.

So this solved my comic book sourcing problem, and I quickly set up a free pull list for all the titles I was following at the time. Still pretty heavy on the Marvel and X-Men line, which was gearing up for The Fall of the Mutants crossover.

I have a very clear memory of awaiting Excalibur, and buying the bookshelf special edition in December 1987, on probably my last visit to the shop before my first semester wrapped up. (I did well with grades — 3.6 GPA that first semester, I think.)

Cover to Excalibur Special Edition, released in December 1987. Cover art by Alan Davis and Paul Neary.

I also remember looking forward to Marvel ramping up its annuals with the Evolutionary War storyline that spring. And the artwork of Marc Silvestri on X-Men and Walter Simonson on X-Factor was exciting and vital.

Cover to The Incredible Hulk #340 (Feb. 1988). Art by Todd McFarlane and Bob Wiacek.

I definitely remember buying everything related to Fall of the Mutants at David’s, including a copy of The Incredible Hulk #340, with the now-famous Todd McFarlane cover, for cover price. McFarlane’s art was starting to gain attention in Hulk, especially once he started inking his own pencils.

I was already subscribing to The Amazing Spider-Man when Todd started working on that title with issue #298, meaning I bought my copy for 20 percent off the cover price of 75 cents! And I distinctly remember the sense of excitement that came along with picking up The Amazing Spider-Man #300, which McFarlane penciled and inked, and features the first full appearance of Venom. It’s still a very popular book. I will get soon to the tale of how I got my copy signed by McFarlane the following year.

https://youtu.be/jtmsI07AMsE

I also remember very vividly the debut that fall of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The show aired on the Tucson Fox station in syndication on weekends, which meant episodes aired on Saturday afternoon and repeated the following Sunday morning. That made it an easy show to catch, and I remember the hubbub when the DC Comics adaptation arrived at David’s, with that great Bill Sienkiewicz cover, the same week the show premiered. I didn’t scoop it up that first day it was on sale, and had to wait a while to grab a copy.

Cover to Star Trek: The Next Generation #1 (Feb. 1988). Cover art by Bill Sienkiewicz.

It’s hard to explain now how much that show meant to fans back then, even as it was roundly and correctly criticized for not being especially good. And the only reason I can think of that sticks is that at the time there was almost no sci-fi of any kind on TV at that time.

Earlier in 1987, ABC had a minor hit airing the sci-fi series Max Headroom, which starred Matt Frewer as futuristic journalist Edison Carter and was based on the British talk-show character concept. (I’d like to think it had some kind of influence on Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson’s Transmetropolitan comic book, which came along about ten years later). It was really good — a minor classic, even — but short-lived.

There also had been a very interesting ABC series called Probe, which Isaac Asimov was involved in and featured former The Hardy Boys star Parker Stevenson as a scientific prodigy who drove his assistant, played by Michelle Castle, more than a little crazy in the mode of Holmes and Watson. It ran for eight episodes in 1988 and was canceled. One of its producers, Michael Piller, later went on to contribute many great episodes to Star Trek: The Next Generation and co-created Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager before cancer took him at far too young an age in 2005.

And there was Sable, based on Mike Grell’s excellent First Comics series, Jon Sable, Freelance. This one only lasted seven episodes in late 1987 and early 1988, but was almost a decent adaptation of the comic. I recall reading a few issues of the book back in the day and seeing a trade paperback as one of the first graphic novel collections to be found in regular bookstores at the time, alongside Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns and Saga of the Swamp Thing. I’ve since read the whole series and really enjoyed it. The show was a pale imitation, but it was at the time the only TV adaptation of a comic to air on a network since The Incredible Hulk.

Cover to the Warner Books edition of Jon Sable, Freelance. Art by Mike Grell. Collects Jon Sable, Freelance #1-6, originally published by First Comics.

I think with Star Trek: The Next Generation, the collective audience for that kind of material — today scattered across endless series and streaming services — was concentrated in this one show. The ratings for it were very good, and I remember hearing very soon after it began airing that a second season was already ordered. The rest, of course, is history.

I really enjoyed the show, myself. It didn’t really matter that it wasn’t as good as the original. It was new Star Trek, and I liked the characters despite the often-weak early scripts. I remember one rainy Saturday afternoon when I took a study break to grab some comics at David’s, a sandwich from the deli next door, and watch the newest episode of the show, in which Tasha Yar met her demise at the hands of a pile of oily goo. I also spent a lot of time reading news magazines and newspapers, and watching current-affairs shows like Nightline with Ted Koppel. That was part of what led me to study journalism. Good times.

Back to comics: There was a growing sense that something was happening in comics. As I mentioned, graphic-novel collections from Warner Books started showing up in bookstores, and almost every newspaper and magazine in the country ran at some point a story on comics like Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, Love & Rockets and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. I’d noticed for the first time fans buying multiple copies of new issues in the hopes their value would go up. And the entire hobby seemed to be rising. Debates in shops were lively, respectful and pretty fun to take part in.

When that first year ended, I packed up and went back to Scottsdale for the summer. I didn’t know then that David’s would be gone when I came back a few months later. It was a great spot and a lot of fun to visit. I don’t know if I would have continued buying comics without it being so close to my first home away from home.

Comic Treks: Star Trek (Marvel) #9 (Dec. 1980)

Cover to Star Trek #9 (Dec. 1980). Art is unsigned, but credited on Comics.org to Dave Cockrum and Joe Rubinstein.

“Experiment in Vengeance!” (22 pages)
Writer: Martin Pasko
Artists: Dave Cockrum & Frank Springer
Letterer: John Costanza
Colorist: Carl Gafford
Editor: Louise Jones
Editor in Chief: Jim Shooter
Cover artists: Dave Cockrum & Joe Rubinstein

This one’s complicated, and not in a good way. I do give Marty Pasko credit for trying to do an issue of the comic that evokes the feel of the show, but this is an excellent example of trying to do a TV show in a comic book format instead of adapting the show to comics.

Not a terrible start, but drawing the USS Enterprise is tricky and even artists as experienced as Cockrum and Springer struggle to get it right.

This one starts off with the USS Enterprise locating the USS Endeavor, a starship lost in action 22 years ago whose fate has puzzled Starfleet ever since. As the Enterprise approaches, Lt. Karen Hester-Jones reports to Kirk as the ship’s new zoologist. She and Kirk have an obvious history together, one that obviously didn’t end well and, for her, not happily. The Endeavor then surprises everyone by intercepting the Enterprise and attacking!

All this happens by the end of page 2!

Page 3 is where the seams start to show. Spock detects no life forms, but the Enterprise is able to immobilize the Endeavor in a panel that sees the word balloons pointing at the wrong ships. The script’s also been all over the place in terms of technobabble, with the Endeavor reported as being found a half-parsec from its last known location (which doesn’t seem that far off in Trek terms), and then distances tossed around inconsistently — 25,000 km out is far out, but then it seems closer at 200,000 before instantly getting down to 1,000 km. A sure sign this issue was under the deadline gun.

It’s interesting to note, as the crew beams over to the Endeavor’s bridge (in environment suits) that the ship’s exteriors and interiors, as well as the crew’s uniforms, evoke the TV series very strongly. With the sweater-like collars on the crew’s tunics, it looks very much like the second Star Trek TV pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before.

Then it gets weird — and familiar in a not-s0-good way. There’s a mysterious, sparkly cloud that “possesses” one of the crew members. We just had a ghost story in issues #4 and #5, and here we are going down that same path again! There’s a three-page action sequence that’s better than it should be, really, but still fails to be interesting because all the characters are fighting each other in big, clunky, monotone-colored environment suits. It’s a bit of a chore to figure out who’s who in this mess. But they end up beaming back to the Enterprise with the possessed crewman — and the sparkly cloud tags along in the transporter beam.

Figures in environment suits fight on the USS Endeavor. Nice attempt to spice things up with the color holds in those last two panels.

While the sparkly cloud sneaks around the ship, Hester-Jones and Kirk have it out. Turns out they were a couple, until Kirk was drawn back to Starfleet. She was angry at him and married Bill Jones, who realized he couldn’t compete with Kirk and didn’t renew their marriage license. (This was something Gene Roddenberry mentioned in the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Marriage licenses in the 23rd century have to be renewed or they expire. Kirk’s marriage to Vice Admiral Lori Ciani ended the same way.) She’s still angry with Kirk, but he has a job to do!

Will Jim Kirk ever allow himself … to be loved?

On cue, Spock reveals that the Endeavor’s logs reveal its last mission was responding to a distress call from Janet Hester on a moon called Mycena. Hester-Jones says that was her grandmother’s name, but it couldn’t have been because Janet Hester died at the age of 36 in 2139. Spock then shows it was her, producing a photo of her at age 89. He continues: Shortly after the Endeavor rescued Janet Hester, the crew started going crazy and the crew was eventually murdered or killed by cutting life support. The madness, of course, resembles what happened to the Enterprise crewmember on the Endeavor, so Kirk receives new orders to investigate and orders a course to Mycena.

Ten pages in, you can see how dense this story is, though not in a good way. It’s very episodic and clunky when it wants so very much to be mysterious and interconnected.

And it doesn’t get any better once the Enterprise arrives at Mycena, which is an ice planet. Kirk, Bones, Spock and Sulu beam down in parkas and split up to explore two tunnels that both lead to an underground chamber. Bones and Spock are immediately attacked by a giant lobster creature that resists all phaser fire and can’t be detected by a tricorder. It also has flexible spine, so it can follow Spock and McCoy into the tunnels. Kirk and Sulu somehow spot a human body underneath the ice that isn’t shown in the artwork, and then meet up with Spock and McCoy in a chamber with a device that, when Spock activates it, creates a defense field that keeps out the creature. And if that wasn’t enough, Sulu notices that this alien technology has Starfleet technology added to it.

Lots of talking heads and pointing — all in that inimitable Cockrum style!

Then Bones finds some early transporter technology and Spock digs up computer records of the “Hester Project.” Kirk calls the ship, where Uhura is the most-recent crewmember to be possessed. He sends McCoy up to help with that, and orders Hester-Jones beamed down. He asks her to take some samples from the lobster thing and she explains her grandmother “died” when she was lost in space while being transported from the her assignment at the Deneva Research Station. Kirk then realizes she was part of the team that invented the transporter and that, after they were ordered to discontinue the project, she and six of her colleagues ended up getting “lost,” landing on Mycena and continuing their experiments.

An angry Lt. Uhura starts tearing things apart as she looks for a script that isn’t lame.

You’re not the only one struggling to keep up. The pages stopped even being numbered half-way through this one.

Doctor, heal thyself.

And it gets weirder. The possessed crewmembers all start chanting in unison: “We seek Hester! The Unity seeks Hester!” They then bust out of sickbay, giving McCoy a black eye, and beam down to attack Hester-Jones. Kirk realizes they want Janet Hester and that there are six beings who were all Hester’s colleagues and became trapped as spirit-like creatures because of the transporter experiments. When she was rescued by the Endeavor, they followed and killed the crew trying to kill her. But she escaped in a shuttlecraft and died in a crash landing … on Mycena.

That’s the body Sulu spotted, and Kirk uses it to lure the Unity into the shuttle, and then tosses in some overloaded phasers and beams up just before the whole thing blows up.

If all else fails, blow it up! The throwback shuttlecraft is a nice touch and drawing it was probably the only fun Cockrum had while working on this issue.

Finally, the end is in sight. Spock’s puzzled by their hatred, the “possessed” crewmembers are all back to normal, and Hester-Jones decides to move on from Jim Kirk and transfers off the Enterprise.

The only woman Jim Kirk can love is named … Enterprise!

Just understanding the plot in this one is difficult. It’s way too much crammed into too small a space to work in any way, shape or form. The art by Cockrum and Springer is, in a way, a minor miracle for not making the entire affair even worse. Visually, it’s not terrible. But it’s not good either.

And let’s look at the cover for this issue, which is confusing in so many ways. I’m going to assume the woman in the Starfleet uniform is supposed to be Karen Hester-Jones, though her outfit and hair are colored differently than inside the issue. If the man is supposed to be Kirk, it’s not at all clear, but who else would it be? I thought on first glance that these were Endeavor crewmembers, but that’s obviously wrong. And the story has six alien ghosts, and this cover features nine heads. I do like the overall composition, with the swooping Tholian-style lines, but that also has nothing to do with the story inside.

Last thing: the letters column is still being written by Mike W. Barr, who didn’t write this issue and won’t write another one until issue #17.

Clearly, this is a title in disarray. Marvel had more success with Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, in part because those books found sympatico creative leaders in, respectively, Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson. And while affection among the Marvel staff for Star Trek was clearly high, that direction was lacking in the comics themselves.

At least the next issue has a Frank Miller cover to look forward to.

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