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Comic-Shop Memories: Fantasy Comics, 1989-90, Tucson, Ariz., Part 1

I don’t remember why I stopped shopping at AAA Best when I started my junior year at the University of Arizona. Instead, I starting shopping weekly in Tucson at Fantasy Comics, which is located at 2745 N. Campbell Ave.

Fantasy was in an unremarkable one-story building, with a glass case at the front full of its more expensive comics. New releases were racked to the immediate right. The rest of the current comics were stocked in alphabetical order in racks that stretched to the back of the shop. The main floor featured lots of back issues. Charlie Harris, a frequent DC “letter hack,” either owned the store or worked there.

One of the most memorable things for me about shopping at Fantasy was that back issues were in heat-sealed bags. To get them open, you needed scissors, so there were lots of discarded comic bags in my trash.

Into the Trek comics wormhole

I fell deep into Star Trek at the time. DC published in August new Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation series that I really enjoyed. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier had done poorly at the box office and with critics, but Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s third series debuted in September and was by far its best to date.

But it was the classic Star Trek comic that really caught my eye. It had clever scripts by Peter David and slick art printed on good paper from the team of James Fry and Arne Starr. And nothing beat those covers by Jerome K. Moore. They are spectacular and I never tire of looking at them or admiring the skill Moore brought to those illustrations.

My Star Trek obsession led me to a Star Trek convention experience that cemented my fandom for that franchise. It was a weekend Creation Convention at the Tucson Convention Center, with special guest Patrick Stewart.

Prior to Stewart’s entrance, Gene Roddenberry’s assistant, Richard Arnold, previewed upcoming episodes of The Next Generation. These were sneak peeks at some of the best in the series’ run: “Deja Q,” “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” “Sins of the Father” and “Captain’s Holiday.”

Stewart appeared for a charming Q&A session at the end of the day. Among the secrets he revealed: He had accepted a teaching job at the University of Arizona. But the offer slipped through through the cracks and after landing the role of Captain Picard, he never looked back. What might have been!

Marvel’s X-Men on the rise

The other hot franchise was X-Men. It had been a best-seller for years at this point, but new artists raised the excitement to a new level. Jim Lee’s arrival on X-Men seemed inevitable after lengthy runs on Alpha Flight and Punisher War Journal. He did a few issues here and there at first, before taking the full reins in the summer of 1990. At the same time, Rob Liefeld also was pitching in on X-Men titles and getting some heat. He took over the penciling chores on The New Mutants in 1990 and introduced Cable, another high point. Erik Larsen took over penciling The Amazing Spider-Man from Todd McFarlane, who was set to launch a new Marvel title. With Marc Silvestri jumping from X-Men to Wolverine, the seeds of the Image revolution were taking root.

But Star Trek had sort of taken over my mind. I collected the first DC series, re-watched the movies and original TV shows, and even enjoyed some of the Star Trek novels. “Writer of Stuff” Peter David was the creator whose work I most enjoyed, leading me inevitably to The Incredible Hulk.

Lost in the aisles of Bookman’s

Fantasy was but one of the shops I frequented that year. Another mainstay was Bookman’s, a used-book store that filled a former grocery store space with tons of fascinating objects. Each visit took hours, it seems. I’d start with out-of-town newspapers and move on to a newsstand section full of old and new magazines. Then there were aisles full of used books, cassettes, CDs, and bargain low-grade comics. I always flipped through Comics Scene and the Comics Buyers Guide, catching in the latter news of a Peter David signing at All About Books and Comics in Phoenix. I skipped out on school to drive up from Tucson in time to hit the Thursday evening event.

The Hulk tour hits Phoenix

The signing was part of a tour promoting David and artist Dale Keown’s work on The Incredible Hulk. Keown had only drawn two issues of Hulk at this point, and the signing was sparsely attended. That gave everyone a chance to hang out with David and Keown and chat about a lot of things. David signed several Star Trek issues for me, a Next Generation novel he’d written, and some Hulks. He joked about calling his editor back in New York to rave about the warm Arizona weather.

To my surprise, Keown hailed from Alberta, so we talked about Canada and Arizona, as well as comics. I remember he sold the splash page to The Incredible Hulk #367, his first issue, for about $150. A few years later, I saw the same page for sale in another Phoenix-area store for many multiples of that.

The signing was part of a mini-tour that continued that weekend to comic shops in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. All About produced a poster for the signing similar to the McFarlane one I wrote about previously. Mine is framed but in storage.

Hunting for back issues in Tucson

After that, I started seriously looking for back issues of The Incredible Hulk. David had been writer on Hulk for about three years, and I began by tracking down his back issues. I often visited a Tucson shop called Comics and Things, located in a strip mall at 3934 E. Grant Road, in search of Hulk and Star Trek back issues. It had a good selection of recent back issues but soon vanished into the ether.

The writing and art on Hulk surprised me. David started with a fairly conventional Hulk story with McFarlane on art. Their collaboration ended with a satisfying climax that completely changed the series’ premise. David next turned the Hulk gray and got him a job as a high-end Las Vegas bouncer named Joe Fixit. Jeff Purves drew this run and did a fabulous job before disappearing from the world of comics.

Hulk was so good that Sam Kieth drew the fill-ins — if you could call them that.

Keown drew Hulk for the next three years, and it became was a huge hit. David stuck with the title for years after, and still writes new Hulk stories from time to time. Great stuff.

How much is too much Batman?

This also was a time when Batman was still riding high on the popularity of the Tim Burton movie. So Batman was super-hot and DC released in the autumn of 1989 Legends of the Dark Knight #1. Promoted as the first new solo Batman book since 1940, this series set free top talent to do their ultimate Batman story.

The first issue also marked the first time I remember variant covers from a major publisher, as DC promoted the book with a second cover that came in four different colors. They said in the book that it was “just for fun,” but the result surely made DC’s accountants happy as fans decided they needed to have a copy of each color — and therefore bought four copies of that first issue.

Pointing out the differences between Tucson and Phoenix, that first Legends of the Dark Knight sold out immediately down south. The same was true of The New Titans #60 and 61, which were key parts of the current Batman storyline, “A Lonely Place of Dying.” I easily found both on my first comic shop stop on my next trip to Phoenix.

Next: My short career as a “letter hack.”

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 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.

Comic Treks: Star Trek (Marvel) #8 (Nov. 1980)

Cover to Star Trek #8 (Nov. 1980), art by Dave Cockrum.

“The Expansionist Syndrome” (22 pages)
Writer:
Martin Pasko
Artists: Dave Cockrum & Ricardo Villamonte
Letterer: Ray Burzon
Colorist: Carl Gafford
Editor: Louise Jones
Editor in Chief: Jim Shooter
Cover artist: Dave Cockrum

A few changes this issue, with Marty Pasko stepping in as writer and Ricardo Villamonte as inker on Dave Cockrum’s pencils. There’s good and bad in these changes: Pasko’s script starts off strong and action packed — the best so far of the original stories — but suffers from trying to wedge in a full TV episode’s worth of plot in a comic book space. It quickly becomes clear there’s just not enough space to give the ideas space to breathe or context to give it meaning. Villamonte fares better, bringing a much cleaner look to Cockrum’s pencils that better suits the series. It’s the best-looking book so far in the series, even with Cockrum’s design biases on clear display in the creation of the alien Machs (who look a lot like the Sidri from X-Men).

This issue begins with a solid splash page of the bridge crew reacting in pain as alien ships can seen on the main viewer — and Spock looking like he’s in a trance. The captions explain the Enterprise is on its way on an emergency medical mission to Starbase 14 and its course has taken it into the Agena system, where the inhabitants of the fourth planet have taken their appearance in their space as an invasion.

A decent splash page, but that title lettering is weak.

We then get a pretty good two-page spread, with the Agenan ships trapping the Enterprise with energy bands resembling the web seen in the third season TV episode “The Tholian Web.” The energy is causing the bridge crew extreme pain and disrupting the matter/anti-matter generators, trapping the ship in space with all other systems operational. The last panel reveals the medical mission the trap disrupts is getting an ill agricultural engineer to the Starbase for a live-saving procedure. Without it, she’ll die in 24 hours.

Shades of “The Tholian Web,” but still a pretty dynamic two-page spread from Cockrum.

Complicating matters, Spock is “digitized” off the bridge to one of the alien ships, which heads to the planet surface. So, naturally, Kirk prepares to fight back only to hear from Scotty that the energy disruption is affecting weapons systems and that unless they stop the aliens the Enterprise will explode in four hours.

Spock goes to pieces. Or maybe he just really likes the cover to Talking Heads’ 1978 album, “More Songs About Buildings and Food.” I think he and David Byrne would get on well.

Villamonte’s inks and Burzon’s very clear lettering show how mismatched Janson’s style was with the book. The story so far has breezed along easily, clearly and is quite entertaining. Cockrum’s art looks like Cockrum’s art. And it continues in some cool alien designs and layouts as Kirk leads a landing party to a surface full of interesting aliens and a fair bit of action.

And here’s where the story starts to run into itself. First, we have the humanoid aliens on the planet calling themselves Orgs and their enemies are the Mox. More on that in a bit. And then the critical patient on the Enterprise, Professor Lenore Fowler, starts smacking tools out of Dr. Chapel’s hands as she demands to see McCoy.

Cockrum again delivers with a nice alien in the first panel and then that fourth panel with the projectile-tossing arm just visible on the edge.

The Enterprise sensors pick up Spock’s life form readings as the only such readings in a 200 km radius, and lead the landing party to his location within a large temple. There’s some slug-like creatures all around called the Kamahr that generate force fields. An org named D’vid explains the Orgs and Mox are enemies fighting for control of the planet. The Mox have control and confine the Orgs to small areas unable to support their population. So they starve and are now ready to fight back with a planned invasion of the Mox temple.

Next, we find Spock inside the temple with the Mox citing self defense as they attempt to convince him to use his telepathic abilities on the Kamahr in some way. Spock refuses, of course.

Kirk and McCoy, meanwhile, are in the temple and see the Mox for the first time. Together, they figure out that the Mox are Machs, as in machines, and the Orgs are organisms. Mastering the obvious is apparently a difficult course to pass at Starfleet Academy. When the Mox guard spots D’vid, it attacks and the landing party defends itself by destroying the guard. They then find and free Spock, who, like some kind of pointy-eared Clarissa, tells it all: the Mox have learned of the Orgs invasion and are seeking a way to defend themselves as nonviolently as possible by tapping into the Kamahr and their telekinetic abilities.

Kirk and McCoy put their half-brains together and figure out the obvious.

Meanwhile, Chapel makes the mistake of turning her back on the professor, who uses a hypospray on her doctor to escape. Back on the planet, McCoy and Kirk debate whether killing the Mox is murder, when the Orgs attack. Spock, of course, fixes the whole thing by mind melding with the Kamahr and using their telekinesis to free the Enterprise from the Mox ship. Kirk orders the ship to fire its phasers in a wide target on stun mode, which stops the invasion by knocking out all the Orgs.

The Fowler stuff aside, I like the little debate in the bottom half of this page. It really evokes the feeling of the original series.

The professor, meanwhile, stuns the transporter crew and beams down in time to tell Kirk she has a solution to the planet’s problem — just as she collapses due to her fatal disease.

Suddenly, Kirk, Spock and McCoy are back on the Enterprise bridge. Kirk reveals how Spock’s mind-meld revealed that the Mox and Org were both from Earth — refugees from the Eugenics wars of the 1990s.

A good page for some typical Trek-like banter — too bad none of it makes sense.

Then Professor Fowler on the planet communicates that she’s doing great with the mechanical heart the Mox designed for her and that she’s got high hopes for the truce she arranged between them. She’s already got them building hydroponics gardens, high-rise housing and instituted a population control program.

Since THAT all worked out somehow, Kirk orders the ship on to its next mission.

And just in case you weren’t confused enough, here’s a final attempt to explain this story before it ends.

This is a script that really tries to evoke the feeling of the TV show, and succeeds in a number of ways. But it ends being too much story for a 22 page comic book. (In case you were wondering, Marvel did up its story page count in 1980 from 17 to 22 pages at the same time it raised prices from 40 cents to 50 cents.) Trying to jam this much story into a single issue fails to give any of the elements the space to build any suspense or have the payoff mean much of anything in any of its plot lines. The klunkiness of the Mox and Orgs and D’vid is pretty mawkish, and the Professor Fowler character has no rational motivation for her actions and ends up pretty much just a plot device designed to increase danger and resolve the story.

The rest of the comic is pretty solid, though. The mention of the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s predicts and pre-dates plans to bring back Khan in the next movie. The art is clean and clear and has the personality and flair you expect from Dave Cockrum. The colors aren’t flashy, but they do their job. And the lettering is clean and clear. I think Marvel must have upgraded its printing along with expanding the page rates, because there’s far less of the muddiness seen in previous issues to be found here. Even the cover is a big improvement, actually showing one of the main characters — Spock — prominently and in a perilous situation interesting-looking enough to entice readers to part with their half-dollars. No letters page this issue, but there are plenty of signs that the book is improving in many ways for hopeful Trekkers in the summer of 1980.

Comic Treks: Star Trek (Marvel) #7 (Oct. 1980)

Cover to Star Trek #7 (Oct. 1980), by Michael Nasser.

“Tomorrow or Yesterday” (17 pages)
Scripter: Tom DeFalco
Penciler: Mike Nasser
Inker: Klaus Janson
Letterer: Ray Burzon
Colorist: Carl Gafford
Editor: Louise Jones
Editor in chief: Jim Shooter
Cover: Mike Nasser

There’s a lot to like in this issue, which reads like a comic-book equivalent of a TV episode. It’s all done in one, and has all the basics of a standard TV story, with an A plot involving Kirk, Spock and McCoy on the planet, and a complementary B plot with Scotty and the ship.

Tom DeFalco does a nice job on the scripting end. This reads very much like a classic TV episode, even if it doesn’t always make a ton of sense. The pencils by Mike Nasser (now known as Mike Netzer), opens up the panels to tell the story and brings some dynamism an visual splash to the proceedings. Klaus Janson’s inks give Nasser’s pencils continuity with the previous issues, while the colors and letters are suitably well done enough to not be noticeable. There’s no fancy use of color holds here — just solid work.

Solid scripting by Tom DeFalco on this splash page. The title is pretty much lifted from the original series episode “Tomorrow is Yesterday,” which was one of the better first-season shows.

So this one starts off with the Enterprise heading to a section of the galaxy threatened by a cloud of Vega radiation. Kirk is to find and help any threatened populated planets by evacuating the threatened populations until the cloud passes. This is all conveyed rather nicely via “Captain’s Log” narration captions on the splash page, setting up the story quickly and clearly.

Page two is a good example of how this comic recreates the feel of the original show. Nasser starts with a large, irregularly shaped panel that gives a good view of the bridge crew and their urgency in discovering a small group of 200 intelligent life forms living on Andrea IV, right in the path of the Vega cloud We get a nice closeup of Kirk as he delivers a line that would come straight of the show and is easy to hear being spoken by William Shatner.

Page 2. A good example of how to hook your readers with solid layouts and scripting.

Pages three and four get the plot going even more quickly, with more transporter shenanigans (acknowledged this time with footnote from Louise Jones), and taking the transporter off the board as a deus ex machina solution to the crew’s problems.

Then things get weird, as the aliens show up and state they have been awaiting the Enterprise’s arrival for a very long time. I really dig Nasser’s design of the alien for its unusual graphic look, even as it’s unclear how a thing like that could move about in any useful way. I have to say it’s a nice lettering effect to give the Andreans a script style in their dialog balloons.

Again, Nasser does a fine job keeping things dynamic with good layouts and a really interesting alien design of the type you could only do in the comics at this time.

Pages six and seven are both very solid, with the former revealing that the Andreans have build massive statues of Kirk, Spock and McCoy that is a great shocker and would be an ideal spot for a commercial break if this was a TV episode. Page seven fades back in with Spock revealing the statues to have been built some 24,000 years ago. It’s a great panel that actually shows the characters — something the small-box layouts seen so far in the series have been unable to deliver. Kirk asks the lead Andrean what’s going on, but he’s about to “step beyond.”

Another nice page with interesting layouts in service to a good story point. I like the alien hand breaking the panel and the reaction shots of Kirk, Spock and McCoy.
Coming back from the commercial break, Nasser again gives us a nice big look at the heroes with that lead establishing panel. The dialog moves things along well, too. This stands out in contrast to the extremely boxy layouts and small drawings seen so far in the series of the lead characters, who are really the main draw to all of this stuff.

Now we spend a couple pages on plot, with McCoy explaining the Andreans are dying, and the Andreans denying any danger from the Vega radiation — because they know that Kirk et. al are “the protectors.” Kirk and company do their best to persuade the Andreans to evacuate, but they refuse because of their complete belief in the belief that the protectors will be save them. Spock comes up with a long-shot possible solution in which very precise phaser strikes by the Enterprise could disperse the Vega radiation. Kirk says they’ll go for it, but the transporter is still out. So Kirk orders Scotty to disperse the cloud and come back.

I really like this layout, with the mirrored effect in panels 1 and 3 at the top of the page, with Kirk’s changing expression, and then again at the bottom. I should say that Janson’s inks are, as always, very polished.

Unable to help Scotty, Kirk follows a hunch of Spock’s that leads them to discover a massive solar collector, which their Andrean host tells them is one of many on the planet. Again, taking a page from TV pacing, McCoy tells Kirk he’s made a major discovery without explaining what it is.

Meanwhile, Scotty leads the crew as they try to disperse the Vega radiation, which doesn’t work and strands the Enterprise without warp capability and they put everything they’ve got into the deflectors to try to shield themselves from the approaching cloud. Back on the planet, McCoy tells Kirk that one of the Andreans is evolving at a fantastic rate, which is what the aliens mean by “stepping beyond.” A doorway in the base of the giant statues opens to admit the transitioning alien, and Kirk, Spock and McCoy follow.

Another nice example of showing the characters up close and large as a way to bring some dynamism to the proceedings. By the way, Scotty injured his hands in the earlier transporter accident.

Here we get some more interesting art, as the passage reveals a massive underground complex. Spock mind melds with the Andrean, and gets enough information from it to relay that this species is always in evolutionary flux and can see all periods of time simultaneously. They prepared for the Vega cloud accordingly by building the solar collectors to amass the energy needed to disperse the cloud, and knew that Spock would figure all this out in time to push the activation button and save the day for the Andreans and the Enterprise.

So here’s the underground complex under the statues, as well as Spock’s mind meld. I like the extreme perspective in panel 1 to give this a sense of scale. The rest of it’s a bit compressed, but still clear.

The tale ends with a cryptic, almost pun-like observation from Spock about how he would love to ponder this paradox “… if only I had the time.”

The story concludes with more nice layouts. I like that panel of Spock for its expressiveness and the steady point of view of the final three panels playing against the pun-like concluding dialog.

All in all, a decent issue. You know this because the obvious criticisms are all more about the story itself than how it was executed. The book looks good — or as good as a comic like this could look in 1980 — and the story does evoke the style of the old TV show. But like too many episodes, the aliens are never fleshed out or made to be interesting in any way, even though we’re told that their intelligence far outstrips even Spock’s. The Vega cloud also is really not developed as a specific idea that has any kind of scientific credibility.

There’s a letter’s page in this issue, though no great revelations this time from editor Louise Jones. She does say that every issue of the comic is scrutinized and approved by Gene Roddenberry, and gives co-plotting credit on issue #5 to Denny O’Neil.

I think if Marvel had started off the comic with an issue like this one it would have earned more attention from fans. But coming out as it did in the summer of 1980, its thunder was stolen by the excitement among sci-fi fans surrounding The Empire Strikes Back, and by the Dark Phoenix saga in X-Men among comics readers and Marvel fans.

This issue was later reprinted in Marvel’s second paperback collection of Star Trek comics, the first having collected the movie adaptation. It also included issues #11 and #12, so I’ll talk about that after getting through the original issues in the run.

Comic Treks: Star Trek (Marvel) #6 (Sept. 1980)

Cover to Star Trek #6, by Dave Cockrum and Klaus Janson.

“The Enterprise Murder Case!” (17 pages)
Writer: Mike W. Barr
Artists: Dave Cockrum & Klaus Janson
Letterer: Rick Parker
Colorist: Carl Gafford
Editor: Louise Jones
Editor in chief: Jim Shooter
Cover: Dave Cockrum & Klaus Janson
“Historian First Class”: Marian Stensgard

This one hurt my brain. The splash page for this one is pretty good for a Star Trek comic: Kirk and Spock rushing to Lt. Rand in the transporter room, where something appears to be going wrong with the beaming up of an important ambassador. I especially like on this page the color hold effect of the transporter, which uses the limitations of the printing technology to good effect. Less impressive is the rather pointless “computer paper” effect on the captain’s log captions. In 1980, that might have seemed futuristic, but anyone who had to use that kind of paper will tell you what a pain it was to remove neatly those perforated side sprockets.

The lesson of this page is: Never use the transporter when Rand’s in charge.

The real problem with this image, though, is that it’s lifted almost directly from the movie. Another transporter accident? Really?

When they pull the transportee through, it turns out that Ambassador Phral is dead, thanks to a dagger that apparently found its way into his back during transport.

That’s a decent premise for a Star Trek story, I’ll admit. I just wish the rest of the issue had lived up to its potential.

The captions reveal the setup for this issue: Kirk is to ferry Ambassador Phral from his home planet of Yannid IV to a ceremony admitting the planet to the Federation, essentially a defeat for its rival, the Klingon Empire. But the death of the ambassador is, clearly, a problem. Especially when it’s revealed that Phral was dead for 10 minutes before appearing on the Enterprise — impossible given he was alive just moments before the transport, which did experience some unusual interference.

Spock, by the way, has this plot figured out by the end of page three. The rest of us have 14 more pages to endure.

Throughout all this, Kirk is more on-edge than normal – snapping at crew members and living up to his lower-decks nickname, “Kirk the Jerk (Off).” There’s a bunch of exposition setting up a subplot for the captain that almost completely crowds the art off the page.

Some nice color work here gives some depth to this panel.

Meanwhile, Sulu, Chekov and Chief DiFalco are boozing it up on Yannid IV and get into a classic bar fight. Barr’s narration is blunt and appears ripped from the pages of a prohibitionist group. I’m not sure if Sulu, et. al, are escaping via beam-up the swords of the Yannidians or the captions.

Writer Mike W. Barr fights with the captions for a … bar fight.

After a cursory appearance from Admiral Fitzpatrick (who looks like he was originally Commander Adama cut and pasted from Marvel’s Battlestar Galactica comic), Kirk comes clean to McCoy and Spock about his past screw-ups on Yannid IV.

Finally, we get a cool page as Cockrum gets to conjure up some of the wacky space machinery and costumes he did much better in X-Men. We also get to see a tantalizing glimpse of young Kirk, wearing the old green sweater uniforms seen only in the original Trek pilots, “The Cage” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” There’s also an original phaser! Yay, Original Series!

Cockrum almost makes this page work. Almost.

Kirk’s version of what happened is that he was an ensign just out of Starfleet Academy, leading an away team into a war on Yannid IV. The pro-Federation King Geror had been killed by pro-Klingon forces that also had captured the king’s son, Prince Arlph. Kirk led a landing party to find the prince and succeeded in liberating him, although a into the fray and rescue Prince Arlph — without casualties. It worked, except a warning shot Kirk fired ricocheted unexpectedly and put Prince Arlph into a coma. Arlph’s brother became king and blamed Kirk, as did Arlph when he came out of his coma, changed his name to Pharl and became the ambassador who died in the transporter accident. Starfleet, of course, exonerated Kirk. That’s a lot to convey in less than two pages, so it’s a lot of cranky copy supported by Cockrum doing his damnedest to make it work.

There’s also signs of just plain crap. Arlph and Phral are both anagrams of Ralph. Geror is one for Roger. And Storf is one for Frost. I don’t know what the anagram is for Yannid, but I assume there is one. Barr is not exactly pulling a Marc Okrand on this one. It pulls me out, because as soon as I realized this, I couldn’t help but read Arlph and Phral as Ralph and Geror as Roger.

Spock comes up with a theory of what happened, and pulls out some really lame proof that apparently so discombobulated Cockrum that he couldn’t keep track of who he was drawing in a single panel.

The rest of the comic is about solving the mystery — something it does in the most comic-book-y fashion imaginable. Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down in disguise — in this case, that means pirate costumes, “purpleface” makeup (Prince would love it), tails, and some really bad hairdos and facial hair.

It’s here that Spock reveals his deep affection for Calgary Flames icon Lanny McDonald. Don’t listen to me — decide for yourselves!

The trio tracks down a clue leading to “Doctor Loroc,” who’s a female plastic surgeon, and gets shot in her third panel. The idiocy continues as Spock et. al deduce the real killer has changed his appearance and is one of three aliens in the clinic.

In classic Trek fashion, Spock’s bluff exposes — with the current leaders of Yannid VI now assembled in the room — the ambassador and how they subbed the dead body for his during mid-transport. The exposed Phral grabs a weapon and holds the princess hostage. Bones, once again, thinks fast and stabs Phral with a hypo spray conveniently loaded with “the most potent knockout drug I’ve got!”

Bones “shoots” someone for the second issue in a row.

The grateful Yannid VI leaders agree to sign the Federation treaty and hang out on the Enterprise for a few days before beaming home.

Strangely enough, this is all done in 16 pages — leaving a real clunker of a final page for Kirk, Spock and Bones to tease each other before the ship finally warps off past more overwritten copy and on to the next issue.

The creative team on this issue was clearly attempting to compress a story as complex as a full episode of the original series into a mere 17 pages. And it really doesn’t work, especially when the plot is as underdeveloped and overwrought as this one.

Some nice color work here, even if the story is by this point incoherent.

Cockrum and Janson are clearly not meshing any better. This issue struggles to find moments where the art can shine, and way too often has to rely on color effects to get any kind of “wow” factor into the mix.

The covers are an obvious problem for this series. This issue’s cover — marred, as were all Marvel comics that month — with an ad promoting a contest for fans as a way to apologize for raising the price to 50 cents, is just plain awful. Again, there’s an apparent aversion to putting Kirk, Spock and McCoy on the cover in favor of a not-great rendering of the inanimate object kn0wn as the U.S.S. Enterprise. And the bit with Ambassador Ralph, I mean Phral, evokes old DC Comics but lacks any kind of visual hook for the story inside.

This issue also features a letters page, with no great revelations from editor Louise Jones. However, at the bottom of the page is “The Mighty Marvel Checklist” of comics on sale this month, at least two of which are stone-cold classics: Star Wars #39, the first episode of Marvel’s adaptation of “The Empire Strikes Back,” by Archie Goodwin, Al Williamson and Carlos Garzon; and the double-size X-Men #137, featuring the final fate of Phoenix, by Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin.

Star Trek #6 is not in the same league.

Comic Treks: Star Trek (Marvel) #5 (Aug. 1980)

Cover to Star Trek (Marvel) #5 (Aug. 1980), by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson.

“The Haunting of the Enterprise!”
Writer:
Mike W. Barr, with plot assist from Denny O’Neil
Artists: Dave Cockrum & Klaus Janson
Letterer: John Costanza
Colorist: Carl Gafford
Editors: Denny O’Neil & Louise Jones
Editor in Chief: Jim Shooter
Cover: Frank Miller and Klaus Janson

With Marv Wolfman gone, Mike W. Barr and Denny O’Neil step in to wrap up the tale started last issue, with inauspicious results.

The issue starts off with the Klingons vaporizing a Starfleet Ensign with a phaser, prompting Kirk to do the same to one of the Klingons. During the brawl, Spock is knocked out with a chair to the head and taken captive by the Klingons as the shields go down and both sides beam back from the haunted house to their respective ships.

An ensign gets phasered, and our eyes suffer for all the orange, pink and purple on this page.

Spock learns from his captors that they are interested in the new warp engines on the Enterprise and they have a secret weapon to use. On the Enterprise, Raytag hints the girl from the haunted house knows what’s going on, though she denies it.

Monsters begin appearing throughout the Enterprise, terrorizing the crew. Bones does a scan of the girl and finds something unusual.

Spock learns the Klingons encountered a damaged starship weeks ago and found as the sole survivor a “horror film archivist.” To earn his willing cooperation, they create a “construct” of his dead wife. The Klingons then put him in a new “thought-enhancer” machine, which tapped into his brain and brought to life the monsters in his dreams.

The plot stands still, but Cockrum and Janson deliver a few panels of nice art.

More monsters plague the Enterprise as the plot treads water, while Spock get close enough to the film archivist to mind meld with him and project a warning to the Enterprise to kill the girl. Bones figures out she’s made of the same stuff as the monsters and is therefore not real, so he pulls out his phaser and disintegrates her.

Fast decision by Bones, and more eye-cancer inducing color holds.

Meanwhile, Raytag is revealed as being the receptor for the images on the Enterprise, and a sudden power surge kills him in the bring.

Finally, some fun! The monsters are unleashed on the Klingons.

This wakes the film archivist, who unleashes his monsters on the Klingon vessel instead. Spock frees him and they transport back to the Enterprise and hightail it out of Dodge.

And the transporter saves the story once again. Maybe.

After dropping off the film archivist at Starbase 16, the Enterprise is off to its next mission.

So, any hope that the previous issue evoked in readers that this series was going to work were seriously shot down by this issue.

It’s easy to be too hard on Barr and O’Neil here, as they obviously came in at the last minute to plot their way out of a pretty odd setup. But their solution just treads water and meets only the minimum standards for resolving this story.

The “film archivist” bit is the weakest — neither he nor the image of his dead wife get even a name in this issue. The Klingons also appear to be the dumbest creatures in the galaxy if this is their plan for getting intel on the new Starfleet engines. Bones deciding in the course of a panel to phaser the girl into oblivion is seriously out of character, while Spock is reduced to a source of exposition and Kirk just shoots things with his phaser. There’s little charm and even less humor in this tale, which clearly sprouted from Wolfman’s real affection for old movie monsters. Also, Raytag’s story goes nowhere, and the death of the ambassador from last issue has no impact or part to play in the story’s conclusion.

The art veers away from Cockrum shining through to being more about Janson’s finishes, and their styles just don’t gel here. There is not much action of interest in this story and little room for the visual storytelling to explore the idea of monsters in space in any interesting way. The lettering and coloring also were off this issue – the splash page alone is an impossible-to-read assault on the eyes.

The cover, at least, is an improvement — no surprise considering it’s penciled by Frank Miller. This issue came out several months before Daredevil #168 introduced Elektra to the world, but you can see Miller moving that direction with his femme fatale composition and the classical look of the nameless girl’s sandals. Again, though, Kirk and McCoy are small on the cover and the ghostly image of Spock gets a bit lost in the purple on purple color hold. Perhaps another color would have worked better.

Wrapping up this issue is a letters page with answers from Barr, who was obviously slated to take over regular writing on the series. No real revelations this time, but Barr shows real enthusiasm for Star Trek comics that will really come to benefit readers only after the license moves to DC Comics.

Comic Treks: Star Trek (Marvel) #4 (July 1980)

Star Trek (Marvel) #4 (July 1980). Cover by Dave Cockrum and Klaus Janson.

“The Haunting of Thallus!” (17 pages)
Cover:
Dave Cockrum and Klaus Janson (signed)
Script/Edits: Marv Wolfman
Pencils: Dave Cockrum
Inks: Klaus Janson
Colors: Carl Gafford
Letters: Jim Novak
Consulting Editor: Jim Shooter

Marvel’s first original Star Trek story is action packed, full of surprises and features much improved art from the movie adaptation. So, of course, this was writer and editor Marv Wolfman’s last issue on the title, which from this point on struggled to find a consistent creative team or direction for itself despite contributions from numerous talented creators.

Raytag escapes as soon as he’s beamed aboard.

Storywise, this issue starts off with a rare teaser splash page of the Enterprise encountering a haunted house in space. The actual story starts on page two, with Kirk and Spock receiving a new mission from Admiral Fitzpatrick (no clue why they didn’t use Admiral Nogura, already established as Kirk’s superior officer) to transport a “totally insane!” prisoner back to the prison he escaped from on the planet Thallus. Overly humble Regulan Ambassador R’kgg is to accompany them on this mission, which goes off the rails as soon as the prisoner, Raytag M’gora, is beamed aboard and escapes.

All this happens by the end of page three, so the pacing is already much ramped up from the sullen pace of the movie and its adaptation.

A nice example of the improved writing and art in Star Trek #4.

The next three pages feature the Enterprise crew trying to recapture Maytag, who’s escaped into the engine pylon structures and fended off attempts by security and Kirk to stop him. Since Raytag is like a bat and “sees” with sonar, they broadcast a “sonic backlash” to distract him long enough for Spock to deliver a nerve pitch.

Crewmembers “forming friendships”.

That taken care of, the Enterprise then receives new rendezvous coordinates from Thallus and obligingly changes course. Meanwhile, a pair of crewmen “forming friendships” in their cabin are attacked by and fend off a werewolf, and Chekov and Sulu see a ghost on the recreation deck.

Raytag tries to convince Kirk not to return him to Thallus and suggests that the Enterprise will become as trapped as he will be. Approaching the rendezvous, Dracula appears on the bridge and trounces a couple of guards before turning into a bat and vanishing into the turboshaft. He’s next spotted on C-Deck where a crewman fired at Dracula and Ambassador R’kgg is found dead with puncture wounds on his neck.

This is classic Cockrum — the woman’s pose, the alien, and the circular inset. Nice stuff.

The Enterprise arrives at its rendezvous to find the floating haunted house teased on page one. Raytag warns Kirk that he and his crew are now also prisoners of Thallus.

There’s more action on this page than in all of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Beaming over, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and a couple of crew members (they don’t wear red shirts anymore, but they’re definitely in the same category) find an elaborate reproduction of a haunted house with spider webs, dust and a storm brewing outside. They hear a scream and rush in to find Frankenstein’s monster choking a young woman. Kirk knocks it out the window and a whole slew of horror monsters appear around them. Among them is a critter who looks an awful lot like Marvel’s Man-Thing.

Check out Man-Thing at right in the bottom panel.

The girl says they’ve been holding her prisoner here as long as she can remember. Bones suggests they bail, but then a a crew of Klingons appear and its commander saying there is no escape.

The last page shows a Klingon ship arriving to inform the Enterprise it has entered Klingon space and its landing party has been captured. Meanwhile, Raytag laughs at this madness as he sits in the brig.

This issue features a letters page that provides some hints at what’s going on with the publishing of the title. First, it lists not Marv Wolfman as editor, but Louise Jones. There are few responses to letters, but she does explain in in answer to a letter from Sim Parks of Swansea, S.C., a bit about the rights situation vis a vis the original series.

More adaptations of novels and short stories aren’t in the cards right now, Sim, mainly because Marvel only has the rights to adapt the movie and do new material based the movie. As yet, we have no rights involving the TV shows or other Star Trek material. Nevertheless, we hope to do stories that you enjoy … even if they are brand new. Let us know if we’re on the right track, okay?

Louise Jones, Star Trek: The Letters Page, Star Trek (1980) #4.

Wolfman’s story echoes a tactic the original series used to save money: set the story somewhere that looks a lot like a standing set you’d find on a TV studio lot in the late 20th century. Wolfman does a good job of packing a lot of story into this issue and using the dialog effectively to indicate character and make clear who’s who and what they’re doing. The mystery connecting the haunted house, the Klingons and Raytag is built up well enough to be a convincing reason for a Trek fan to come back and see how it plays out in the next issue.

For the art, this story plays so much better to Cockrum’s strengths as an artist. Most fans recall him for his amazing character designs, but he also had a real flair for action sequences that really shows here. Assuming he and Wolfman worked Marvel-style, the top-notch pacing of the story and the effective storytelling that gets a lot of information across comes down to Cockrum’s pencils. More of Cockrum’s flair comes through Janson’s inks, which works to the benefit of the story, even if I still think it’s a less-than-ideal match that fails to convey the sleek, modern look of the movie.

The cover, however, is not effective at conveying the story inside as a Star Trek story. The Enterprise is small and obscured through a window, while Kirk and McCoy have their backs to the camera. Spock looks good, but he’s too small and the jokey nature of the image not something that would have appealed as much to Trek fans, I think. It looks like a rejected monster comic cover that had a couple Trek elements pasted in to work for this series.

This issue was the unexpected final issue for Wolfman, who did not return to plot the conclusion in issue #5. As mentioned previously, Wolfman had been editor in chief at Marvel for a short while around 1975-76, and when he passed that title on he carved out a writer-editor deal that allowed him to run the projects he worked on himself with little or no oversight. That approach changed when Jim Shooter took over as editor in chief in 1978. Shooter realized that the single editor approach for a line of comics as numerous as Marvel’s was unworkable and began hiring a team of editors to each work on a reasonable number of titles. He also did not think writers should edit themselves, and refused to renew the writer-artist deals. As they expired, the writers who had them — Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Gerry Conway and now Wolfman — all left Marvel for DC Comics.

Wolfman’s departure from Marvel was bad news for Star Trek, but very quickly resulted in him pairing with artist George Perez to create The New Teen Titans, one of the most iconic, best-selling and critically acclaimed superhero titles of the 1980s. So that worked out.

New Shooter hires Louise Jones and Denny O’Neil stepped in to fill the gap on issue #5, with Jones taking over Star Trek as her own title the following issue. It’s interesting to note that Jones, who was then very new to Marvel, was at the same time taking over X-Men from editor Jim Salicrup amid the climax of the Dark Phoenix saga under somewhat tense conditions. Not sure that it had an effect on Star Trek going forward, but it sure didn’t help.

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