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Robert Greenberger
by Robert Greenberger
With star trip celebrating its 50th anniversary in September, Paramount photos is doing its finest to celebrate gene Roddenberry’s development with a wide range of releases, mining the archives as well as authorizing a number of obscure nuggets to see the light of day. among those releases is IDW’s star Trek: The traditional UK Comics – volume 1.
Star Trek: The traditional UK Comics – volume 1
Say what? Yeah, you keep in mind the somewhat strange Gold key run as well as perhaps you chosen up last year’s two-volume curiosity star Trek: The newspaper Comics, however what’s this about UK strips?
Star Trek: The newspaper Comics Vol. 1
As you may know, British comics utilized to be regular magazine-sized affairs ranging in subject matter from soccer to girls’ adventures. among the products were titles based on the science fiction fare of the day, notably Gerry Anderson’s Supermarionation series however the team of the U.S.S. business likewise were featured in the pages of Joe 90: top Secret, TV21 Valiant, their associated annuals as well as one problem of Radio Times magazine. These ran from 1969-1973, with two extra stories that appeared in 1978 as well as 1979 timed to the very first function film’s release.
Rich Handley, the writer/editor, is an acknowledged professional on the comic strips on both continents as well as is working with IDW on this first-ever compilation of the UK material. He just recently explained he’s been pushing such collections to Pocket Books, WildStorm/DC as well as other interested celebrations however for whatever reason, Paramount’s licensing arm kept rejecting the request.
That all seemed to modification as IDW inherited the permit a number of years back. “To my fantastic surprise, Chris Ryall not only got back to me that exact same day, however stated he had really been looking into it himself however lacked the materials (for both the us as well as UK runs). Chris was excited when I told him I had them all, so he put me in touch with the library of American Comics’ Dean Mullaney, with whom I’ve been working on the reprint books ever since.”
What made the job simple to create was that Handley maintained a total set of the American as well as UK strips. when the offer was signed, the collection was sent to Mullaney for scanning. “When he showed me exactly how the cleaned-up pages look, I was blown away,” Handley said. “After all these years of looking at these decades-old British comic books with their faded composing as well as coloring, I was amazed at exactly how fantastic a task Dean did at bringing out the artwork’s beauty. They’re truly something to behold now.”
Star Trek: The Gold key Archives Vol. 1
While the Gold key books featured backpacks as well as jet contrails from the starship’s nacelles thanks to a paucity of visual materials for the Italian artists to work from, the stories at least felt like star Trek. That was not always the situation for English readers.
“Do you keep in mind that episode in which Captain Kurt of the area Federation as well as his countless team members aboard the world star Ship business patrolled a far-off galaxy, battled Romulan pirates clad in ancient Roman centurion garb, as well as assisted a squad of giant eagle policemen? Or when Kurt as well as his top officers–the Vulcanite Spock, doctor ‘Mac’ McCoy as well as helmsman David Bailey–taught alien gorillas to play soccer, satisfied a fifty-foot-tall kid who made them trip a giant toy train, as well as terminated up the ship’s nuclear rockets for their next mission, all the while yelling out such spacey exclamations as ‘My stars!’ as well as ‘Sufferin’ starships!’? No? You don’t recall that? Well, when you checked out the strips… you will,” Handley composed with tongue somewhat in cheek.
“These strips are trippy as well as weird as well as sometimes method off the mark, in the exact same method that the Gold key comics were–only with a British sensibility. however they’re likewise beautifully illustrated as well as immensely fun to read. They’re the product of the age in which they were made as well as the medium in which they were produced–namely, the age of pulpy sci-fi, Gerry Anderson Supermarionation puppets as well as British television of the 1960s as well as ’70s.”
Now, I have to admit that in spite of all my experience with all-things Trek, this will be my very first genuine exposure to the UK strips so my curiosity is particularly piqued in spite of the somewhat wonky fidelity to the source material. Handley’s abiding interest for the strips, though, speaks well for the experience to come.
He cites as his preferred “the 13th storyline, in which the team of a Federation guardship mutinies against their tyrannical commander, takes Spock’s cousinHorek hostage as well as attempts to seek sanctuary on a Klingon outpost. It’s a solid story featuring some characterizations (well, strong according to the requirements of the U.K. strips, at least) as well as some wonderful artwork. Plus, hey–Spock’s cousin!”
All 638 pages of material is being gotten ready for this two-volume set with the second edition as yet unscheduled.
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Star Trek: The traditional UK Comics Vol. 1