firehose

The hit film Star Trek Into Darkness is now available (as a digital download — the disc gets released in a couple of weeks), and you can stream the entirety of The Original Series, The Next Generation and more on Netflix and through other services. But what if you want more; what if you want the adventures of Captain James T. Kirk, Mister Spock, Doctor Leonard McCoy and that one redshirt who’s probably going to die before the cold open in your favorite four-color format?

The Gold Key Era (1967 – 1978)

Western Publishing’s Gold Key imprint had the first Star Trek comic book license and boy, most of these are just out-and-out stinkers; generic kid-friendly sci-fi adventure yarns that lack anything close to the themes and characters that make the series what it is. In the first issue, they discover a planet where carnivorous plants are at the top of the food chain and they have enslaved intelligent animals to feed upon. James T. Kirk’s solution? Destroy the planet and all life on it. That’s right; he doesn’t just break the prime directive. He commits genocide.

Not even experienced writers like Len Wein and Arnold Drake managed to do much more than crank out goofy hackwork in later issues.  There’s a bit of amusement to be had in sequels to stories like “Metamorphosis” and the return of the Guardian of Forever, but only a bit.

While some stylization is a good thing in a licensed comics (one only need to look at the greatness of Frank Miller and Walt Simonson’s Robocop Versus Terminator for proof of that), the fact is that original series artist Alberto Giolitti had never actually seen the show — only publicity photos. In fact, he didn’t have a photo of James Doohan, so he just drew a generic white guy for Chief Engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scot  for the first handful of issues. In fact, outside of Spock actor Leonard Nimoy’s makeup artist, nobody fared particularly well under Giolitti’s pen, even if he drew a bitchin’ Enterprise that shot fire out of its nacelles. Later artists followed up in that bland, ineffectual Gold Key style that has made the vast majority of their licensed comics the high point of no one’s collection.

All of this is particularly disappointing once you consider how gorgeous and enticing a lot of the covers for Gold Key’s run are. I’m pretty sure the publisher had to have been sued by at least one indignant fan who actually bothered to open up and read what was inside.

I’ve spent years trying to like these comics and failing; clockwork plotting and out-of-character dialogue sucks the enjoyment out of the goofy moments and … interesting artistic choices.

Marvel, Part I (1979 – 1981)

With the hype surrounding  1979′s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Marvel made its move to secure the license. Star Wars had basically saved the publisher and everyone liked Star Trek, right? It must have seemed like a no-brainer. It’s sad that the cerebral science fiction film’s adaptation (with art by Dave Cockrum and Klaus Janson) is the creative high point of a series that was hamstrung by licensing restrictions. Marvel creators could only use characters shown in the film and specifically avoid any mention of what happened during the five-year mission of the original television series. You want a sequel to “City on the Edge of Forever?” Too bad, fanboy.

For sheer camp value, though, issue #4, “The Haunting Of Thallus,” is worth checking out. It features an appearance from Marvel Comics’ version of Dracula and he puts down a righteous smackdown on the crew.

I think we can agree that this is exactly the sort of thing that comics needs more of, period. Sadly, that wasn’t to be the case; Martin Pasko wrote the majority of these issues and with a series of artists that included Luke McDonnell and Gil Kane provided an updated version of the Gold Key model of the Trekstory. Issue #18, the final installment, was penned by J.M. DeMatteis and features pirates, a giant robot, and a shirtless James T. Kirk in the opening splash; irritatingly, it’s somehow more generic than the rest.

DC Comics: A Story In Two Volumes (1982 – 1986)

Two years after Marvel ceased its Star Trek comic and bolstered by the success of Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, DC Comics moved in. Thanks to the sharp editorial and quality control that helped foster the company’s 80s renaissance, they managed to publish the best Star Trek comics yet. Unlike Marvel, DC had free rein to use any and all of the established Trek mythos. With February 1984′s “The Wormhole Connection,” the publisher began stories set after the events of Star Trek II and leading into Star Trek III. This was the first time that a Star Trekcomic actually felt like it should, even if you can feel Mike W. Barr, Tom Sutton and Ricardo Villagran learning a bit as they go.

Things got interesting once The Search for Spockcame out and the trinity of Kirk, Spock and McCoy were reunited for a while. With “The Mirror Universe Saga” (which is available in an out-of-print but inexpensive trade paperback collecting issues #9-16), things kicked into high gear with a rollicking adventure where dimensions were hopped, Enterprises were destroyed (again) and an intrepid reporter saved the day. It was after this arc that James T. Kirk was given command of the Excelsior for an extended shakedown cruise. (After all, flying around in a captured Klingon Bird of Prey is a little…y’know. Something.)

One thing that really differentiated DC’s approach from previous efforts was the strong supporting cast. With the original crew having to stay fairly static between films (to the point where they put Spock in charge of his own ship so he was off-screen most of the time), it was up to characters like Bearclaw, Bryce and the Klingon defector Konom to handle the actual drama.

Writers would change, but Sutton and Villagran remained the regular art team during first volume of DC’s Trekseries, taking breaks only when a movie adaptation or something like that demanded their attention. While the art is anything but remarkable — Sutton was known for horror more than anything else and Villagran’s inks were overpowering — that consistency is one of those things we just don’t see that often nowadays.

Trek novelist Diane Duane was responsible for a pair of very good stories from the first volume of DC’s Star Trek. The two-parter “Double Blind” (issues #24-25) features two races — one a group of fierce-looking Cthulhus, the other a literal group of talking house cats — who both claim the Excelsior in a story that we can’t let be discovered by the Internet. There’s a lot of character-driven humor and heart in “Double Blind,” and it’s just as much fun as “The Trouble With Tribbles” or “A Piece of the Action.”

Duane’s other major contribution, issue #28′s “The Last Word,” is a McCoy-centric done-in-one that deals with death in the crew, something that Trekhas generally avoided discussing much. Special note should be made of Gray Morrow’s evocative art in this issue; he captured likenesses remarkably well while avoiding the stiffness that tends to accompany work that looks too on-model.

With Mike Barr stepping back, Len Wein took over after a series of fill-ins and helped guide the book to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. While this meant he was stuck with the task of explaining how Spock reverted to the “LDS”-addled spaceman we see in that film along with other bits of housekeeping, he managed to wrap things up fairly well, proof that he’d come a long, long way since his Gold Key material. Maybe, you know, writing a buttload of other comics helped.

After the fourth movie, things saw a notable dip in quality with sequels that nobody asked for (“The Apple”? Really?). Thankfully, Peter David came on board and began applying some of the same talent he’s since demonstrated in comics like X-Factorwhile tackling the large cast of the series. In the space of a little under a year, there’s a bachelor party, a massive space battle, a wedding, a trip to Dante’s Inferno, the stabbing of James T. Kirk and the return of a now-reformed Finnegan, all done with a writerly grace that the series had lacked before.

David also did a sterling job on Star Trek Annual#3, a story drawn by Curt Swan (with inks by series regular Ricardo Villagran) that focused on the great love of Scotty’s life. (No, it’s not the engine room. He likes girls, too. Just not as much.)

However, with Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, things changed… and not for the better. Considering the quality of that filmic effort, that should be nothing like a surprise.

Paramount handed down a decree that said the comic’s supporting cast had to go and with them, the art team of Sutton and Villagran. The series was rebooted with a second volume. Peter David continued scripting through the first year and change, but even with his witty repartee and ability to work within the constrictions, it was obvious that the wind had been sucked out of the sails. James Fry and Arne Starr’s art, while having a cartoonish appeal, also had the unfortunate effect of making the crew looking slightly surprised at all times. Things that should have been fun, such as “The Trial of James T. Kirk,” in which our captain has to answer for his many, many violations of the prime directive and other Federation statutes, seemed toothless.

Later writers like the novelist Howard Weinstein tried their best, but the series became more episodic and lost a lot of the forward momentum that made the first volume stand out. Yes, there were sequels to episodes and fan favorite Wrath of Khan survivor Saavik rejoined the crew, but it became the one thing Treknever should be: just a product, and a boring one at that.

One oddity in DC’s Volume Two era that stands out is the graphic novel Star Trek: Debt of Honor, written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Adam Hughes with Karl Story on inks. As you can probably imagine, it’s over-scripted by a sizable percentage, with a core story obscured by pointless name-checking and references and the need to explain everything as it happens. (Not to mention the accents. The accents, people.)

That said, Hughes does stellar (no, that is not a pun) work and not even Bob Pinaha’s word balloons can’t do much to temper the glee at seeing one of comics’ masters of likenesses tackle the crew of the Enterprise.

Marvel, Again (1997 – 1998)

By the time DC’s second volume had wound down in 1996, the focus in Star Trek licensing was firmly on the Star Trek: The Next Generation characters and beyond. Only the quarterly Star Trek Unlimited featured stories set during The Original Series (Early Voyagesfeatured Captain Pike and the crew of the Enterprise before Kirk) and, for the most part, these were pretty much like every other Marvel comic published the late 1990s: not very good.

The exception that proves the rule here is Star Trek Unlimited#3′s “Message In A Bottle,” written by Dan Abnett and Ian Edgington with Mark Buckingham and Kev Sutherland providing (occasionally photo-referenced, but still very serviceable) art. This story manages to echo “The Galileo Seven” and “The Immunity Syndrome” without aping them entirely while giving us a look at Lt. Uhura doing something besides operating the switchboard.

It’s exciting, puts an underappreciated character front and center (this was before Tumblr, remember) and makes you want more in the same vein. Sadly, that wasn’t to come.

(I know what you’re thinking at this point: “Why haven’t they mentioned the Star Trek/X-Mencrossover?” That’s because it’s out-and-out terrible. Don’t act like it’s not. You say “X-Men and Spock! Hanging out! There are two Doctor McCoys!” and I say “Scott Lobdell wrote it.”)

The Treklicense proved to be too expensive to maintain and Marvel canceled all of their tie-in series simultaneously, an act that I’d like to think of as a mercy killing

WildStorm (1999 – 2002)

DC Comics got its third chance at Star Trek when the license was granted to its recently-acquired WildStorm imprint. Like Marvel, WildStorm focused its efforts on TNG, DS9 and Voyagerfor the most part with only a few one-shots and special featuring the original series crew. The less said about these, the better, and not just because my editor is giving me the stinkeye about how long this piece is running.

Tokyopop (2006 – 2008)

Perhaps best known for scores of unfinished series and underpaid creators, American manga publisher Tokyopop released three volumes of featuring short stories starring the original Star Trekcrew in the style called “Amerimanga,” invented by someone who should probably be dragged out into the street and shot. Despite the overall goofiness, there’s some charm to be found these amateurish productions. David Gerrold (who scripted the classic “The Trouble With Tribbles” episode) was paired with Don Hudson in a story that features Captain Kirk seducing a space teddy bear.

For this alone, I thank everyone involved in this effort.

IDW Publishing (2007 – Present)

IDW obtained the license and started doing pretty well by it, with one-shots and miniseries focusing on the original series. A lot of these have been by-the-book affairs that don’t do much beyond letting the reader feel like they’ve seen a comics adaptation of an episode they somehow missed, but there’s still quality to be found in stories like the DC Fontana-scripted “The Enterprise Experiment.”

Strangely enough, noted comics curmudgeon John Byrne’s done some of his best work of the last decade and change on these titles, with Leonard McCoy: Frontier Doctor and an Assignment: Earth series that catches readers up with original series guest star Gary Seven. The former lets us see some of the nooks and crannies of the Federation while filling us in on how the title character earned that amazing beard between the end of the TV series and the first film. The latter follows up on the stealth pilot episode from the original series and it amounts to a fun, pop-tastic American take on Doctor Who. (That means you won’t fall asleep during it and wonder what the hubbub was about.)

Both of these series have been collected in Star Trek: The John Byrne Collection, an oversized hardcover that also collects his Romulan stories and other odds and sods.

Also worth mentioning is Chris Roberson and Jeffrey and Philip Moy’s Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes crossover from 2011-2012, a six-part miniseries that’s available now as a collected edition. While the Marvel superhero crossover suffers from being a product of its time of publication, ST/LOSHfeatures Roberson working a distinctly 1980s superhero comic vibe, with the two teams having a misunderstanding before teaming up to escape an alternate dimension where the Federation has been dominated by an emperor whose identity is just one huge orgasm for a certain sort of fan.

(I am that sort of fan. I have no pride.)

IDW’s efforts over the last couple of years have been understandingly focused on an ongoing set in the Abramsverse established in the 2009 Star Trekmovie reboot, but there’s a strangely enticing John Byrne comic on the horizon — a photocomic sequel to the second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”

It’s due to come out as an Annual this December and I hope this means that we’ll be seeing more oddities and interesting things of this nature coming out of IDW. After all, with 45 years of stories set in that universe, it still occasionally feels like the surface has just been scratched.

Note: Every Trek comic published prior to Tokyopop (including the book-and-record sets aimed at kids with art by Neal Adams and Russ Heath among others) is available in the PDF format on GIT Corp’s Star Trek: The Complete Comic Book Collection.

Microsoft confirmed this morning that Windows 8.1 has been released to manufacturing ahead of its October 18th retail launch.

Microsoft also confirmed rumors that the new operating system would not be made available early to any customers. Traditionally, the company has made its new operating systems available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers, as well as volume license customers.

This allowed developers to test and update their applications ahead of release day to ensure that there were no day one upsets and similarly allowed IT departments to try out the new software.

The Chromecast app for iOS: not much, but it'll do.

Just over a month after the device’s announcement and launch, Google has released a Chromecast setup app for iOS devices. While users have been able to stream to Chromecast with updated YouTube and Netflix apps for some time, they are now able to set up the devices using an app, too.

Google promised effective feature parity across iOS and Android platforms when it launched the Chromecast in July. Neither platform would be at a particular advantage, it said, yet the Netflix promotion came and went before iOS got its app.

While actual casting features made it to iOS in short order, iOS device setup had to be conducted in a slightly convoluted way via the Safari browser. The iOS Chromecast app affords a little more extensibility: users can view the device’s settings, build number, and MAC address, as well as reboot or reset it by tapping a couple of buttons.

Like other companies such as Twitter, Google, and Microsoft, Facebook is now giving us a peek at the number of data requests it gets from governments around the world. In the company’s first-ever Global Government Requests Report, Facebook revealed that the United States leads the world by far in both the number of "total requests" and "users or accounts requested" between January 1, 2013 and June 30, 2013.

American authorities—presumably ranging across local, state, and federal levels—requested information on “20,000 to 21,000” individual accounts. Facebook handed over “some data” in 79 percent of those cases. Curiously, the US is the only country where Facebook expresses this data as a range rather than as a specific number.

“We have reported the numbers for all criminal and national security requests to the maximum extent permitted by law,” the company wrote in the report's Frequently Asked Questions section, which along with the report itself, was released on Tuesday. “We continue to push the United States government to allow more transparency regarding these requests, including specific numbers and types of national security-related requests. We will publish updated information for the United States as soon as we obtain legal authorization to do so.”

By Craig Pearson on August 27th, 2013 at 1:00 pm.

There are plenty of pitfalls that come with crowd-funding. Hell, even successful campaigns suffer from cashflow problems. But I’d imagine Precinct, the spiritual successor to Police Quest, would rather be in that position than the one its currently in. After a collapsed Kickstarter, the game’s second attempt at bucket rattling hasn’t taken in the necessary funds, with only $11,961 pledged in three weeks. In a sad statement to the community, the developers have announced that it’s effectively cancelled.

While Precinct was another developer returning to a game series of yesteryear, it was at least a interpretation of that idea, turning the fiddly and hilarious adventure series of a cop on the beat into a first-person police procedural drama. But it appears that wasn’t what people wanted. Writing on the game’s site, Producer Robert Lindley announced:

We put every effort into making a crowdfunding campaign work but we have decided to end the Precinct campaign effective today. Your generous support not only made Precinct a possibility, it also gave us the fire to try and make this work when the going got hard.

But it wasn’t enough. Precinct’s attempted reroll after the original Kickstarter scored less than 14% of the Kickstarter pot in the same amount of time. That was too much for the producers to take, says Lindley:

We’re fighters and fought our best. Unfortunately, our best wasn’t good enough to overcome the challenges with crowdfunding Precinct. Our new approach attracted some terrific supporters and we are grateful. However, we simply don’t have the momentum needed to meet the requirements of this project.

Depending on the situation, we may decide to try again someday. The backing community are wonderfully supportive of Jim Walls making a new game. Likewise, our team remains passionate about Precinct and are hopeful there is a way to make Precinct a reality in the future.

I hate seeing someone’s passion failing to capture the interest of others, and a crowd-funding failure is a very public rebuttal. Not even the generous terms of the second funding attempt, where every pledge would receive a copy of the game, was enough to convince people to part with their money, and there’s no fallback position this time.

After Disney bought Marvel and discontinued its licensing deal with Boom! Studios, Roger Langridge‘s until-then ongoing Muppets series fell into a sort of limbo until his unpublished stories were collected in the standalone 96-page Disney’s Muppets Presents Meet The Muppets #1 released by Marvel back in 2011. After that, though, the book was considered effectively canceled with no trade paperback collections or even digital buying options made available to fans. That changes this April with the release of The Muppets Omnibus Hardcover, which is set to collect Langridge’s The Muppet Show, The Muppet Show Comic Book: The Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson, The Muppet Show Comic Book, and The Muppets work originally published by Boom!.

“I’m extremely proud of the work I did on the Muppet Show comic books and thrilled to hear that they’ll be available soon in this long-lasting format,” said Langridge in Marvel’s official press release. “This is one of those rare cases where corporate imperatives neatly intersected with a cartoonist’s own interests and passions, and I’m pleasantly surprised to hear that Marvel thought my efforts were worth commemorating with such a prestigious edition.”

Over at his personal blog Langridge pointed out that he’d have liked to have seen Amy Mebberson and Shelli Paroline’s contributions included too, however.

“It looks like the work I wrote that was drawn by Amy Mebberson and Shelli Paroline won’t be included, which is… let’s just say it’s not what I would have done; but it is what it is, and I’m grateful that any of it will be available at all – I’d pretty much written it off as work that would disappear forever.”

No matter whether or not Marvel taps Langridge for future Muppets comics, his association with Jim Henson’s puppet characters is far from over, with the storyteller reporting to USA Today that he still gets asked to draw the characters at conventions.

“Of all the things I’ve worked on, the Muppets seem to be what has made a connection with the largest number of people, and it remains the thing I’m requested to draw most often,” Langridge says. “I’m lucky to have had the opportunity to be associated with something that is held in such great affection by so many.”

While singer Robin Thicke set his pop hit to a highly dubious music video, sued the family of his stated inspiration Marvin Gaye for agreeing that it does indeed sound like Marvin Gaye, declared it a “feminist movement within itself” and continues to do god knows what else to crush the stupid thing into the ground, nerdcore musician Adam WarRock teamed up with cartoonist (and frequent ComicsAlliance contributor) Chris Haley to rescue “Blurred Lines” from Thicke’s icky grasp and redeem it as a truly affectionate tribute to the world of convention cosplay. Enjoy “Nerrd Lines.”

WarRock described the inspiration for the track on his website:

In this weird nerd world that we live in, it’s kind of funny how many professional cosplayers we know, or people who are sort of web-renowned for their cosplay abilities. It’s the kind of thing that I think gets derision from a lot of people who aren’t self identified nerdy types; but the more that I’ve been to cons and seen people really happy, enthusiastic, just expressing themselves in support of whatever they are dressed as; it’s kind of a beautiful thing, right? I was waiting for a ride to the airport from Otakon, standing there with my boxes and bags tired and beaten up, and I saw a mom drop off 3 little kids dressed up as anime characters, and the mom got out of the car and helped adjust their costumes before they ran to the line to get into Otakon. It was a pretty great moment, and it made me thankful to be in the genre or realm or whatever you call it that I’m in. Nerds rule.

Sample lyrics:

In these nerd lines

you know you got it

And so you flaunt it 

you’re at the con and

in that costume

Think she looks fantastic

Spandex and plastic

Hey

Wanna take your picture,

When you’re in the get up

Treat you with respect

cuz a creep’ll get a fist to the face

You blew my mind off

Take a pic with psylocke

What rhymes with psylocke?

Ok now they might judge, think it’s all fun and games

But you’re so proud and nerdy, and I think it’s a shame

That some they can’t accept it

you do and I respect it

If I forgot to mention

Hey Dr. Girlfriend..

And some more:

Oh, this for the cosplayers,

For the jean greyers that I saw later

This one goes out to all the Homestuck trolls

I don’t read Homestuck, but do your thing, yo

I just want everyone to express themselves

whether you’re dressing like you’re the belle of the ball, I mean y’all

With hair to the ceiling bright pink I mean

I just love to see you doing your thing

I’m kinda new on the scene, but you’re pursuing a dream

I’d never ruin it, yes I’m fully supporting every stitch and a seam

Get lost in your eyes, every time, in fact

But I man I gotta ask, girl, is that a colored contact

Just shake your cape

Get up

Get down

Like you’re in that skirt

That S on your shirt

Like you’re not from Earth