Proto-borgs, a space race, James T. Kirk, slave trader, and a trip to the 20th Century for some fan service. That's what ahead and more in today's review of Star Trek Newspaper strips.
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Transcript below:
Space, the Final Frontier! These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Her four-year mission: to help promote Star Trek movies in newspapers all around America. Learn more when we take a look at Star Trek: The Newspaper Comics Volume 2, straight ahead.
It's amazing the number of properties that have appeared as newspaper strips. Some we wouldn't be surprised by comic books, but daily and Sunday strips were oftentimes seen as a great way to adapt a property. Many obvious superheroes such as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman have been in the comic strips along with characters like Blondie and the Peanuts gang. There was even a series of Stars Wars comic strips. In conjunction with the release of the first Star Trek movie, Star Trek launched newspapers across America with the crew appearing in the same uniforms that they wore in the original Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
The American Comics Library has put out two bound editions. The first collects Volume One collecting 1979 to 81, and the second collecting 81 to 83. The first three strips in the book are written by Sharman DiVono with the art by Ron Harris, and actually the first story in the book in actually the most interesting. In fact, the introduction by JC Vaughn to this volume cites only this particular story because it features the appearance of Cyborgs, Cyborgs which assimilate biological lifeforms and make them part of their whole.I think the…what Vaughn calls the ‘Pro-Borg' aspect of the story is a bit overplayed in the introduction in the back cover copy, but it's definitely there. The way that beings look when assimilated, as well as the appendages call the Borg, even though there are a lot of differences. Even though you can't call this directly a look at the Borg, it's a pretty good science fiction story…and as I said it's the best story in the book.
The next story is The Wristwatch Plantation which finds the Enterprise transporting a diminutive alien race known as the Bebebebeque who have a lot of complications. The story is a bit rambling. First, the aliens are having difficulty getting along with the crew and Kirk's got to solve that; and then there's narcotics trafficking and then there are other aliens who are enslaving them on their colony. And it does have just a bit of meandering and wandering to it, but it's kind of like the old Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon stories where they would tell a story over the course of months in the comic strip and it would seem to wander about almost endlessly as one development led to another, but still on the same plot. This is a fairly good story.
The Nogura Regatta finds the Enterprise, as well as twenty other Federation ships participating in a space version of a Japanese race for an Admiral's birthday, while the Admiral's grandson is deciding to do a social engineering experiment on the crews of these ships using space pirates. This is an interesting concept – I think it works for the most part even though it's a little bit silly, particularly when you think about all of those episodes of Star Trek when the Enterprise is informed, "You're the only ship that's close enough to get there." You wonder was it because all of the other ships in the Federation were often involved in some race for an Admiral's birthday.
The fourteenth story set in September of 1982 brings a new creative team on board which initially is no team at all. It's Padraic Shigetani who both writes the story and does the art,