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| James Sherman/Larry Hama |
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| Ed Hannigan/James Sherman |
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| Unknown |
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| Luke McDonnell/Al Milgrom |
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| Walt Simonson |
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| Joe Brozowski/Terry Austin |
And here are the final batch of covers from the 1979-80 Marvel Comics
Star Trek monthly comic book series, featuring issues #13 through #18 of the company's first attempt with the
Trek franchise, which was a continuation from
Star Trek - The Motion Picture (hence, the pastel pajama uniforms). It was an interesting - if ultimately unsatisfying - run, as the company tried their damnedest to apply the Marvel-style of super-hero storytelling to the
Trek universe, but they were limited both by their own approach, and licensing restrictions from Paramount.
A few years later, DC would land the license, and have a longer, more successful run with it. As mentioned in previous posts, Marvel would get the license back for a while in the 90s - but
that incarnation is beyond the
Space: 1970 timeframe. Scans and artist credits courtesy of
The Grand Comics Database.
Hmmm, I wonder if it would be feasible to do an animated Trek (or motion comic at least) series from these?
ReplyDeleteI think that they were pushing it with the Gnome story. LOL. I agree that the DC version was much better by 80's standards.
ReplyDelete13 and 17 had great covers (although I dislike the character heads on 17---it's like they were channeling the Mego cardbacks for the Star Trek action figures some years earlier.
ReplyDelete14 and 15 are clearly superhero oriented--15 looks like Daredevil, but clearly Kirk is in disguise for a mention (similarly, in one of the Pocket Books novels from the early 80s, Kirk had to dress up like this to study an alien race). It was one of those torture books from Marshak and Culbreath, where they were kidnapped by the UFO aliens and in general made to suffer. Completely out of character...
I thought most of the art inside 17 was garbage, but a very good story.
I love 16's cover but can't recall the story at all (but it was definitely inferior to the cover).
And 18 wound up being something where they had to meld to impress aliens and save their lives. Really. 14-18 come off in general as being worse than the 3rd season of the series and worse than the animateds, and on par with most of the early Gold Key Trek comics.
Thanks for the great images!
Gordon Long
I used to have a complete set of these years ago. Even though Marvel's take on the material wasn't particularly good, I kinda wish I'd kept them, so I decided to get the IDW omnibus edition which handily reprints the entire series (minus the film adaptation).
ReplyDeleteThat last cover, the mind-meld one, is a direct lift from a Steve Ditko drawing of Dr. Strange and the Ancient One in a classic Strange Tales comic from the 60s.
ReplyDelete