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Star Trek The Newspaper Strip #1
Star Trek: The Newspaper Comics, Volume 1: 1979-1981
A collection of Star Trek daily and Sunday newspaper strips, originally released by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. This volume features the first ten stories, from the strip's debut on December 2, 1979 through October 25, 1981. Rich Handley contributes an introduction detailing the history of the strip. Extras include reproductions of promotional material and the McDonald's Happy Meal strips from 1979.
270 pages, Hardcover
First published November 13, 2012
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55 people want to read
About the author
Rich Handley
54 books9 followersRich Handley has written or co-written five books (Timeline of the Planet of the Apes, Lexicon of the Planet of the Apes, The Back to the Future Lexicon, The Back to the Future Chronology and the novel Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes), helped to update the reference book Planet of the Apes Revisited, and penned articles for POTA magazine Simian Scrolls. Rich has written fiction and other works for Lucasfilm's licensed Star Wars franchise, and has contributed essays to IDW's Star Trek newspaper strip reprint books, Fantom Press's upcoming Tales from the Forbidden Zone: The Unseen Scripts of Doug Moench, Sequart's New Life and New Civilizations: Exploring Star Trek Comics, and ATB Publishing's impending Star Trek anthology, Outside In: TOS 109. In addition, he has written for or edited numerous other publications, including Star Trek Communicator, Star Trek Magazine, Cinefantastique, Dungeon/Polyhedron, RFID Journal (for which he currently serves as managing editor), and Realm Press's Battlestar Galactica comic book line.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
January 12, 2021
Fun set of comic strips. The stories take place shortly after the events of Star Trek The Motion Picture and are series of acceptable episodes of a tv series. The format is interesting as only a snippet of each story is on each daily strip. I don’t know how someone could have read the originals as you only got three or four panels a day. Add to that the colored Sunday comic which appears had to be repeated in summary form on Monday I am guessing for those readers who only paid for the cheaper six day subscriptions. Looking past the mechanics of turning a 15 minute comic read into weeks of story, I enjoyed the time I spent with this book. One note, the last story is longer than the others and has no ending other than a teaser to buy the next volume. But, as of January 2021, that next volume is out of print and I can only find used copies on eBay for prices in excess of $100. Fun, but not that fun.
December 7, 2013
The Star Trek newspaper comic was not widely printed, it appears, because sci-fi comics were considered unpopular or risky by newspaper editors. I do remember seeing one installment of the strip in a newspaper my parents picked up somewhere on vacation at some point during its run. Other than that, this comic strip was completely new to me.
Within the confines of the daily comic format, it does a reasonable job of continuting the tone of Star Trek the Motion Picture and the original Star Trek TV series (even occasionally making reference to events of the original series). Most of the stories concentrate on the Strange New Worlds aspects of Trek, rather than focusing on more intense action-adventure as we later saw in Wrath of Khan. Even with the very sparse dialogue and exposition, the characters are captured well, with little bits of give-and-take, just like in the original series. Because the stories needed to be broken down into daily installments, and needed to be accessible to the non-fan general public, the plots are simple and the Trek technobabble is kept to a minimum. In some cases, the enforced simplicity results in light, lively stories without the ponderous feel of The Motion Picture. At other times, cases the stories are too simplistic, even childish. The story arc featuring two Klingon civilians who defect to the Federation is one such example. Rather than exploring the implied moral and political issues of democracy vs. authoritarianism, the story just sort of peters out with an inconclusive ending. That may be a lot to expect of a newspaper comic, but it is the type of philosophical exploration I expect from a good Star Trek story.
Unfortunately, the strips also suffer from a steady decline in the quality of the artwork. The drawings are sharp and detailed in the early stories, but as new artists were brought on for later stories, the art becomes muddy and rushed-looking. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the artwork from the Star Trek McDonald's Happy meal boxes is reprinted in a color section at the back of the book.
To summarize, there is much that is enjoyable about the book if you would like to indulge in some nostalgia for the early days of the Star Trek movie franchise. However, there is nothing here that I thought was an amazing or outstanding example of Star Trek storytelling.
Within the confines of the daily comic format, it does a reasonable job of continuting the tone of Star Trek the Motion Picture and the original Star Trek TV series (even occasionally making reference to events of the original series). Most of the stories concentrate on the Strange New Worlds aspects of Trek, rather than focusing on more intense action-adventure as we later saw in Wrath of Khan. Even with the very sparse dialogue and exposition, the characters are captured well, with little bits of give-and-take, just like in the original series. Because the stories needed to be broken down into daily installments, and needed to be accessible to the non-fan general public, the plots are simple and the Trek technobabble is kept to a minimum. In some cases, the enforced simplicity results in light, lively stories without the ponderous feel of The Motion Picture. At other times, cases the stories are too simplistic, even childish. The story arc featuring two Klingon civilians who defect to the Federation is one such example. Rather than exploring the implied moral and political issues of democracy vs. authoritarianism, the story just sort of peters out with an inconclusive ending. That may be a lot to expect of a newspaper comic, but it is the type of philosophical exploration I expect from a good Star Trek story.
Unfortunately, the strips also suffer from a steady decline in the quality of the artwork. The drawings are sharp and detailed in the early stories, but as new artists were brought on for later stories, the art becomes muddy and rushed-looking. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the artwork from the Star Trek McDonald's Happy meal boxes is reprinted in a color section at the back of the book.
To summarize, there is much that is enjoyable about the book if you would like to indulge in some nostalgia for the early days of the Star Trek movie franchise. However, there is nothing here that I thought was an amazing or outstanding example of Star Trek storytelling.
February 13, 2013
Amazingly, I never read these strips in their entirety before now. This is a very handsome production, nice thick paper, hardcovers, bookmark, and well-restored. It's a shame the content wasn't better. Thomas Warkentin's likenesses were good but his stories in the initial eight arcs are thin, promising more interesting tales. His use of Harry Mudd felt like an add-on and Klingons requesting asylum could have been huge but was disposed of quickly. Ron Harris' art was more visually dynamic which was welcome but Sharman DiVono's stories demonstrated her inexperience with writing comic strip continuities so the pacing was odd.
March 31, 2014
The _Star Trek_ comic strip ran in relatively few newspapers, but the _Pittsburgh Post Gazette_ was, briefly, one of them, and I faithfully cut out and saved the daily strips to put together a whole story. The quality of the stories and artwork have held up surprisingly well, and this quality collection displays both to best effect. Nostalgia!
June 29, 2023
Celebrating a forgotten period of Star Trek comics. From 1979-1983, select newspapers nationwide carried the further adventures of Kirk, Spock and the rest of the USS Enterprise crew in comic strip form. Unlike the Gold Key Comics version or Marvel's short-lived run of adventures, the Star Trek comic strips are the rarest of the rare because most newspapers decided instead to run the Star Wars strip along with the continuing escapades of Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon in the funny pages.
Set immediately after the events of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, this book covers the next 5-year mission, which coincidentally is being explored right now in the IDW Publishing miniseries Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Echoes. These 23rd century episodes are full of Klingons, with their new head ridges, along with many of the races introduced in the 1979 Robert Rise flick such as Arcturians, Saurians and Zaranites. But sorry Next Gen fans, not a Romulan in the bunch!
This joint IDW/Library of American Comics collaboration was published in 2012. I didn't even know this thing existed until I saw a post about this in one of the Star Trek Comics groups I am a member of on Facebook. I learned about this collection from Rich Handley, who wrote the foreword and helped with the editing, from a post. Thus, in the manner of complete transparency, I am not in any way being compensated for a review of this book. (Unless Rich follows through on the No-Prize I requested when I found an error in one of his story recaps.)
The main genius behind many of these stories is Thomas Warkentin. He provides nearly flawless older representations of the Enterprise crew. It's forgivable that Lt. Ilia appears in the first story, despite having died earlier in her lone canon appearance during The Motion Picture. The quality of the stories, the artwork and just how in character everybody is is top notch!
After about a year, Warkentin left the strip. He was replaced by Sharman DiVino and Ron Wilson. The stories were just as good. The art was just as stunning. Only for some reason, both Spock and Kirk have been de-aged to look like their 1960s incarnations while Uhura, Scotty and the rest remain their middle aged selves.
Both this volume and volume 2 are out of print. Amazon at least still has a few copies of this edition left at the original cover price of $49.99. As for the companion piece, it's really expensive. Not just on Amazon but everywhere that claims to have a copy. $119 and up! No joke. And no way I'm going to ever get my hands on a copy for that price, right?
If you do go searching for Volume 2, it can also get a little confusing. Eaglemoss, which is a publisher out of England, released the entire 1979-83 run of the strips in 3 volumes. They can be purchased on eBay for around 25-40 pounds. Not sure what the dollars to pounds conversion rate is. And since I already have volume 1, I'm not about to go that route. Plus, with UPS about to go on strike, I'm afraid if I order from the UK, it'll be the 23rd Century before I receive them.
A great read of long lost tales exploring the final frontier! Including a fantastic look at the ST:TMP McDonald's Happy Meal boxes that featured comic strip art by Thomas Warkentin!
Set immediately after the events of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, this book covers the next 5-year mission, which coincidentally is being explored right now in the IDW Publishing miniseries Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Echoes. These 23rd century episodes are full of Klingons, with their new head ridges, along with many of the races introduced in the 1979 Robert Rise flick such as Arcturians, Saurians and Zaranites. But sorry Next Gen fans, not a Romulan in the bunch!
This joint IDW/Library of American Comics collaboration was published in 2012. I didn't even know this thing existed until I saw a post about this in one of the Star Trek Comics groups I am a member of on Facebook. I learned about this collection from Rich Handley, who wrote the foreword and helped with the editing, from a post. Thus, in the manner of complete transparency, I am not in any way being compensated for a review of this book. (Unless Rich follows through on the No-Prize I requested when I found an error in one of his story recaps.)
The main genius behind many of these stories is Thomas Warkentin. He provides nearly flawless older representations of the Enterprise crew. It's forgivable that Lt. Ilia appears in the first story, despite having died earlier in her lone canon appearance during The Motion Picture. The quality of the stories, the artwork and just how in character everybody is is top notch!
After about a year, Warkentin left the strip. He was replaced by Sharman DiVino and Ron Wilson. The stories were just as good. The art was just as stunning. Only for some reason, both Spock and Kirk have been de-aged to look like their 1960s incarnations while Uhura, Scotty and the rest remain their middle aged selves.
Both this volume and volume 2 are out of print. Amazon at least still has a few copies of this edition left at the original cover price of $49.99. As for the companion piece, it's really expensive. Not just on Amazon but everywhere that claims to have a copy. $119 and up! No joke. And no way I'm going to ever get my hands on a copy for that price, right?
If you do go searching for Volume 2, it can also get a little confusing. Eaglemoss, which is a publisher out of England, released the entire 1979-83 run of the strips in 3 volumes. They can be purchased on eBay for around 25-40 pounds. Not sure what the dollars to pounds conversion rate is. And since I already have volume 1, I'm not about to go that route. Plus, with UPS about to go on strike, I'm afraid if I order from the UK, it'll be the 23rd Century before I receive them.
A great read of long lost tales exploring the final frontier! Including a fantastic look at the ST:TMP McDonald's Happy Meal boxes that featured comic strip art by Thomas Warkentin!
June 3, 2025
These strips were created in the late 70s and early 80s to promote Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Beyond adopting the uniforms and sone crew assignments from the movie, however, there's little effort to integrate these stories into the timeline. There are also some inconsistencies with TV canon, such as the references to budgets and donations in what is supposed to be a post-monetary amd post-scarcity economy.
That said, the characterisation is pretty faithful to the original series, and the plots definitely share its ethic. The artwork is variable, but some of it is beautiful. The serialised format leads to some repetition of key plot points, but overall it's an enjoyable read.
That said, the characterisation is pretty faithful to the original series, and the plots definitely share its ethic. The artwork is variable, but some of it is beautiful. The serialised format leads to some repetition of key plot points, but overall it's an enjoyable read.
January 22, 2017
A delightful collection of the newspaper adventures of the original Enterprise crew. It's a little weird for fans as it's set to coincide with the first movie. All of the uniforms are updated, and Chapel is now a doctor, but Captain Decker is never even mentioned and Ilia disappears without a mention after the first story. The stories aren't as goofy as in the Gold Key days, but they take advantage of the ease of effects with plenty of weird aliens. Good stuff.
Read
December 12, 2019Daily and Sunday newspaper strips, presented in order. Nice artwork reproductions. Simplified stories for a newspaper audience.
June 16, 2020
Silly and (thank you, God) not canon, but still.... I have to give it 3 stars for quality, but I still loved reading it. I can’t wait for part two.
August 12, 2019
Fun collection of comics from the newspapers. If you enjoy some short Star Trek stories you will love this.
December 20, 2015
This is a much easier way to read a serial newspaper comic story than a little each day. The stories were fairly simple for this reason. The reader has to be able to follow on a daily basis.
What I liked:
Some interesting story ideas that could be developed into good episodes.
The writer captured the character personalities fairly well.
What I didn't like:
Monday's were usually a rehash of Sunday. At first it was almost a black and white reprint of the last three panels from Sunday. They did get better toward the end of the book, as the author found creative ways to refresh the plot in a less repetitive way.
Later comics tried to phonetically reproduce Chekov and Scotty's accents in a way that made reading more annoying than adding to the flavor.
I gave this a three because I did enjoy the stories. Probably more from a nostalgic reading. Not worth buying, from my perspective, but was glad to get it from the library. There is apparently a second volume. Should I see it in the library, I'll borrow it, but this volume wasn't good enough to spend much effort trying to find the second, in my opinion.
What I liked:
Some interesting story ideas that could be developed into good episodes.
The writer captured the character personalities fairly well.
What I didn't like:
Monday's were usually a rehash of Sunday. At first it was almost a black and white reprint of the last three panels from Sunday. They did get better toward the end of the book, as the author found creative ways to refresh the plot in a less repetitive way.
Later comics tried to phonetically reproduce Chekov and Scotty's accents in a way that made reading more annoying than adding to the flavor.
I gave this a three because I did enjoy the stories. Probably more from a nostalgic reading. Not worth buying, from my perspective, but was glad to get it from the library. There is apparently a second volume. Should I see it in the library, I'll borrow it, but this volume wasn't good enough to spend much effort trying to find the second, in my opinion.
March 22, 2016
These newspaper comics from 1979-81 are set in the era of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and use the uniforms from that move as well as the Enterprise crew using wrist communicators.
The stories are perfectly enjoyable Space Adventure newspaper strips but little else. Those expecting the equivalent of, “The Trouble with Tribles” or “City on the Edge of Forever” will be sadly be disappointed. The Star Trek strips are pretty much straight up space adventures in the style of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Well told, but not particularly innovative, but all of them are interesting.
Among the highlights are a strip where Doctor McCoy meets his ex-wife and a wannabe doppleganger (whose plan to replace McCoy is foiled by him acting completely out of character.) Also, Harry Mudd makes an appearance, and there are several stories involving the Klingons, the most interesting involving a crazy alien general who is trying to start a Klingon-Federation War so they can fight in it.
The stories are perfectly enjoyable Space Adventure newspaper strips but little else. Those expecting the equivalent of, “The Trouble with Tribles” or “City on the Edge of Forever” will be sadly be disappointed. The Star Trek strips are pretty much straight up space adventures in the style of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Well told, but not particularly innovative, but all of them are interesting.
Among the highlights are a strip where Doctor McCoy meets his ex-wife and a wannabe doppleganger (whose plan to replace McCoy is foiled by him acting completely out of character.) Also, Harry Mudd makes an appearance, and there are several stories involving the Klingons, the most interesting involving a crazy alien general who is trying to start a Klingon-Federation War so they can fight in it.
September 16, 2013
A collection of newspaper comics featuring the crew of the original Star Trek series. The cartoons never caught on in the United States. It is understandable why. The stories were slow moving and the drawings too odd. One of the hazards of animation and cartoons is the authors can have little too much freedom and ability to draw "new" species, and they use it. One of the alien species looked like giant phalluses. Others were just too cartoonish.
May 28, 2014
A lovely collection of surprisingly accomplished newspaper comic strips in the adventurous world of Star Trek. The setting is after “The Motion Picture” and the stories combine the etheric late 70’s aesthetics to the warm character interaction of the original TV-series.
The collection is a bit uneven, but there is some good sci-fi and recognizable character drama to satisfy a fan of 70’s science fiction as well as a trekker.
The collection is a bit uneven, but there is some good sci-fi and recognizable character drama to satisfy a fan of 70’s science fiction as well as a trekker.
February 18, 2013
It's great to finally have these comic strips in book format. The stories are classic Trek. The artwork by Thomas Warkentin is outstanding. The quality begins to fall off a bit after he leaves the strip, however the other writers and artists still do a decent job.
January 31, 2013
There is an ovious drop in quality- both in terms of art and writing- as the strips progress, but there is still a lot of fun in this volume, and the presentation on thick paper and generous size is greatly appreciated.
April 5, 2013
I really enjoyed these stories and they transported me back to the late 70's early 80's when Star Trek was still kind of new. Considering that these stories were "dallies" in newspapers they were actually very good. I am looking forward to "Volume 2'.
April 1, 2019
This was a great collection of stories. I think the format helped keep things moving with quick pacing. Probably the best Trek I've read in comic book form.
Tune in here for my discussion on some favorite Trek books and comics: https://soundcloud.com/allthebooks/ep...
Tune in here for my discussion on some favorite Trek books and comics: https://soundcloud.com/allthebooks/ep...
July 26, 2013
Some great, classic stories. The first half has awesome art. The second half, less so. But the whole thing is a lot of fun.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews