Star Trek: The Classic UK Comics Volume 1

Star Trek: The Classic UK Comics #1

by Rich Handley (Contributor), Angus Allan, Tod Sullivan

In 1969, six months before the Star Trek TV series premiered in England, British comics readers were introduced to the characters in an original comic book series. The stories were serialized, generally 2 to 3 pages at a time, in 257 weekly magazines spanning five years and 37 storylines. These extremely rare comics have never been published in the United States. Star Trek fans will quickly note that the comics were not written with strict adherence to Star Trek's core concepts. The Enterprise frequently traveled outside our galaxy, and the crew committed many violations of the never-mentioned Prime Directive along the way. Spock shouted most of his lines and often urged Kirk (or "Kurt," as his name was misspelled in early issues) to shoot first and ask questions later. But it's precisely that "offness" that makes them so eminently readable and deserving of a proper reprinting. They're unique in the annals of Star Trek and fans have gone without them for far too long.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Star Trek, Science Fiction, Comics

244 pages, Hardcover

First published April 12, 2016

About the author

Rich 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.

Reviews

[betanine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beginning of the book helps prepare the reader, explaining the background of these comics printed in the UK. Some of them are rather comedic. Clearly, the writers didn’t get a chance to watch much Star Trek, especially early on. Other stories, while they had their quirks, are on par with their Spock’s Brain episode.

I wouldn’t recommend this as an example of fun ST stories outside the TV medium. In fact, if not for the ST connection, I would not have finished. It is an interesting intellectual look at how someone in the UK may have been introduced to the ST universe before the show was syndicated on the other side of the pond.

This probably deserves a two star rating, but it benefits from a Star Trek bias.

[Rob Frampton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A curiosity, at best, this collection of early Trek strips, written when we in the UK had seen none of the TV shows, so the characterization, technology and storylines are all 'off'. That, in itself is not a problem - indeed it's initially quite fascinating and amusing, but the plots soon degenerate into cliche and sameyness, so I'd advise you to invest only if you find a copy at a low price or if you're a real completist.

[Joshua Begley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this more, but most of the stories are very hard to read due to the book's format. because these were initially in a magazine or a Sunday newspaper, the stories are long and horizontal, and the binding is traditional graphic novel format, so the stories spread across two pages, but crease in the middle is so deep you can barely read it. this should have been bound like a Calvin and Hobbes or Peanuts collection.

[Arin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hilarious in it’s ridiculous. The writers were familiar with sci fi tropes but absolutely nothing about Star Trek. Starts out fun and amusing. Gets a bit reprieve towards the end. And hard to handle how willing the are to just kill people. Very not Kirk or Spock of them. But interesting in its bizarreness and the art is honestly fairly quality throughout for the Star Trek cast

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

As advertised, a truly bizarre collection of comics written and illustrated by people who knew science fiction in general, but very little about Star Trek in particular.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

The art is magnificent, Lindfield's in particular. The storytelling is pretty wonky, as addressed in the introduction. For some reason, Sulu is referred to as the helmsman in the early stories but becomes "armaments officer" on page 114, which is noted in the introduction. Many of the stories seem to use ideas culled from Marvel and DC superhero comics rather than the television series. The introduction erroneously implies that Chekov is not involved and is a bit overblown about the recurring presence of Mr. Bailey, who is never given a major role in any of the stories. The colors are a mess, but did they ever really make sense anyway? In the later stories, Kirk is clearly in a red uniform and just about everybody except Uhura and Kirk are in blue uniforms. In the Lindfield stories, the artwork is so expressive that the coloring issue looks like lighting effects and almost escapes notice, but the other artists use the red pretty solidly throughout. Scott is put in command of the ship often, as in the series, but when Scott leaves the ship after being put in command, he gives control to Uhura, which never happened in the series and would have been refreshing if it had. Most of the stories are not very good, but they'll be essential to the completist and mildly enjoyable to the casual fan.

It's unfortunate that more care wasn't taken with the book's physical assembly, since until the first black and white issue, everything is a two-page spread. Text near the page division is often illegible, in addition to interfering with the visuals.