Written by Nathan Archer, Janine Ellen Young & Doselle Young, Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, Kristine Kathryn Rusch & Dean Wesley Smith
Pencils by Jeffrey Moy, David Roach, Robert Teranishi Background Assists by Philip Moy
Inks by W. C. Carani, David Roach, Claude St. Aubin
Colors by Dan Brown (with Nick Bell)
Letters by Ryan Cline (with Jenna Garcia) & Naghmeh Zand
Like Enemy Unseen, this "Star Trek Classics" release on Hoopla from IDW takes a Wildstorm trade paperback from the 2000s and rebrands it. While Enemy Unseen collected several otherwise unrelated Next Generation stories, this one collects four Voyager stories, three double-length one-shots and one three-part miniseries. I was surprised that the obviously intentionally vague title Encounters with the Unknown is actually pretty applicable to all four stories even though it feels like it could be applied to almost any Star Trek story if you squinted hard enough!
The first story is "False Colors," whose basic premise is that Voyager encounters what seems to be a Borg ship, but turns out to be something else entirely, and then Seven, Chakotay, and Tuvok must infiltrate it in the guise of Borg drones... leading to Seven possibly starting her own little collective. Like Perchance to Dream from Enemy Unseen, it reads like it's written by someone who is new to the comics medium: lots of word balloons, few visually interesting things near the beginning, the kind of stuff that might make for a fine episode of the tv show but is dull on the comics page. When the interesting conceit of the story finally turns up—would it be ethical for Seven to establish a "collective" of her own if it helps protect Voyager? how would she feel if she did?—it's not really used in an interesting way, the characters don't seem to actually face a dilemma due to it.
I felt like the whole comic might have been constructed around the idea of the shocking cover image of Seven as a Borg—which to be fair, was similar to how several actual Voyager episodes were developed. from Star Trek: Voyager: False Colors #1 (script by Nathan Archer, art by Jeffrey Moy & Philip Moy and W. C. Carani)
The second story in this volume is the one story I can say I've wholeheartedly enjoyed across both volumes of Star Trek Classics that I read. "Avalon Rising" is about the Doctor being sent to an alien planet to recover an artifact blocking transporters; the planet is in a medieval time period, and its knights and squires interpret the Doctor as a wizard from a distant land, a role he ends up leaning into. It's delightful stuff: visually interesting (artist David A. Roach proves every bit as adept with this Doctor as the onehenormallyillustrates) and the dialogue and character arc for Bob Picardo's Doctor are pitch perfect (the writing is by the unknown-to-me wife-and-husband team of Janine Ellen Young and Doselle Young). It's the kind of premise you could image them doing on screen, but they never did, reminiscent of some screen episodes (sort of a mix of "Heroes and Demons" and "Muse" and "Living Witness") without being derivative of them. Neat conceit as the Doctor retells stories of Voyager's adventures through a medieval lens, a nice heartwarming ending. Honestly, one of the best Star Trek comics I've ever read.
Unlike any other story in the volume, this one was clearly constructed around interesting visuals suited to the comics medium. from Star Trek: Voyager: Avalon Rising #1 (script by Janine Ellen Young & Doselle Young, art by David Roach)
Next comes "Elite Force," which I guess must be an adaptation of the videogame of the same name. Despite writing by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, stalwarts of space adventures comics in general (e.g., Legion Lost) and Star Trek comics in particular (e.g., Early Voyages), I found this hard to grab onto; the "Hazard Team" characters just don't give us enough to care about. Plus (and this isn't their fault) two stories about derelict Borg and scavengers in one volume is too many!
This guy's entire personality is "dumb jock." from Star Trek: Voyager: Elite Force #1 (script by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, art by Jeffrey Moy & W. C. Carani)
Lastly there's Planet Killer, a three-part miniseries about Voyager coming across another iteration of the same weapon as in "The Doomsday Machine" from the original series. The beginning is too slow and obvious considering the reader already knows what's up even if the characters don't; the second issue wastes half its pages on Harry Kim laboriously recapping "Doomsday Machine" for some reason; the third issue is very rushed, with a lot of stuff happening in reported speech or narration, instead of on the page. Like "False Colors," too talky for a comic, and despite some good efforts by artists Robert Teranishi (who I don't know) and Claude St. Aubin (who did strong work on DC's R.E.B.E.L.S. a few years after this), the action sequences lack the necessary intensity to make the premise work. The guest character feels like an afterthought (contrast them to Commodore Decker in the episode this story very closely mirrors).
Probably the best part of the art were all the ship-in-danger shots; very well done. from Star Trek: Voyager: Planet Killer #3 (script by Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch, art by Robert Teranishi & Claude St. Aubin)
So, on the whole, aside from "Avalon Rising," there's little here I'd call "classic." (Oh, also my Hoopla edition has a mistake where what's included as the first page of "False Colors" is actually the first page of "Elite Force." I think the first page of "False Colors" is missing as a result.)
Often, when I read a Star Trek novel I think to myself, "This would make a good Star Trek Adventures scenario." Novels that have made me think this include John Vornholt's The Next Generation: Masks (1989), Jeffrey Lang's Deep Space Nine: Force and Motion (2016), John Jackson Miller's Prey: Hell's Heart (2016), and especially many of the Next Generation works of Dayton Ward: Armageddon's Arrow (2015), Hearts and Minds (2017), and Available Light (2019). (It's probably not a coincidence that Dayton himself has written a lot for STA.)
That last one I thought would not just make a good STA adventure in general, but would make a good fit for my campaign. The premise of the novel is that the Enterprise finds a derelict ship in deep space. It seems abandoned, but the crew eventually discovers that it's carrying 60,000 refugees from an alien planet, they're just suspended in the ship's transporter buffer—where they can actually live until the ship arrives at its destination. Things are complicated, though, when a group of scavengers turn up.
This would work well for a couple reasons. One, I wanted to make the scavengers into Ferengi instead of an original race. One of my player characters is a Ferengi woman, and she has a brother who works as a successful businessman. If her brother was among the scavengers, it could lead to some good character conflict for her. (Additionally, one of my players requested more familiar races from the show.) Second, way back in our fourth episode, the players acquired an alien superintelligence living in their computer system, the "Engineer" named "Mercury." Unlike most of their people, Mercury wanted to explore the universe; they had briefly done so in an android body (which the players found way back in episodes 1 and 2). However, Mercury had honestly not done a lot since coming aboard, aside when the players briefly consulted them in episode 6. I had the idea that Mercury might complicate things here by uploading themself into the derelict's transporter buffer, which would then let them materialize themself as a living being.
I also did a B-plot, as I've been doing more of this season. The players have been dealing a lot with the Haradin and the ways their nativist movement is disrupting the entire Ekumene sector. I wanted them to help shape Starfleet's response to this, so my subplot for this episode was a conference on the player ship's home base of Deep Space 10, where Rukot and Mooria would be summoned to participate.
Also, at the beginning of the summer, one of my players, Cari, had been torn whether to continue playing her regular character of Jor, the Diversitas's security officer, or a new one-off character she'd played in our ninth episode, Rina K'var, the blue Orion pickpocket, who'd ended up exiled by her aunt. I suggested she could play Rina once, an idea she went for, because I had a good idea how to fit the character into the B-plot of this episode.
“Captain’s Personal Log, Stardate 55020.9. Consul Vrossaan has invited Mooria and me to a conference on Deep Space 10 to discuss growing Haradin tensions in the Ekumene sector. Professor Orven Jadrel’s understanding of Haradin history, trade, and the meanings of Harad will be essential. The Haradin are not simply facing piracy. They are facing a crisis of identity....”
This is
who I had per session:
Ryan as Rukot, captain (sessions 1-3)
Debi as T'Cant, first officer/science officer (1, 3)
Kenyon as Nevan Jones, engineer (2-3)
Claire as Mooria Salmang, pilot (1, 3)
Austin as Frector, Intelligence analyst (1-3)
Andy as Gurg bim Vurg, medical officer (1-3)
...with special guest stars:
Cari as Rina K'var, freelance Orion (1, 3)
Hayley as Charley Lee, DS10 science officer (2)
I'll write this one up act by act. I did change the episode title to "No One in Here" to fit with my usual pretensions, but maintained Dayton's original title as the title of Act I. To keep with his usual theme of using Rush song titles, I used two other track titles from the same album as "Available Light" as the titles of Acts II and III.
Act I: Available Light
Mercury appears to Gurg (image generated by ChatGPT)
It's been an ongoing subplot in our campaign that Gurg, the Diversitas's chief medical officer, has been trying to make contact with Mercury; it was the whole reason he snuck aboard the Diversitas and finagled an assignment there. The episode began with Mercury presenting a genetic problem to Gurg; once Gurg solved it, Mercury appeared on his screen and asked what he wanted. Gurg's big technological goal is to connect people's brains to each other for the sharing of information (a collective, he is always quick to point out, not the Collective); when Gurg told Mercury this, Mercury gave Gurg a set of nearby coordinates.
It took a bit of persuasion for Gurg to convince T'Cant, who was acting captain with Rukot away at the conference, to go there, but he eventually did. There the players discovered the derelict. The three scenes were basically 1) examining the derelict from the outside, 2) beaming over and exploring it, and 3) discovering the Ferengi were aboard. (Kenyon, who plays Nevan the chief engineer, was away for this session, so we just said they left him in command when the players beamed over.) I had to come up with a bunch of Tasks for the players, of course, but I very much benefited from being able to take a bunch of description and such right out of Dayton's novel!
Nejamri derelict (adapted from the Available Light cover by Doug Drexler)
My players were convinced this was an Alien-esque scenario, so they proceeded very cautiously. I had a bit where I played some Ferengi laughs they heard from the other side of a door, but they were convinced it was something creepy and malevolent! I had planned on having scene 3 be about them dealing with the Ferengi, but things went slightly longer than expected, so I just ended the act with the Ferengi turning up and one of them hugging Frector and exclaiming "sister!"
In Available Light, a fight breaks out between the scavengers and the Enterprise crew, and a mysterious emitter seemingly evaporates the character of T'Ryssa Chen; if there had been a fight, I would have done something like this, but this didn't happen, so I had an emitter evaporate T'Cant seemingly at random—because Debi would be out of town next week!
In the B-plot, my goal for this act was mostly to establish the NPCs and the parameters. There were a lot, since I wanted a bunch of different possibilities represented for the conference, but most of them were returning. These were:
Captain Akul, Klingon (episodes 3, 5, 8)
Professor Orven Jadrel, Haradin academic (episodes 7, 8)
Consul Vrossaan, Federation diplomat (episodes 5, 6, 8, 10)
conference attendees
Plus there were three new NPCs: Della Robbia Roman, the admiral running the conference, (my players were delighted by my southern accent); Commander Derzir Ban, a Trill logistics expert (I wanted a joined Trill who could be snobby about Mooria's failed Initiate status); and Ashrevi, a Return to Harad agitator protesting the conference. And also Gregin Shrek, DS10's bartender, would put in an appearance (he previously appeared in episode 5). Each NPC would have a different take on what Admiral Roman should do about the Haradin: a military solution, a diplomatic solution, an Intelligence solution, and so on.
My other goal was to get Rina K'var involved. Since being kicked out of her aunt's pirate guild, she'd been playing Orion tambourine in Gregin's bar; he asked her to sneak into the conference and get him some information. With some judicious use of Threat, I got the players to intersect, and Rina even overheard some of Taleria's subordinates plotting. The act ended with Professor Jadrel giving a keynote at the conference... and then a bomb going off, injuring Jadrel, Mooria, and Rina. (Mooria's and Rina's players would be out of town the next week, so this worked well with my preexisting idea for a bombing subplot.)
Act II: Hand over Fist
Assistant DaiMon Tozal (Tog from TNG: "Ménage à Troi")
In the A-plot, I had three basic scenes planned out. The first was the negotiating between the Starfleet crew and the Ferengi; Frector excels at this kind of thing, of course... but I put the whole Federation crew at a Disadvantage in Social Conflict with Ferengi because they were hanging out with a female. So it was difficulty 6... but she still did negotiate to allow continued access to the derelict. Her brother was Assistant DaiMon Tozal, working for DaiMon Plen of the FCA marauder Trickledown Economics.
In the second scene, the players investigated the derelict with some technical Tasks, alternating with social Tasks to deal with the Ferengi—they got up to shenanigans that the crew would have to deal with to proceed. The players were able to pretty quickly put together the clues to figure out that the Nejamri was carrying 60,000 people in transporter buffers, but they were suitably impressed at the concept.
In the third scene, I had an Extended Task planned. I didn't know exactly what it would be, just that it would be Magnitude 5, Work 30, Resistance 1, Intervals 12. I was going to play it by ear based on what was happening: they wanted to open up a communication channel to T'Cant, so I had this cause the derelict computer to recognize she didn't belong and attempt to purge her. Nevan and Gurg took care of this, while I occasionally spent Threat to have the Ferengi do stuff Frector would have to deal with.
At the end of the act, Mercury used their connection to upload themself into the derelict computer, which also shut off the power. Commercial break!
Lt. Commander Charley Lee (image by ChatGPT)
Meanwhile, in the B-plot, Admiral Roman tasked Captain Rukot with investigating the bombing. I had known we'd be down to just four players this week, and suggested to my wife that she could play: she was in my old campaign, but now cares for the kids while I play usually. This would mean bringing the kids and them having a late night, but we thought we could make it work... beside, Kid One was interested in playing! I suggested to my wife she make up a character who could be stationed on Deep Space 10 and help Rukot investigate.
She decided to build a science officer with a Focus in chemistry, a human with a cybernetic hand that gave them an enhanced sense of touch. Kid One designed the visual appearance using an online Star Trek token generator, and Kid Two came up with the name: Charley Lee. A family undertaking!
When it came time to plan the mystery, I thought the only two real possible culprits were either the Romulans or the Haradin agitators. But how to make this not obvious... yet not so complicated the players would struggle to solve it? The idea I came up with was that Ashrevi had planted the bomb, but she had been given it by Romulans posing as Haradin. So the players would find some clues incriminating the Haradin, and some incriminating the Romulans, and some absolving each group: footage of Ashrevi carrying in a package she didn't carry out... but strong evidence she couldn't have brought an explosive on the station. They did a good job making their way through the clues and figuring it out.
I made the third scene an Extended Task as well, a chase where Ashrevi ran away and they had to catch her. Something interesting I did was to play both scenes at the same time, going back and forth. As Kenyon pointed out, this mean the players had to be thoughtful about using Momentum, because they needed to save some for the other group!
Act III: Presto
DaiMon Plen (Lurin from TNG: "Rascals")
Debi was back, so we began our third session by showing what T'Cant was up to in the Nejamri "Heaven" (it's called "Haven" in the novel, but c'mon, let's go big). This let her get some key exposition.
Scene two then set the stage for the finale: The DaiMon of the Ferengi ship ordered Frector's brother to disconnect the Starfleet connection to the computer core of the derelict, so Frector had to stand up for herself. Austin killed it, rolling something like 11 successes, some of which he spent to establish an Advantage countering the Disadvantage I'd set up. They also made contact with Mercury and communicated with T'Cant inside the derelict computer.
I wanted the final scene to be all about transferring power to the Nejamri derelict, but I didn't want to do yet another Extended Task. So I adapted the Extended Task mechanic:
Every round, the players could attempt a Daring + Engineering Task to transfer power to the derelict.
On a success, they could roll Challenge Dice like an Extended Task, and the power flow would increase by that amount, on a scale of 0 to 20.
The difficulty would start at 5, but every time they succeeded it would go down by one.
But also every round, I would roll Challenge Dice, and the power flow would go down this amount, representing the Ferengi doing things to interfere.
I could spend Threat to do things like increase the difficulty of the main Task or add to my Challenge Dice rolls.
But the players could also undertake Tasks to either create Resistance on my rolls or stop me from rolling altogether.
If the power flow went back down to 0, the materialization process would begin without enough power to sustain it. If it went up beyond 20, then there would be enough power to sustain the process.
the Trickledown Economics (image from Star Trek Online)
This I think was pretty fun! There was some grumbling about the fact that since it wasn't an Extended Task, Nevan couldn't use his relevant talent, but I pointed out that if I let him use it, I would have just designed the whole thing to be harder to compensate. There was a nice tug-of-war, but they won in the end. Frector broadcast to the Trickledown crew, pointing out the downsides of their undetaking, causing a work slowdown; T'Cant bent the power transfer beam so the Ferengi couldn't block it. There was one very exciting round where between them all, the players rolled five 20s, giving me 10 Threat!
In the end, the players saved the Nejamri, had some exciting showdowns, and convinced the Ferengi to lay low. My adaptation got looser as it went, but I think overall it worked well.
I'd like to make the A-plot a publicly available mission, but my notes are mostly written for my own benefit and have a lot of stuff specific to my players and campaign, so I would need to do a lot of cleanup first. Maybe someday!
The first scene of the B-plot was mostly to wrap up dangling thread from the investigation: the players got to question Ashrevi, and hear Taleria's side of the story. (The latter told them she'd already sent her subordinates home to Romulus... on a shuttle she feared wouldn't make it!) Then in the second scene, I had them hear each NPC's take and then come up with their own plan. They very much wanted to amplify Professor Jadrel's anti-nativist message... but how?
This was sort of the crux of the episode for me. I could think of a lot of ways to do this, but didn't want Starfleet to just tell them—hence the conference idea. They came up with the plan of hacking into the Haradin transmitter network, and transmitting Jadrel's message through that.
Scene three, then, was convincing other people to go along with the plan. If they could convince four of the six NPCs, they then could convince the Admiral. They worked their way from easiest sell to hardest, making good use of Talents and information to lay out their argument... and then they convinced the admiral. So now I know what to base the season finale around!
This is a semiautobiographical science fiction novel: the main character is clearly based on Nnedi Okorafor herself. She is someone who doesn't normally write science fiction, but after she's fired from her job as a creative writing adjunct, she writes a science fiction novel that becomes a major bestseller and a movie... but then struggles to write a second novel or deal with what success might be. A lot of the novel focuses on her family dynamics. The main sf elements is that she also has a physical disability; after
the success of her book, she obtains access to an advanced mobility
device, a set of artificial legs she can essentially control with her mind.
For the most part, it's fine. Nnedi Okorafor has never been a favorite of mine; I've largely given up on her work, as whatever she's doing just doesn't seem to work for me despite the widespread acclaim she gets. I liked the family dynamics. I've seen a lot of online complaints about those, but they rang totally true for me in all their messiness and complications. On the other hand, I thought the stuff about the main character's failure and success didn't always ring true. As someone who is an English professor myself... no one would ever fire an adjunct in the middle of the semester, no matter how many students complained about them! Getting someone to take over a class mid-semester is a huge pain; the only thing you would ever fire an adjunct for is sexual misconduct or just not showing up! On the flip side, do successful authors really get mobbed everywhere? They're not movie stars. (A lot of this felt like wish fulfillment, to be honest.)
What sank the book for me, though, are the excerpts from the main character's supposedly bestselling, highly acclaimed novel, Rusted Robots. I hated these. It takes a lot of confidence and skill to include a novel-within-a-novel and claim it's highly regarded... and while Okorafor might have the confidence, I didn't think she had the skill. The excerpts were twee and obnoxious and I refuse to believe anything like this would ever become a bestselling highly regarded book. The whole book depends on you believing this! Unfortunately, in a world where Becky Chambers's Monk and Robot is apparently popular, perhaps it is plausible, but to be honest, I refuse to believe we live in that world either.
Part of the whole point of my long, long comics reading projects like this one is to see how a concept changes over time as the world changes around it. When the Justice Society originally debuted, it was of course set in the present; it was set during World War II because WWII was happening. When the JSA was revived in the 1960s and '70s, it became a vestige of the past: the debuts of the JSA heroes were kept rooted in WWII. This meant the JSA heroes could age and grow, unlike the new heroes of the Silver Age, who would always have their origins updated as time marched on. Roy Thomas exploited this to good effect in the 1980s, giving us both JSA as period piece (in All-Star Squadron; see item #3 in the list below) and JSA as a saga that had evolved in a way the JLA never could (in Infinity, Inc.; see items #4, 5, and 10). But as time went on, this became—if you were literal-minded—increasingly untenable. The JSA went from being the generation before the JLA to two generations before to even more. By the 2010s, did it make any sense that people who'd fought in World War II could still be active superheroes?
This is one of the reasons, I suspect, that in the "New 52," DC totally retooled the JSA, setting the series in the present but on an alternate Earth. They took the opportunity to update many of the characters; in particular relevance to this post, they made Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern, into a gay man. Later, this updating of the JSA got undone. I don't know the details of this (I largely stopped reading DC Comics after Convergence), but the JSA is back on the same Earth as the JLA and back to originating during World War II. But DC did not undo changes like making Alan Scott gay, so now the original Green Lantern was a gay man during a time where society was much less accepting of homosexuality. My understanding is that this was tackled briefly in a couple one-shots I haven't read yet, but the first full exploration of this is in Alan Scott: The Green Lantern, one of three "Dawn of DC" miniseries focusing on JSA members (see also #55 below). Framed by Alan talking to his son Todd (himself gay), the story delves into Alan's origin, but also the tale of his first love, including a stay in an asylum where Alan is subjected to conversion therapy.
We're here, we're queer? from Alan Scott: The Green Lantern #6 (art by Cian Tormey)
Overall, I found this really effectively done; I don't know if writer Tim Sheridan is gay, but the details of what it would be like for Alan in this time overall rang true to me. The conversion therapy stuff is harrowing, the emphasis on learning to live as you are works well. I don't know if I like the idea the whole JSA was immediately accepting of Alan (seems anachronistic), but I suppose DC would never want to tackle making some of its heroes homophobic in a mainstream book in the 2020s. I found Cian Tormey's art strong overall, and the story has some good twists and turns. Although... why are the bad guys in this World War II story Russians, given they were our allies? Not that Russians couldn't have been up to some skulduggery, but literally no one even comments on the fact that they're supposed to all be on the same side! Not quite as strong as the nostalgic glow I got from Wesley Dodds: The Sandman, but it still shows off the strength and continuing relevance of these characters.
This post is the fifty-sixth in an improbably long series about the Justice Society and
Earth-Two. The next installment covers Jay Garrick: The Flash. Previous installments are listed
below:
Collection published: 2002 Contents originally published: 2001-02 Acquired and previously read: ??? Reread: January 2026
Script: Darko Macan Pencils: Ramon F. Bachs Inks: Raul Fernandez Colors: Chris Blythe Letters: Steve Dutro
The Star Wars series Knight Errant, which I worked my way through earlier this year, is set during the timespan of the "New Sith Wars," a millennium of on-and-off conflict that came to an end a thousand years before The Phantom Menace. Reading Knight Errant made me think of what (I believe) is the only other piece of narrative Star Wars content to be set during this period, the 2001-02 comics miniseries Jedi vs Sith from Dark Horse—which I remembered as being really quite good, so I decided to give it a quick reread.
The title of the book is pretty cheesy, and I wouldn't be surprised if the title came first, if some enterprising editor didn't come up with "Jedi vs Sith" as highly marketable and then cast about for an appropriate time period to set such a book in. Similarly, the book itself is one of those continuity fix-up stories Star Wars tie-ins love to do: the Phantom Menace novelization established that a millennium earlier, a guy named Darth Bane established the Sith when everyone thought they were dead, and an earlier videogame (Jedi Knight, I think?) established that there had been a big battle where a bunch of Jedi and Sith had died, and what if those were the same thing? (See also The Shadows of Mindor, which has a similar genesis.)
You can't take another Jedi's lightsaber, kid! from Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith #2
The end result of these two factors could be quite bad, I imagine, but rereading it confirmed my belief that it is surely the best miniseries Dark Horse ever published during its time with the Star Wars license. (As opposed to the best ongoing, which was surely Knights of the Old Republic.) It's a very different Star Wars, but successful nonetheless. There are two parallel stories here: ones about three kids with Force talent who end up essentially drafted by the Jedi for a last stand on the planet Ruusan; the other is about the Sith Lord Darth Bane returning to his fellow Sith after a failed assassination attempt and watching as they all fall, forming his own new ideas about how the Sith should operate as he does.
Lord Farfalla: great Jedi or greatest Jedi? from Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith #4
The story about the kids is great. It's very dark; it's about the horrors of war, and the difference between being an idealized "great warrior" and the realities of being an actual soldier. There's lots of tragedy and I had forgotten how harsh it was. (I don't exactly know when I read it before, but it's not on my reading log, which begins in September 2003.) Darko Macan does an excellent job with the kids, making them sympathetic even as they make bad choices, and the ending especially is terrific.
No, don't tell him Rain! from Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith #6
The Darth Bane plotline is more of a subplot, but Bane is great, a droll unstoppable killing machine, yet smarter than everyone around him. You can see how we would get from the many Sith of the Knight Errant period and this comic to Bane concluding there must only ever be two Sith. (Darth Bane would later star in a trilogy of novels picking up from the end of this comic, but they were quite terrible.)
All Star Wars spaceships should be this awesome. from Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith #4
Ramon F. Bachs and Raul Fernandez do a great job on art. Some Star Wars comics set in time periods away from the films struggle to make the aesthetics distinct (this problem plagued Knight Errant, for example), but they give a mythological tone to the whole thing, with a Jedi lord who looks like a centaur and spaceships that look like sailing ships. I love Lord Farfalla; he's probably my favorite single-appearance Star Wars tie-in character. Bachs has a cartoony style that I feel like caused him to later be pigeonholed as a YA comics artist (the other work of his I've read is all from teen-focused comics: Legion of Super-Heroes, Monsters Unleashed!, Squirrel Girl & Ms. Marvel, Legends: Black Panther), but it's surprisingly good at evoking the horrors of war here. Overall, this is a great little package, underrated and undeservedly forgotten.
As I have mentioned previously, I have begun rereading some of the Oz books aloud to my kids. For Kid One (age 7), it's been almost five years since we read the early ones; for Kid Two (age 5), they haven't heard them at all.
One of the interesting things about reading the books aloud was how it cause me to see many of them in a different light based on Kid One's enjoyment of them, what they responded to—as well as what I responded to, when I was reading aloud instead of reading silently. Rereading is also interesting in this regard, because when I first read The Marvelous Land of Oz aloud,* I was reading it to a three-year-old, and now I'm reading it to two much older kids. So I've gone from reevaluating the books to rereevaluating them!
The Marvelous Land of Oz: Being an account of the further adventures of the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman and also the strange experiences of the Highly Magnified Woggle-Bug, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Animated Saw-Horse, and the Gump; the story being A Sequel to The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum illustrated by John R. Neill
So last time around, I complained about this one a lot: "I feel as though Baum was attempting to recapture the magic of the
original book's Scarecrow–Tin Woodman–Cowardly Lion trio, but failing. [...] Tip occasionally has
good ideas, but the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman are pretty useless;
and new characters Jack Pumpkinhead and Woggle-Bug pretty much
contribute nothing at all. Plus everyone becomes mean and is constantly
sniping at each other!" But this bothered me a lot less this time around because I think my kids can appreciate funny banter at ages 5 and 7 that a kid aged 3 cannot. They thought Jack Pumpkinhead's constant fretting about ways he might die was funny; Kid One told me they really liked my Woggle-Bug voice; both kids had an appreciation for the Woggle-Bug's really terrible puns (particular highlights: the "squash" one, all the jokes about the Scarecrow being filled with money). All of this had gone over the head of Kid One five years ago.
Even though it has been a long time since we read this book, Kid One is familiar with the origins of Ozma from adaptations and such; Kid Two, however, did not know the true identity of Tip. (It was a feature of Paradox in Oz, but that was a long time ago for him, and probably all went over his head in any case.) So I put Kid One under strict instructions not to hint to Kid Two what was going to happen... and thankfully they listened! This paid off when it was revealed who Tip really was. Kid Two's mouth was literally agape! But there was a downside, too; when we finished the book, Kid Two was sad: "But I want there to be more books about Tip!"
Continuity note: One of the fun upsides of having recently read the Ages of Oz prequels aloud to the kids is when they pick up on connections; Kid One was very excited when Glinda's lie-detecting pearl showed up in this book, which she acquired as a kid in A Dark Descent.
* I always think of this book as The Marvellous Land of Oz, though, because as a kid the copy I owned was a Puffin Classic, which used UK spellings.
This is the first finalist I've read thus far for the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story or Comic. Though it is intended to recognize the best sf&f comic of the previous year, I often find this category pretty idiosyncratic: while I think categories like Best Novel do a fairly good job of scooping up the wider sf&f community's preferred novels, even when I personally don't enjoy them, the Hugo electorate consumes a very odd and specific subset of comic books. It very clearly prioritizes comics work by people who have previously won Hugo Awards for prose fiction. Case in point: Nnedi Okorafor, who won Best Novella for Binti in 2016 and the Lodestar Award for Akata Warriorin 2018, and has subsequently been a finalist for some very mediocre work like Black Panther: Long Live the King in 2019.
The Space Cat is definitely better than Long Live the King, but I'm doubtful this children's graphic novel would ever have appeared on someone's list of the best sf&f comics of 2025 otherwise. It's science fiction, but based on Okorafor's real life: the main character is Okorafor's actual cat, Periwinkle, and both Okorafor and her daughter appear in the comic. But in the comic, Periwinkle is from space and regularly returns to space on various adventures; when the family goes to Nigeria on a work trip, Periwinkle must help the local animals band together against an alien invasion that no one else has noticed.
Space Cat no talk good!
It's not great but I did enjoy Space Cat. This is the fourth comic illustrated by Tana Ford that I've read (two of the others were also written by Okorafor; she also illustrated an issue of the Star Trek ongoing Boldly Go that I haven't gotten around to reviewing yet), but this is the best of them; she does a great job capturing the animals. Her Periwinkle is lively and expressive and has a strong sense of character. The story is simple but cute (if a bit padded, even at its short 150ish pages), though I didn't care for the pidgin dialogue style Okorafor gives the animals. The insight into Nigerian culture is interesting—I had no idea cats were seen as cursed! I thought the way the things cats do (e.g., attack your new houseplant) are reinterpreted as purposeful actions humans don't understand.
Maybe this is why our cat eats our plants while we're sleeping!
So far Space Cat is the only Best Graphic Story finalist I've read, but I'd be surprised if it ends up at the top of my ballot. However, I'd also be quite surprised if it ended up at the bottom; usually there's something genuinely dreadful to be found on it. But I did loan it to my seven-year-old, who immediately asked when the sequel was coming out, so clearly a hit with the target audience.
There is a sort of idea in Doctor Who discourse, of "guns vs. frocks." This idea was apparently coined by Gareth Roberts, but is pretty well explained by Kate Orman in this interview with fan and scholar Alan McKee:
I think it’s [Doctor Who novelist] Gareth Roberts who said that Doctor Who needs less guns and more frocks. And it became a very quick shorthand for two rough schools of writing in the Doctor Who novels: one of which was militaristic space opera books that were very serious, and took themselves very seriously; and then at completely the other end of the spectrum, very camp ones that did not take themselves seriously. (10)
(Also discussed here by another writer.) Like a lot of systems that break things down into exactly two categories, you're meant to favor one—I used to read Scott Alexander's Slate Star Codex, and a go-to move for him and his readership was, "There are exactly two ways of thinking, and I belong to the superior one." Guns vs. frocks doesn't hide this; it's right there in the original conception of it that Kate Orman paraphrases. As Elizabeth Sandifer points out, "this is a spectacularly loaded framing of a debate" when your main character abhors guns!
On the whole, I agree: I am much more likely to have a good time with "Flatline" than with "Time Heist." However, I can enjoy a good "gun" story: I am an unabashed fan of Resurrection of the Daleks, for example, and Earthshock and The Caves of Androzani are also in this space. (Well, I remember being a big fan of Resurrection, anyway; it's been a long time since I've seen it.)
One might argue, though, that the whole guns-vs.-frocks dichotomy isn't really applicable to Doctor Who as a whole so much as a very narrow slice of it, which is what Jacqueline Klieper says on this Tumblr post: "I’m generally kind of dubious about treating the gun/frock distinction as particularly meaningful outside of the fairly narrow parameters of the Virgin novels that the terms originated because of." It's not so much a term designed to describe Doctor Who in general as a way of describing two particular ways of making the New Doctor Who Adventures more "adult." You could take the Paul Cornell "frock" approach and embrace the weird camp elements of Doctor Who—sentient churches on the moon—or you could take the "gun" approach of macho space military people blowing things up—for me embodied by the particularly boring and tedious novel Shadowmind by Christopher Bulis. I tend to agree with Kliper; I struggle to map the guns-vs.-frocks dichotomy onto the 2005-22 revival, for example. (I very much struggled to come up an example before finally thinking of "Time Heist," to be honest. Klieper comes up with a couple of examples from the revival, but I'm not sure I really agree with them... though I may be falling victim to a common problem in genre distinctions: "any example I enjoy from a genre I generally don't enjoy must not count as a 'true' example of that genre.")
Doctor Who: Prisoner of the Daleks by Trevor Baxendale
But that doesn't mean it can't occasionally happen. Trevor Baxendale never wrote an NA, but Prisoner of the Daleks reads like his attempt at one. The Doctor lands in the era of the Dalek Wars, and the book is all about that without reprieve: soldiers and squads and massacres and secret plots and plans and it's all Very Serious Stuff. Nicholas Briggs could have written this in his sleep, of course, but with Nick there's a thematic depth, an attempt to make the Daleks mean something that's completely absent from this book where they're just the Horrible Monsters You Know from TV. The one clever thing this novel does is to make you think there's going to be a sympathetic female character of the week who functions as a pseudocompanion... and then kill her off pretty quickly. I didn't expect this, so well done, and it firmly established the book's "gun" bona fides: no one is safe! Unfortunately, having done this, the book is left with no interesting or sympathetic guest characters to speak of. I think "gun" Doctor Who is probably a particularly poor fit for David Tennant's Doctor, even on the page.
All of this is to say, I think this book perfectly achieves what it sets out to do. But what it sets out to do completely fails to be of interest to me. If you know about the guns-vs.-frocks dichotomy, then what you think about that way of conceptualizing Doctor Who will probably tell you pretty clearly what you will think about this book before you even read it. (I picked this up because it's one of the more widely praised "New Series Adventures"... but I guess I should have paid more attention to who was doing the praising!)
In the US comic, Bumblebee was killed off and reborn as Goldbug in the four-issue crossover, G.I.Joe and the Tranformers, which ran concurrently with issues #24-27. However, this story was not used in the UK comic, I believe because the reprinting of G.I.Joe in the UK was not far along enough for this story to make sense. In the UK, Bumblebee's death and rebirth was instead told in a totally different fashion in the stories Wanted: Galvatron, Dead or Alive (#113-5) and Hunters (#117-8). (That said, three years later, when the ailing UK Transformers comic was desperate for content, they reprinted the G.I.Joe crossover anyway, just with a note saying it wasn't in continuity!)
The Til All Are One compendia include the UK version in their reading order in volume two, and relegate G.I.Joe and the Transformers to volume four, with the out-of-continuity tales. I assume they made this call because the UK stories were a vital part of its ongoing saga, whereas I don't think G.I.Joe/Transformers was ever referred to again in the US, aside from the Bumblebee/Goldbug thing. (For some reason, IDW's The Transformers Classics reprinted the story in their final volume, instead of where it goes chronologically, meaning Bumblebee was suddenly Goldbug, and also meaning that I never read it, as I only read the first four volumes.)
But I am doing my best to read all the US and UK stories in an integrated reading order, and so I'm reading it concurrently with the US issues it overlaps with, even though that means I'll go through two totally different origins for Goldbug in quick succession. I'm also continuing to read the profiles from Transformers Universe, placed by release date relative to the US stories. Note that in early 1987 there were four comics featuring the Transformers being published concurrently by Marvel US: the main ongoing, the G.I.Joe crossover, Universe, and the adaptation of the movie. The Transformers was at its height!
from G.I.Joe and the Transformers #1
"Blood on the Tracks" / Groove – Ramjet, from G.I.Joe and the Transformers #1 (Jan. 1987) / Transformers UK #265-8 (14 Apr.–5 May 1990) and Transformers Universe #2 (Jan. 1987), plus other issues; reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Four (2025)
written by Michael Higgins and Bob Budiansky, illustrated by Herb Trimpe and Ian Akin & Brian Garvey, inked by Vince Colletta, lettered by Joe Rosen and Brenda Mings, colored by Nel Yomtov
G.I.Joe and the Transformers was written by Michael Higgins, who was neither regular writer on G.I.Joe nor The Transformers. Even by the standards of 1980s toy tie-in comics, I found this awkwardly written. Not that Bob Budiansky or any of the other Transformers writers have ever been kings of dialogue, but the Transformers here felt awkward and overly expositional and slightly out of character.
Once again, reading the Transformers Universe profiles left me with a feeling of lost opportunity. Especially for the Decepticons: there are a lot of them with interesting character hooks and backstories, but most of the times in the actual comics, they are all just interchangeable subordinates for Megatron or whoever happens to be leader at the time. The other lost opportunity highlighted here is that this issue contains a lot of profiles of Autobots who were important early in the comics, but who were superseded over time through the eternal influx of new characters. I miss these guys, I wish more had been done with them.
from The Transformers US #24
"Afterdeath!", from The Transformers US #24 (Jan. 1987) / Transformers UK #105-6 (21-28 Mar. 1987), reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Two (2025)
written by Bob Budiansky, penciled by Don Perlin, inked by Ian Akin & Brian Garvey, lettered by Janice Chiang, colored by Nel Yomtov
This, infamously, is the story where Optimus Prime willingly kills himself because he lets a videogame NPC die. It doesn't really make very much sense as a premise, and poor Don Perlin struggles to communicate the very-important-to-the-story videogame realm. What a way to go! Still, I appreciate that Bob Budiansky was never content to stop innovating. Two years in: kill off the beloved leader of one of your factions, why not? (Although, I guess this was right around the same time as The Transformers: The Movie, which killed off Optimus Prime. Was it just a Hasbro mandate?)
from G.I.Joe and the Transformers #2
"Power Struggle" / Rampage – Swindle, from G.I.Joe and the Transformers #2 (Feb. 1987) / Transformers UK #269-72 (12 May–2 June 1990) and Transformers Universe #3 (Feb. 1987), plus other issues; reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Four (2025)
written by Michael Higgins and Bob Budiansky, illustrated by Herb Trimpe and Ian Akin & Brian Garvey, inked by Vince Colletta, lettered by Joe Rosen and Brenda Mings, colored by Nel Yomtov
To be honest, I just find G.I.Joe inherently uninteresting. I don't know if I could articulate why this 1980s toy advertisement is less interesting than the ones I do enjoy, but nothing I have ever read of it has ever made me want to read more of it. Which, admittedly, is entirely Transformers crossovers... but not even the utter genius of Tom Scioli had me thinking "Give me some G.I.Joe!" Unfortunately, this crossover seems to have a lot more G.I.Joe in it than Transformers. What Transformers there is, is pretty inconsistent: in this story, Shockwave says he no longer desires to take power from Megatron, while in the main book storyline that occurs simultaneous to this, he is doing exactly that!
As for the profiles, my main thing to note here is that 53 pages here just cover two letters of the alphabet! I had never before noticed how many Transformers have names beginning with R and S.
from The Transformers US #25
"Gone but Not Forgotten!", from The Transformers US #25 (Feb. 1987) / Transformers UK #107-8 (4-11 Apr. 1987), reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Two (2025)
written by Bob Budiansky, penciled by Don Perlin, inked by Ian Akin & Brian Garvey, lettered by Janice Chiang, colored by Nel Yomtov
If the death of Optimus Prime is contrived, then the death of Megatron is Bob Budiansky at his best, and the strength of this story kind of justifies the weakness of its predecessor. Megatron is upset because Optimus Prime is dead... and it was not he who killed him. He grows increasingly paranoid and obsessed across the course of this issue, culminating in his final decision to kill himself rather than let Optimus get the better of him by dying! Great stuff, though the contrivance that Predacons were sent to assasinate Megatron two times is kind of hard to swallow... on the other hand, Megatron vs. Predaking is great, so why not?
from G.I.Joe and the Transformers #3
"Ashes, Ashes...", from G.I.Joe and the Transformers #3 (Mar. 1987) / Transformers UK #273-6 (9-30 June 1990), reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Four (2025)
written by Michael Higgins, illustrated by Herb Trimpe, inked by Vince Colletta, lettered by Joe Rosen, colored by Nel Yomtov
Two problems I have. One: isn't it weird that we have two simultaneous storylines about the Decepticons acquiring a human energy technology that barely acknowledge each other? Why do they need Power Station Alpha if they have the thermocline (or vice versa)? Two: the whole thing between the G.I.Joe general and the US senator who are in love in six seconds and then she turns out to be working with Cobra is pretty dumb.
This is the tenth in a series of posts about Marvel's The Transformers. The next covers US issues #26-27 and UK issues #109-18 & 277-81. Previous installments are listed below:
