The Maze Agency: "The Adventure of the Chinese Dissident" and Other Stories by Mike W. Barr et al.

Somewhat belatedly—I think while writing up the previous post in this sequence—I discovered that there were actually three Maze Agency short stories that had been published outside of the regular Maze Agency comic series. One was a comic story published in a one-shot from Alpha Productions called The Detectives; the other two were prose stories, which could be found in an installment of the quarterly series Noir (a mix of comics and prose) and an anthology called Sex, Lies and Private Eyes. So I tracked them down to cap off this series. (When the hypothetical Maze Agency omnibus is released, hopefully it will include them all.)

The comic story in Detectives #1 (which has a cover by original Maze Agency ongoing artist Adam Hughes), "The Adventure of the Chinese Dissident," is just ten pages, and so can't be as complicated as most Maze Agency stories, but is pretty good regardless. Its main downside is that you only get any clues at all about a page before it's all revealed, so there's not really a chance to "play along" as the reader... but it's not like I was ever going to do that successfully in any case! Paul Pelletier is a solid artist here (I mostly know him from small bits and bobs on series like The Darkstars or Blue and Gold), and I would have gladly seen more Maze Agency from him.

The other two are, like I said, prose stories. It's weird when characters originated in comics make the jump to prose, in my opinion; I think a lot of time there's a kind of flatness. Comics tell you interiority through  mostly external cues, especially in a series like The Maze Agency, which has no narration. I spent some time reading a bunch of superhero-comics-turned-prose-stories, and I found it was hard to imagine a lot of superhero characters as actually having vivid interior lives—not just for me, but obviously for the writers! Mike Barr isn't inexperienced in prose (I actually read a couple of his prose Star Trek works two decades ago now), but he doesn't really go for interiority at all here: the narrator is distant from Jen and Gabe. This can work in a detective story, but it did make me feel like these weren't really playing to the strengths of the medium.

from Noir: The Illustrated Crime Fiction Quarterly #1

Weirdly, both "The Heat Is On" and "Murder Gone Wylde" are about pornography: the former about an adult video store, and the latter about a producer of porn DVDs. I found "The Heat Is On" had a good sense of atmosphere that worked well, but the actual mystery was slight; "Murder Gone Wylde" has an engaging set of characters and suspects, and was a lot of fun... unfortunately, I think it might have been even more fun as an actual comic! Still, as one last way to spend time with Jen and Gabe (and Lieutenant Bliss, etc.), you could do a lot worse. Did Barr ever write any original mystery novels? I feel like he could have done good things with that canvas.

"The Adventure of the Chinese Dissident" originally appeared in issue #1 of The Detectives (Apr. 1993). The story was written by Mike W. Barr, pencilled by Paul Pelletier, inked by Bob Cram Jr., lettered by Susan Dorne, and edited by Christopher Mills. 

"The Heat Is On" originally appeared in issue #1 of Noir: The Illustrated Crime Fiction Quarterly (Winter 1994). The story was written Mike W. Barr, illustrated by Rick Magyar, and edited by Christopher Mills. 

"Murder Gone Wylde" originally appeared in Sex, Lies and Private Eyes (2009). The story was written by Mike W. Barr and edited by Joe Gentile and Richard Dean Starr.

This is the last in a series of posts about Mike W. Barr's The Maze Agency. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Maze Agency vol. 1 #1-5 (1988-90)
2. The Maze Agency vol. 1 #6-23 (1989-91)
3. The Maze Agency vol. 2 #1-3 (1997-98)
4. The Maze Agency vol. 3 #1-3 & vol. 4 #1 (2005-23)

Two related posts cover Noir Quarterly and Sex, Lies and Private Eyes.

The Maze Agency: "A Beautiful Crime" and Other Stories by Mike W. Barr, Ariel Padilla, Ernest Jocson, et al.

Almost a decade after its first revival (see item #3 on the list below), Mike W. Barr's The Maze Agency was revived again, for a second three-issue miniseries, this time from IDW. (The revival was accompanied by a new collection of volume 1's first five issues, see item #1 below; I have also seen some evidence that ISBNs were assigned for more collections, but none of those were ever published.)

I found these three issues more of a mixed bag than the previous revival from Caliber. I think there were two reasons: one avoidable, and one perhaps unavoidable.

First, the avoidable one. I didn't find any of the stories among these three as well put together as the ones in the previous two runs of The Maze Agency. Maze Agency stories were always complicated, sure—I imagine there's very rarely a fair-play whodunit that isn't—but these usually verged into overcomplicated. The reader might very often lose track of things... but probably the one thing that should never happen in a whodunit is that the reader loses track of the suspects. But in all of these stories, especially the first and the third, I found that was exactly was what happened. Two many characters, and when the murderer was revealed, I wasn't quite sure I remembered who they were.

Probably part of the problem there is not the writing, but the art: the IDW stories are all penciled by Ariel Padilla, and I didn't think he had the command of making unique faces necessary to pulling off the complex character work of a murder mystery. Sure, not everyone can be Adam Hughes, but almost all of his many replacements in the original run still managed to do it. The glossy mid-2000s coloring techniques probably don't help either. In particular, issues #2 and 3 have lots of characters—beauty pageant participants and two distinct Japanese families, respectively—and if you can't tell them all apart, you'll very quickly be lost. I wish a stronger artist had been found to bring back The Maze Agency.

from The Maze Agency vol. 3 #2

The other reason, though, was probably unavoidable. The pleasure of the original Maze Agency wasn't just the whodunits, it was being with Jen and Gabe as their relationship evolved and developed. The series moved forward in real time; its two years of comics covered two years of their lives.

Volume 3 of The Maze Agency was published fifteen years after the last issue of volume 1...  yet the characters have clearly not aged fifteen years. Nor, however, are we picking up shortly after where we left off; these are not early 1990s period pieces, either. In true "comic book time" fashion, the fashions and the technology indicate this is the mid-2000s, but Jen and Gabe are where we left them. Or, even worse, regressed a little: one of the stories indicates Gabe has his own apartment, but he actually moved in with Jen during the original run. There probably was not a good solution to this dilemma, but I find it disappointing nonetheless. (I think, though, I would have done what Sue Grafton did in the Kinsey Millhone books partway though, and transformed them into period pieces. For one thing, the fashions of the late 1980s and early 1990s are much better than the generic mid-2000s stuff Jen is wearing here. She even lost her forelock!)

from The Maze Agency vol. 3 #3

What I think of as the "modern" revival of The Maze Agency actually isn't all that modern—depressingly, it's closer to the series's original run than it is to the present! However, there was one last Maze Agency revival just a couple years ago, from Scout Comics... which lasted just one issue! I was able to find a press release about the Scout revival but no interviews or anything; certainly, the fanfare with which it was announced seems to indicate it wasn't planned as a one-shot, but no further issues were solicited or anything.

Anyway, it's fine. The twists of the mystery are interesting enough, and there are some good bits of humor in it. Unfortunately, it's let down by the art: all of Silvano Beltramo's women basically have the same face, and he's also the colorist, and occasionally gives Jen reddish-blond hair (matching one of the suspects) instead of blond, so I often had to reread dialogue to figure out which woman was Jen! I do appreciate they got Alan Davis back to do one of the covers; I think it was originally a 1:5 incentive cover, but it wasn't any more expensive than the regular cover online.

from The Maze Agency vol. 4 #1

The Scout Comics one-shot seems to be it for The Maze Agency; I believe it was Mike Barr's last-ever published comics work, and he's now having health problems, alas. If you liked the core series, these later revivals don't quite recapture its glory days, but are still worth tracking down.

Volume 3 of The Maze Agency originally appeared in three issues, from Nov. 2005 to Jan. 2006. The stories were written by Mike W. Barr, penciled by Ariel Padilla, inked by Ernest Jocson (#1-2) and Michael Jason Paz (#3), lettered by Tom B. Long, colored by Rainier Beredo (#1, 3) and Romulo Fajardo Jr. (#2), and edited by Dan Taylor.

"Shriek: The Sequel!" originally appeared in issue #1 of The Maze Agency vol. 4 (Dec. 2023). The story was written by Mike W. Barr, illustrated and colored by Silvano Beltramo, lettered by Tyler Smith, and edited by Andrea Lorenzo Molinari.

This is the penultimate in a series of posts about Mike W. Barr's The Maze Agency. The next covers the short stories. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Maze Agency vol. 1 #1-5 (1988-90)
2. The Maze Agency vol. 1 #6-23 (1989-91)
3. The Maze Agency vol. 2 #1-3 (1997-98)

The Maze Agency: "The Death of Justice Girl" and Other Stories by Mike W. Barr, Gene Gonzales, et al.

Mike Barr's "fair-play whodunit" comic series The Maze Agency (see my two posts linked below for more detail on its original run) has been revived several times since the end of its original run in 1991. The first of these revivals was a three-issue black-and-white miniseries from indie publisher Caliber Comics in the late 1990s. Picking up the first two of these isn't that hard, but the third issue often goes for silly money on the secondary market—I think because Adam Hughes drew one its two covers, though even the cover he didn't draw can still go for a lot for some reason. (Automated bot pricing?) Thankfully MyComicShop posted a $3 copy of the non-Hughes cover while I was engaged in some futile eBay bidding. (Like, it wasn't there when I started looking for it, hence me going to eBay to begin with, but then I went back a few days later and it was!)

The Caliber run consists of three done-in-one murder mysteries, of course: in #1, Jen and Gabe investigate the death of the actress who played Justice Girl decades ago in a film; in #2, they travel to a Catholic monastery to locate a vital witness for a mob case, and in #3, they are confounded when three different women all turn up claiming to be a model who hasn't been seen in public for decades. They are all solid mysteries of the type Barr perfected in the original Maze Agency run, though I found all the characters and clues in #3 (each potential model also has associated side characters) hard to keep track of. On the other hand, I liked #2 a lot; a large cast of suspects, but they are distinctive, so you can keep track of them all fairly easily, and some nice twists.

from The Maze Agency vol. 2 #2

I'm assuming running the series in black and white was a cost-cutting decision, not an artistic one. Certainly, issues #1 and 3 seem to have been drawn much as anyone would draw a color comic. However, issue #2 feels like it was designed to run in black and white: lots of shadows in the monastery, lots of dark brickwork. Overall, I found it moody and effective. If someone (hypothetically) created a Maze Agency Omnibus, I'd probably want to see issues #1 and 3 colored, but I think coloring #2 would diminish its effect.

Overall, Gene Gonzales is an effective penciller, capturing the likenesses of our leads; he does the first two issues and the first half of the third. Unfortunately, the second half of #3 is done by a different artist with a style that seems both rushed and inappropriately cartoony... and having your characters change physical appearance halfway through an issue is especially detrimental to a murder mystery!

Volume 2 of The Maze Agency originally appeared in three issues, from July 1997 to Apr. 1998.* The stories were written by Mike W. Barr; pencilled by Gene Gonzales (#1-3) and James Bible (#3); inked by David Rowe (#1), Ande Parks (#2), Jason Baumgartner (#2-3), and Larry Shuput (#3); and edited by Joe Pruett (#1-3) and James Pruett (#3).

This is the antepenultimate in a series of posts about Mike W. Barr's The Maze Agency. The next covers volumes 3 and 4 from IDW and Scout. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Maze Agency vol. 1 #1-5 (1988-90)
2. The Maze Agency vol. 1 #6-23 (1989-91) 

* The indicia dates on issues #2 and 3 are both just "1998," no month given. Some Internet sources give the months as Jan. and Feb. 1998, respectively, but I think this is just arbitrarily placing the issues in the two earliest slots in 1998. John Jackson Miller's Comichron includes issues #2 and 3 on his sales charts for Feb. and Apr. 1998, and given that issue #1 appears on the sales chart for July 1997, we can infer that Caliber was one of those publishers where the indicia date matches the sales month.

"Meet Jennifer Mays, New York's prettiest detective, and Gabriel Webb, amateur sleuth and true crime writer, in another fair-play whodunit -- challenging you to solve the mystery as it unfolds!": The Maze Agency #6–23

The first four or five issues of The Maze Agency have been collected two or three times, by my reckoning. However, the original series ran twenty-three issues plus an annual and a special, and aside from one story from the annual and one from the special, none of that material has ever been collected. But it is all available on the secondary market for pretty reasonable prices.

Interestingly, the series was cancelled by publisher Comico after June 1989's issue #7, but the series was picked up by Innovation Comics... even continuing the numbering with December 1989's issue #8! (Issue #8 credits Comico editor Michael Eury, so I'd guess the issue was originally prepared for them.) If you're trying to read it all in order, note that special #1 was published between issues #12 and 13, and annual #1 between issues #15 and 16. It is very clear that the comic struggled in the comics market of the 1980s and '90s; it had acclaim, but never a wide audience. (It probably doesn't help that once Adam Hughes gets snapped up to draw JLA, the series never really has a regular penciller again; Hughes draws #8, 9, and 12; the other fifteen issues of the regular series feature eleven different pencillers.)

If you've read the first five issues, how these ones unfold won't be a big surprise to you: every issue features a done-in-one murder mystery when Jen and Gabe solve the crime. Supposedly they are all "fair-play whodunits," meaning the reader can look at all the clues and solve the mystery too. I didn't really attempt to do this because, though I enjoy reading them, I am not "good" at murder mysteries. Only one time, with issue #11's "…Twas the Crime Before Christmas…" (pencils by Robb Phipps), did I even come close, thanks to a very obvious clue about color blindness. In some stories, the explanations can get pretty convoluted, but that's all part of the genre in my experience; you've just got to roll with it. (I found #9's "The English Channeler Mystery: A Problem In Deduction" particularly far-fetched; I must not have been the only one, because someone actually writes into the lettercol with a completely different solution, claiming it fits all the facts, though writer Mike Barr disagrees. I also thought the "clues" in the one about a group of authors being murdered, #16's "If Books Could Kill…", beggared belief, though all the book stuff was quite fun.)

But when it hits, it hits. These are almost never not pleasurable in the way that murder mysteries ought to be pleasurable: fun characters, including some engaging cops for our leads to interact with, enjoyable pulling together of threads and ideas. I particularly enjoyed the aforementioned Christmas story in #11; the one where Jen's police ally herself becomes a suspect, #15's "Too Much Bliss" (art by Mike Okamoto, Mike Witherby, and Rick Magyar); and the one about a homophobic serial killer, #21's "Valentine's Slay." Surely the best of all, though, was issue #14's "Before Midnight" (pencils by Robb Phipps), where a death-row inmate who Jen helped put away is murdered just before his execution. Really tense and clever and well put together.

And though, as I said, the series never regains a regular penciller, there's still some solid artwork across these issues. I particularly liked Mary Mitchell's pencils on issues #16 and 21. (Alas, it doesn't seem like she had much of a subsequent career; her last credited work on League of Comic Geeks is a ten-page story in Marvel Valentine Special #1 from 1997.) I was also pleased to see some early-career work from Rob Davis on #19, who went on to do some excellent art and writing for Doctor Who Magazine from 2007 to 2011. Rick Magyar does most of the inks from issue #8 to 14, which helps maintain consistency, and he's definitely good value.

I only have two real complaints about this run. The first is that it stretches credulity for me when people investigate murders professionally just happen to encounter a murder mystery. I get this is a feature of the genre, but it gets overused a bit: in #6, Jen and Gabe go on vacation and encounter a murder, then in #7, they go to visit Jen's parents and encounter a murder, and then in #8 there's a murder in Gabe's apartment building. Quite a run there! Similarly, issues #16, 17, and 19 all feature murders they just happen to bump into, rather than ones Jen is hired to solve. It's a device that needs to be used more sparingly.

The other is that I felt like in the earlier issues Barr was setting up some stuff about how the two of them met that never gets paid off. A lot of the early issues revolve around Gabe wanted more of a relationship while Jen is reluctant, and I really enjoyed seeming them slowly grow closer together. But it seemed like the early issues implied there was a bit of a story there, and we never get to hear it. Also there's a lot of focus on Jen's family... but what about Gabe's? (Maybe I just wanted a story set in Ohio.)

The special and the annual are also good stuff. Special #1 sees Jen and Gabe solve three murders in one day, each one drawn by a different artist. I particularly liked the one based around Jen's haircut, "Afternoon: Murder by a Hair," one of the only times Rick Magyar provides pencils. Annual #1 is mostly a Spirit tribute (art by Rick Magyar, Darick Robertson, & Wm. Messner-Loebs); I haven't read any Spirit, but the stylistic diversion is enjoyable. 

All that said... if you like well-constructed comics and fun characters, this is definitely a highlight of the medium and the genre. It's a shame no one has ever crowdfunded some kind of definitive omnibus collection, but they're worth tracking down for sure. 

This is the second in a series of posts about Mike W. Barr's The Maze Agency. The next covers volume 2 from Caliber. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Maze Agency vol. 1 #1-5 (1988-90)

The Maze Agency, Volume 1 by Mike W. Barr, Adam Hughes, et al.

The Maze Agency was a comic book series that originally ran from 1988 to 1991, with brief revivals in 1997, 2005, and 2024. It was emphatically not a superhero series; it was about the owner of a private detective agency, Jennifer Mays, and her boyfriend, the freelance crime writer Gabriel Webb, as they solved crimes together. The series was the brainchild of Mike W. Barr, a comics writer known for his detective-focused take on Batman—and, if you're a Star Trek fan, his exemplary run on the movie-era comics. I first learned about it, I think, from an appreciation post on the late, lamented comics blog Comics Alliance, which was surely the high point of Internet comics journalism. (This might sound sarcastic, but it's absolutely not; my consumption of contemporary comics went way down when I no longer had CA to point me towards stuff aligned with my tastes.)

Since I just don't have enough comics series to work my way through around here, with this post I'm embarking on a journey through the history of The Maze Agency. Thankfully, though, there's a lot less of it than, say, Blackhawk! 

The Maze Agency, Volume 1

Collection published: 2005
Contents originally published: 1988-90
Acquired and read: March 2026

Writer/Creator: Mike W. Barr
Pencillers: Alan Davis, Adam Hughes
Inks: Alan Davis, Rick Magyar, Al Vey
Letterers: Todd Klein, Deborah Marks, Bob Pinaha
Colorist: Julia Lacquement

The only issues of The Maze Agency to ever have been reprinted are the first five; there was a black-and-white trade paperback of the first four in 1990 from Innovation,* but in 2005, IDW rereleased the first five (plus some other stuff, which I'll come to) in color, as a companion to their revival of the series. (No further trades were ever released, not even of IDW's own material, so it must not have been a big seller, even though some sleuthing leads me to think that ISBNs were assigned to future collections.)

This is one of those comic books that's kind of hard to review, in the sense that what The Maze Agency does isn't genius... but it is perfect, if you take my meaning. That is to say, this is a comic that has an objective and it fulfills that objective with precision and professionalism. Mike Barr is an underrated writer, in my opinion; he knows (knew? I don't think he's had any new comics work released since 2024's one-issue Maze Agency revival, but I could be wrong) exactly how to put a comic book together. These issues have to pack in a lot, because each one is a single story: they need to introduce a mystery and a cast of supporting characters to go along with it to serve as victim(s) and suspects and witnesses, and provide clues and red herrings, and they also need to give Jennifer and Gabe interesting things to do. That's a lot to pack into twenty pages, but Barr manages it every time with an economy of storytelling that really impressed me. It's just pleasurable to read on a panel-to-panel basis. There is nothing flashy here, but it's efficient in the way that only a solid comics pro of the 1980s could be, in my opinion.

Aw, poor Gabe.
from The Maze Agency vol. 1 #1 (art by Adam Hughes & Rick Magyar)

The steady, experienced hand of Barr as writer is aided by the then new, upcoming hand (that's a weird metaphor, isn't it?) of Adam Hughes as artist. Hughes would go on to become a superstar of the comics industry, but this was among his first comics work if not, I think, the first. Hughes's skill rests in his ability to both draw attractive people and communicate character with facial expressions; it's little wonder he was later poached from this series to illustrate Justice League America, a series equally suited to his talents. (Fun fact: Hughes drew the Maze Agency characters in a cameo in JLA #34, and when Barr found out, he got DC to let him write some dialogue for their appearance!)

Or maybe, Poor Jen!
from The Maze Agency vol. 1 #3 (art by Adam Hughes & Rick Magyar)

Like I said, this volume collects five regular issues of the series. In these five, Jen and Gabe deal with murders in the contexts of an art gallery heist, the discovery of lost sitcom episodes, a facility for testing experimental cars, a group of Jack the Ripper enthusiasts, and an Alcor-like cryonics facility. I found them all enjoyable, solid, well-constructed mysteries. Like any mystery series, though, it's not just about the murders, but also the detectives. The other pleasure of the series is the developing relationship between the leads, as well as their interaction with the supporting cast. We're not told exactly how Jen and Gabe met or got involved with each other, but their relationship is clearly quite recently established when the series begins, and Gabe is eager while Jen is hesitant. They're fun characters, and using Adam Hughes as artist is key to the series's success here: just as a solid mystery tv show is elevated by the chemistry of its cast, so is this comic elevated by Hughes's ability to depict character through his art.

Awwwww...
from The Maze Agency vol. 1 #4 (art by Adam Hughes & Rick Magyar)

When trying to figure out what issues of this series I needed to buy in addition to the TPB, I was stymied by finding contradictory information about this collected edition. Some references said it contained the first five issues plus Maze Agency Annual #1, others said it contained the first five issues plus Maze Agency Special #1. I had to wait for my copy to arrive to solve this mystery. So which was it? Well, it was both and neither. The IDW trade paperback contains one story from annual #1 and one story from special #1... but both of those issues contained other stories as well, so if you want the complete Maze Agency, you'll have to buy both of those issues even if you already own this collection.

In a text piece in the full Maze Agency Special, Mike Barr says it was Alan Davis who gave Jen her little forelock, and he was initially opposed to it but came to like it in the end.
from The Maze Agency Special #1 (art by Alan Davis)

The story from 1990's special #1 is "The Mile-High Corpse!" (here listed as being from Maze Agency #0, which isn't quite accurate). This story was written by Barr with illustrations by comics legend Alan Davis, and though it wasn't printed until much later, it was completed first—Barr used it to try to convince potential publishers to try to get on board with publishing the series. It's just six pages long, so the mystery can't be very complicated, but it gives you a very brief understanding of the premise, and of course it's always a pleasure to see some Alan Davis art.

This actually goes on to be a significant recurring gag in the comic.
from The Maze Agency Annual #1 (art by Adam T. Hughes & Rick Magyar)

The story from annual #1 is even shorter, just three pages. "Murder in Mint Condition" is about Jen and Gabe very quickly solving a mystery at a comics convention... because the first two pages were given away for free at a comics convention in 1988. You could submit your solution; the last page, with the actual solution, was later printed in the Comics Buyer's Guide. The complete story was eventually reprinted in both the annual for 1990 and the original trade paperback. Not really a satisfying mystery but a nice curio.

This is the first in a series of posts about Mike W. Barr's The Maze Agency. The next covers issues #6-23 of volume 1.

* According to Mike Barr's text page in The Maze Agency vol. 2 #1, Caliber also put out a trade of the first four issues in 1997, but I can't find any evidence this actually happened: it's not on the GCD, it's not listed for sale anywhere, or ever having been for sale.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars Graphic Novellas #6–8

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Starcrusher Trap

Published: 2011
Acquired: November 2012
Read: January 2026

Scripts: Mike W. Barr, Ryder Windham, Jeremy Barlow

Art: The Fillbach Brothers, Ben Dewey, Brian Koschak
Colors: Raymund Lee, Mae Hao with Marlon Ilagan

Lettering: Michael Heisler

I used to be a big fan of Dark Horse's Clone Wars Adventures series, which were digest-sized comics containing three or four stories in the style of the 2-D Clone Wars cartoon. A lot of people must have been, because while the show ended in Marsh 2005, the comics lasted all the way until December 2007; in fact, four of its ten volumes came out after the show was over! But the comics did finally come to an end. Once the 3-D The Clone Wars began, Dark Horse replaced them with a series of graphic novellas (some original stories, some reprints of stories originally released serially). These were still digest-sized, but each volume told a single 75-page story, in the style of the new show. Even though I didn't really watch the new show, I liked Clone Wars Adventures enough that I kept collecting these; the last six, however, I never got around to reading until now.

One of my reasons for loving Clone Wars Adventures was the art of the Fillbach Brothers, who I think are cartoonists par excellence; their work on the series was kinetic and delightful. Unfortunately, their style I think suffers a bit when forced to conform to the style of the 3-D cartoon, which is in the case in The Suncrasher Trap, a story of Obi-Wan, Anakin, Ahsoka, and company trying to stop a Separatist superweapon. It's basically fine; as a big fan of DC in the 1980s, I was glad to see Mike W. Barr on scripting duties (I had no idea he was still writing comics!) but it's a bit staid. I think the flat coloring of the 2-D series suits the Fillbachs' art style much more than the shaded coloring attempting to mimic the 3-D series. (In some later novellas, the artists don't seem to have to conform to the show's art style as much; I wish that had been true here.)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Strange Allies

Published: 2011
Acquired: November 2012
Read: January 2026

Of the six volumes I read across January and February, Strange Allies, scripted by Ryder Windham with art by Ben Dewey, is by far the worst. It focuses on a young Chiss Jedi with a group of loyal clone soldiers and a friend who is a burly swoop bike racer; the story tries to simultaneously tell us he's inexperienced and he's been on all these different adventures. The plot jumps around a lot, like the writer made it up as they went along, and there are threads that don't go anywhere. Only once I finished it did I discover that the main characters originate in a series of YA Clone Wars tie-in novels, which I guess explains some of my issues, but while this may work for someone who has read those stories it didn't work for me.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Enemy Within

Published: 2012
Acquired: November 2012
Read: January 2026

Lastly, there's The Enemy Within, by Star Wars comics stalwart Jeremy Barlow with Brian Koschak on art. This story has no Jedi in it; it focuses on a platoon of clone soldiers on a secret mission. I enjoyed the writing on this one a lot; unlike many of these novellas, which seem content to deliver a frothy action story, Barlow gives us a story of character and complications. It is slightly let down by the art; Koschak does well with action but struggles to draw convincing faces, which is a definitely downside in a story that not only needs to convey a lot of characterization via facial expressions, but needs to differentiate a bunch of characters who have the same face!

Doctor Who: Destination Prague by Steven Savile (ed.)

Back in the LiveJournal days, I had a friend there who was invited to pitch for this book; he reached out to me and my friend Michael for Doctor Who advice because he hadn't really seen the show. (In retrospect, he was kind of obnoxious; he got in the book, and I saw him making comments in promotion of his story like, "I always liked x Doctor because of y," when I know for a fact he'd never seen a story featuring x Doctor until we recommended one to him!) Because of this, I seem to recall (it has been almost two decades, so I may be wrong) that editor Steven Savile wanted to do an anthology covering the history of a city, and was torn between doing London and Prague. Prague has a rich history, but it seems kind of random to be honest (I explained the premise of this book to my wife while reading it and she laughed), and how many Doctor Who authors know a lot about the history of Prague? London would be more familiar territory... but of course, probably too familiar. What's the USP of a book made up of Doctor Who stories set in London?

Doctor Who: Short Trips #20: Destination Prague
edited by Steven Savile

Published: 2007
Acquired: May 2009
Read: July 2025

Obviously, Savile decided to go with Prague in the end. I thought the book opened a bit oddly, with a story about an inhabitant-less Prague being taken out of time, hardly the kind of thing that makes the reader experience Prague and thus see the upside to setting a bunch of stories there. The next story takes place in Prague's future, and so does the next, and so does the next. I found this a bit of an odd choice, too—I felt like if the selling point of this book was Prague's rich history, then maybe we ought to lead off with a story set in that rich history.

Halfway through, though, I realized we still hadn't had a historical, and so that must be intentional in the sense that I was wrong about the book's premise. It wasn't chronicling past and future history, but only future history. I feel like this is an okay idea, though in that case, I think it probably would make more sense to go with a city readers are more familiar with, like London. But I also think that if you are going to tell just future history, it would be better to do it in chronological order. If the book had a mix of historical and future-set stories, then jumping around would definitely be the right choice for the sake of variety. But if the decision is to only tell the future story of the city, then jumping around makes that future story hard to discern. It would be neat to get a series of snapshots of Prague's future, chronicling its various ascents and descents moving ever further into the future... but what we get instead is dispersed and fragmented and hard to glom onto.

On top of that, I think the choice of just telling future-Prague stories doesn't play to the authors' strengths. I suspect a bunch of authors largely unfamiliar with a city could do some research to find interesting historical incidents to build stories around, and I think a bunch of authors familiar with a city might have found something to say about its future. But telling stories about the future of a city you don't know much about is a tricky business, and mostly what we get are pretty generic sci-fi stories and/or repetitive transpositions of classic Prague things into the future, like (if I counted correctly) three different Golem stories and three different Kafka's "Metamorphosis" riffs.

Like the last Short Trips volume I read, The Quality of Leadership, this one has a second, implicit USP: the editor is not part of the usual cohort of mid-2000s Doctor Who tie-in writers, and thus they have a different Rolodex of authors to call on, most of whom had never written a Doctor Who story (or maybe just one) and many of whom never would again. Some of them are people who have had (or would go on to have) pretty decent writing careers outside of Doctor Who in fact: names I knew from other contexts included Mike W. Barr (a number of DC comics from the 1980s, including Batman: Year Two and Star Trek: The Mirror Universe Saga), Keith R.A. DeCandido (innumerable Star Trek stories, including editing the S.C.E. series), Kevin Killiany (S.C.E.: Orphans), Mary Robinette Kowal (the Lady Astronaut series), Paul Kupperberg (JSA: Ragnarok), Todd McCaffrey (Pern, though I've never actually read any of his contributions), and Sean Williams (The New Jedi Order: Force Heretic).

Bringing in outside writers to an existing tie-in franchise can be hit-or-miss in my experience. Sometimes those outsiders have an expanded way of seeing it, and they come at it from atypical, interesting angles. But conversely, sometimes they have a more limited understanding of it, because their understanding is mostly shaped by what's on screen; because they haven't been living and breathing tie-ins for a decade, they don't see the dynamism that the premise really allows for. Doctor Who can do really interesting stuff in the medium of prose short fiction... but I don't think you'd know it by reading this book, where it seemed to me that most writers were trying to tell fairly "typical" Doctor Who adventures with aliens invading or time-travel shenanigans or rogue Time Lords, stuff that might work very well on screen with a canvas of ninety minutes, but comes across as superficial on the printed page. In particular, the book suffers from the sheer quantity of stories; some Short Trips anthologies have as few as seven or eight, if I recall correctly, but this one crams in over twenty, meaning many of them are by necessity quite short. You just can't do the "typical" Doctor Who story in fifteen-ish pages in a satisfactory way.

Thus, I found this one a bit of a struggle. Indeed, I think it's indicative that of the three stories I did think were very good, two of them were by authors who have written multiple other Doctor Who stories. The first story that really clicked for me was Mary Robinette Kowal's "Suspension and Disbelief"; it's weird and short (the Doctor has to help a woman whose husband is going to be executed for chopping down a tree so she can make a puppet; the resolution involves a giant puppet) but inventive and well told.

The second was James Swallow's "Lady of the Snows," which was a beautiful story about an artist falling in love with an amnesiac Charley Pollard, using her as his muse, with some great imagery and interesting thematic resonance between what the artist is doing to Charley, and what has happened to Prague in the far future. (To be fair to Swallow, who has gone on to write a lot of Doctor Who stories, I think this was just his fourth one or so.)

The last one was also the very last in the book, Stel Pavlou's "Omegamorphosis." (And to be fair to Pavlou, though he has written other Doctor Who stories, it's literally just two of them. But all three are bangers!) This is the book's third and final Kafka riff... but it's the only one of them that actually feels Kafkaesque, surreal and disconcerting. 

So, I think there are better Short Trips volumes out there, and I unfortunately suspect this one was fundamentally misconceived from the beginning.

Every three months, I read the unread Doctor Who book I've owned the longest. Next up in sequence: Short Trips: How The Doctor Changed My Life

Review: Star Trek: New Frontiers (a.k.a. The Mirror Universe Saga) by Mike W. Barr, Tom Sutton, and Ricardo Villagran

Comic trade paperback, 190 pages
Published 2009 (contents: 1984-85)
Acquired September 2009
Read May 2019

Star Trek Archives, Volume 6: Best of Alternate Universes

Written by Mike W. Barr
Art by Tom Sutton & Ricardo Villagran
Lettering by John Costanza, Janice Chiang, & Carrie Spiegle

Colors by Julianna Ferriter

Let's start with the complaints about IDW.

There is a vast body of uncollected Star Trek comics out there. IDW's Star Trek Omnibus line was a decent effort to get some of it into print. While two of its five volumes were already-collected IDW material, the other three reprinted material that had largely not been collected before: the original Marvel ongoing, Early Voyages, and the film adaptations.

from Star Trek vol. 1 #10

The Star Trek Archives line, on the other hand, was ferociously misguided. Very little of DC's ten-year run of well-regarded Star Trek comics have been collected, and yet the majority of the issues reprinted in volume 1 of the Archives, published 2008, had just been reprinted by Titan in its Star Trek Comics Classics line in 2006! Why not try to reprint something never before reprinted? Volume 6 of the Archives reprints issues #9-16 of DC's Star Trek vol. 1, a storyline called New Frontiers, already reprinted by DC itself under the title of The Mirror Universe Saga; you can still get that collection for $11 including shipping on the secondary market, while IDW charged $25 for its new collection! Why? (I still bought it, though, so I guess that's why.)

from Star Trek vol. 1 #10

Plus the paratext is, as always, bad. The indicia claims the collected issues are #9-16 of a series called Star Trek: New Frontiers, and I don't get why the title is "Best of Alternate Universes." Is it really a "best of" if it only has one story in it? And why "alternate universes" when the story is from one specific alternate universe, the so-called "mirror universe"? If "The Mirror Universe Saga" was out of the question, then surely "Best of the Mirror Universe" would have been better?

from Star Trek vol. 1 #11

All that aside (and I'll have more complaints about the Star Trek Archives next week), I read this between the adaptations of Star Trek III and IV in the Movie Classics Omnibus. I remember reading this in high school and finding it just okay, but rereading it in context reveals what a good job scripter Mike Barr did. In Back Issue! no. 5, he says the difference between his work here and his work on the Marvel Star Trek series is the Marvels were written like tv episodes, but the DCs were written like comics.

from Star Trek vol. 1 #11

However, this reads like a film to me. If instead of The Voyage Home, the third Harve Bennett-produced film had been a trip to the mirror universe, it would have been exactly like this. Barr totally nails the scope of those films, the humor, the moments of characterization, the sense of fun. Big, titanic things happen here-- this isn't the small-scale adventures of Marvel's Star Trek. It draws together threads from the two films before it; I like that Amanda, Spock's mom, gets an appearance (there was no room for her in Star Trek III). I like that Tom Sutton draws Saavik as Kirstie Alley even though she'd been recast as Robin Curtis by this point. The idea that Spock's post-resurrection mental confusion would be cured by melding with mirror Spock is completely delightful. The use of David is neat (though it could be more emotionally impactful). I like the idea that after destroying his ship, Kirk kind of gets to step foot on its ghost. I like that Kirk gets a worthy adversary-- himself!-- and I love that mirror Kirk outplays our Kirk by using the same trick our Kirk used on the Klingons in Star Trek III.

from Star Trek vol. 1 #12

It starts to flag near the end (the final showdown seems one too many), and I'm not sure Kirk needs two order-following martinets as antagonists, nor that his defiance of orders really makes sense, but this is unabashed greatness in comics form. Has the Excelsior even been this impressive? I love The Voyage Home, but there are moments where I wish this had been made instead. Or maybe as Star Trek V? With some small tweaks, I could see it.

Next Week: We find out what happened between Star Treks V and VI, in volume 3 of the Star Trek Archives... The Gary Seven Collection!

Review: Star Trek Omnibus, Volume 1 by Martin Pasko, Dave Cockrum, Klaus Janson, et al.

Comic trade paperback, 324 pages
Published 2009 (contents: 1980-82)
Acquired June 2009
Read May 2019

Star Trek Omnibus, Volume 1

Script by Marv Wolfman, Mike W. Barr (with Denny O'Neil), Tom DeFalco, Martin Pasko (with Alan Brennert), Michael Fleisher, and J. M. DeMatteis
Pencils by Dave Cockrum, Mike Nasser, Leo Duranona, Joe Brozowski, Luke McDonnell, Gil Kane, and Ed Hannigan
Inks by Klaus Janson, Ricardo Villamonte, Frank Springer, Tom Palmer (with Marie Severin & Dave Simons), Gene Day, Gil Kane, and Sal Trapani
Colors by Carl Gafford and Shelly Leferman

Letters by Jim Novak, John Costanza, Rick Parker (with Harry Blumfield), Ray Burzon, Joe Rosen, John Morelli, Janice Chiang, and Shelly Leferman

This volume collects issues #4-18 of Marvel's Star Trek ongoing (#1-3 were collected in the Movie Classics Omnibus), which ran from 1980 to 1982. Following on from the events of The Motion Picture, these comics have two reputations that aren't entirely earned.

from Star Trek #6 (script by Mike W. Barr, art by Dave Cockrum & Klaus Janson)

The first is that they're terrible. I don't think so. There are some not-great ones, sure, particularly the dumb opening two-parter where the Enterprise is haunted, and it turns out to be some guy's mental projections based on horror films he watched! There are also ones where the Enterprise battles the Loch Ness Monster and gnomes, and one where Kirk thinks he's a pharaoh. I'm not sure what's up with these old horror standbys; they sound like they might be campy fun, but are just boring. But there are some solid Star Trek stories here: a guy is seemingly killed beaming up to the Enterprise but Spock finds the trick; Spock and McCoy are forced to interfere in the development of a primitive society; Janice Rand moves on with her life but ends up in deep trouble beyond the galactic barrier; McCoy struggles to reconcile with his daughter... who's married a Vulcan! Nothing too flashy, and still sometimes goofy, but solid, interesting Star Trek work.

from Star Trek #7 (script by Tom DeFalco, art by Mike Nasser & Klaus Janson)

I was particularly struck by the thematic consistency with Motion Picture; there are lots of stories of ancient computers and/or would-be gods. Also I enjoyed the emphasis on elements that later Star Treks ignored; Chief DiFalco becomes a friend of Sulu and Chekov for example, and Janice Rand gets some moments as transporter chief, and the perscan belts are even employed on occasion. The comics do suffer, however, from a bevy of rotating writers and artists. Martin Pasko has a good run as writer, but writes just over half of the issues himself. Dave Cockrum and Klaus Janson do good work (Cockrum drew the Legion, so of course he can do Star Trek), but handle just a third of the issues.

from Star Trek #9 (script by Martin Pasko, art by Dave Cockrum & Frank Springer)

The other oft-claimed thing about this comic is that Marvel had only licensed Motion Picture itself, and this could only use elements of Star Trek that appeared in the film. Supposedly a couple references were snuck in. But once you get reading, I'd say more issues use ideas from the original series (and the cartoon) than don't. There's an Antosian from "Whom Gods Destroy," the disease choriocytosis from "The Pirates of Orion," the galactic barrier from "Where No Man Has Gone Before," Kirk's backstory from "Court Martial," the Klingon stasis weapon from "More Tribbles, More Troubles," recurring characters like Kyle and DeSalle, and so much more! Christopher Bennett has suggested that perhaps "the restriction on Marvel was that they couldn't use storylines from TOS, rather than a blanket ban on concepts from TOS." But in Back Issue! no. 5, writer Mike Barr claims they thought they couldn't even use the Vulcan mind meld until someone was told Spock did one in The Motion Picture (the relevant issue was written before the film was even released!). He doesn't really discuss where all the other references come from.

from Star Trek #11 (script by Martin Pasko, art by Joe Brozowski & Tom Palmer)

As per usual for IDW collections of archival material, the paratext leaves something to be desired. The back cover calls these comics "the first-ever original Trek stories for comics," completely missing the existence of a Star Trek comic book published by Gold Key from 1967 to 1979 that lasted for 61 issues!

Next Week: We find out what happened between Star Treks III and IV, in volume 6 of the Star Trek Archives... the Mirror Universe Saga!

Review: Star Trek: Movie Classics Omnibus by Mike W. Barr, Tom Sutton, Ricardo Villagran, Peter David, Arne Starr, et al.

Comic trade paperback, 370 pages
Published 2011 (contents: 1979-2009)
Acquired March 2012
Read May 2019

Star Trek: Movie Classics Omnibus

Adapted by Marv Wolfman, Andy Schmidt, Mike W. Barr, and Peter David
Art by Dave Cockrum & Klaus Janson, Chee Yang Ong, Tom Sutton & Ricardo Villagran, and James W. Fry/Gordon Purcell & Arne Starr
Lettering by John Costanza, Robbie Robbins, Agustin Mas, and Bob Pinaha

Colors by Marie Severin, Moose Baumann, Michele Wolfman, and Tom McCraw

This volume collects the comics adaptations of all six original series Star Trek films, which were published by a variety of publishers over the years: Star Trek I by Marvel, III through VI by DC, and II by IDW. Like a lot of archival IDW collections of Star Trek material, the basic idea is laudable (IDW even commissioned an adaptation of the never-adapted The Wrath of Khan just to plug a gap in this book), but very little care seems to have gone into it. The credits are riddled with errors: Marv Wolfman is listed as "Mary Wolfman" and Tom McCraw as "Tom McGraw," and no one is credited with the adaptation of The Motion Picture, seemingly because the original comic's credit of "Script/Edits" has been misinterpreted as "Script edits." The indicia also includes a number of errors, listing the original publication of the comics all being titled by the name of the relevant movies, but in fact the Motion Picture adaptation was originally published in Star Trek #1-3 (or, arguably, Marvel Super Special #15), and the adaptations of Search for Spock, Voyage Home, and Final Frontier were in Star Trek Movie Special #1-3. I mean, okay, "Who cares?" but I bet you Dark Horse would never have made such mistakes in their omnibus line.

For what it's worth, I actually read these by interspersing between them any collections of movie-era comics I already owned. So, for example, I read Star Trek Omnibus, Volume 1 (collecting issues #4-18 of Marvel's Star Trek) between The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan, or Star Trek Archives, Volume 6 (collecting issues #9-16 of DC's Star Trek vol. 1) between The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home. I think this did affect my reading: Search for Spock comes across as just the first step in a long epic when you read it before The Mirror Universe Saga.

Sorry about the scan here; should have pushed down harder, I guess.
from Star Trek #3 (script by Marv Wolfman, art by Dave Cockrum & Klaus Janson)

The actual stories here are decent. I enjoyed the adaptation of The Motion Picture a lot for how very of-its-time it was. Marv Wolfman's script has a totally different tone to the majestic, intellectual original, but it still works. He loves grandiose over-the-top narration, and that makes this story just as epic as Robert Wise's direction, just in a totally different way. There are some trims and cuts here, but also some expansions-- we get to see the unfilmed "memory wall" sequence, for example, and Kirk is actually with Spock during his journey into the heart of V'Ger-- but on the other hand, the art of Dave Cockrum and Klaus Janson doesn't always give things the epic-ness they deserve.

The whole comic is very dark.
from Star Trek II:The Wrath of Khan #3 (script by Andy Schmidt, art by Chee Yang Ong)

It's hard to say much about the Wrath of Khan adaptation. Published much later than the others, in 2009, I felt like it approached the movie somewhat reverentially. Everything you expect is here, rendered in a photorealistic style. Nothing bad, but it doesn't use the comics medium to do anything unique, either.

One thing I thought was interesting: the DC comics that precede and follow each film have to massage how the films fit into the comics continuity (e.g., why is the Enterprise crew back in exile on Vulcan in Voyage Home given they were all recommissioned in The Mirror Universe Saga?), but Mike Barr never puts any of that massaging into the comic adaptations of the films. Nothing in this sequence really fits with the fact that according to the comics, all of these characters served on Excelsior!
from Star Trek Movie Special #2 (script by Mike W. Barr, art by Tom Sutton & Ricardo Villagran)

Of the two adaptations scripted by Mike Barr and illustrated by Tom Sutton and Ricardo Villagran the first is solid, but unremarkable. It's solid space adventure comics, and I enjoyed reading it. On the other hand, the adaptation of The Voyage Home largely fails to translate the charm of the film to the comics page. The humor doesn't have the pacing or the performances to really work, and without that, what's the point?

This Rushmore bit was originally supposed to appear on screen. I don't think it's really discernible here that the fifth face is a black woman, though.
from Star Trek Movie Special #3 (script by Peter David, art by James W. Fry & Arne Starr)

The best adaptations in the whole bunch are the two scripted by Peter David. The Final Frontier reads surprisingly well as a comic; I guess it's a lot like a comic book in some ways, with its ridiculous twists and long-lost relatives and weird premise. David has a great grasp on the characters, which really shines through, and even massages some of the inconsistencies of the film in a way that doesn't come across as too Christopher L. Bennettesquely gratuitous. I also appreciated that the rock monster got its due, and probably looked better here than it ever could have on screen. The one of Undiscovered Country is also a good adaptation of a great movie, and reads pretty nicely as a climax to the whole sequence, especially if you've been reading a lot of DC Star Trek comics along the way as I have, where Kirk always seems to be facing down the Klingons.

On the whole this is a good idea for a collection, and I appreciate how IDW enhanced the project by commissioning an extra comic. I doubt this will be anyone's preferred versions of these stories, but they're a solid read.

In Two Weeks: We find out what happened between Star Treks I and II, in volume 1 of the Star Trek Omnibus!