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: 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!