Somewhat less boldly but still highly entertainingly where no man had gone before …
Welcome to the Holiday Hot Picks reviews/listings. We’ll be trotting these out from now until Christmas Eve. For a FULL INDEX, which will grow throughout the next several weeks, CLICK HERE!
Each volume lists for $29.99
What do you give the Star Trek fan who has everything? The first two hardcovers of IDW’s Star Trek Gold Key Archives collections.
These are reprints of the original Trek comics from the late ’60s and early ’70s and they read like scrolls discovered on an archaelogical dig from a Class M planet we’ll call Roddenberry 4: They’re rudimentary and often cheesy — much like the Original Series itself.
If you’re a hardcore Trek fan you know this already, but if not, here’s the background: Gold Key produced Star Trek comics starting in 1967 and running all the way through the ’70s. Early on, the stories bore superficial similarities to the show starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy — many details and likenesses are off.
Still, in reading them, the heart of Star Trek is still in there, making these books an adventurous time capsule into the past. Best parts? Some of Len Wein‘s earliest comics are in Vol. 2 — which also features an intro from our friend Scott Tipton and his brother David — and several of the covers are as creative as anything that you’ll see from the immensely talented Juan Ortiz.
These books aren’t for the casual fan but as an Original Series buff of the first order, I can’t recommend them enough.
