Okay, this is embarrassing. But I live by a credo of making all my flaws public, so here it goes. I am, as all know, an unabashed Star Trek fan. I can go on and on about why I think the original Trek series was important for the quality of modern Western society. But that gets boring fast.
Back in the late 70s, the cast of the original series was still young, and many of us held out hope that they would return to the TV screen. As it turns out, Star Trek: Phase II was in the works (though we wouldn’t know about it for years to come, and then it would manifest as Star Trek: The Next Generation). When Phase II was discontinued, its pilot was instead turned into Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Hot on the heels of the success of Star Wars just a couple of years before, the Trek movie had a selling point that I adored (but that the general movie-going audience detested), that this was a science fiction movie in which not a single battle would be fought. It was entirely a cerebral journey; and that’s why I loved the old Trek.
The rebirth of Trek briefly created a string of media spin-offs, including a short-lived newspaper cartoon series (which was really quite good, as I recall) and some novels. But the new iconography, which included bumps on Klingons’ heads, wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
So there I was, about 12 years old, deliriously happy that Trek had come back into my life, but thirsty for more. This wasn’t the era of endless spin-offs, reruns, and web series. All we had was one movie and the original series. So what did I do? I drew my own comics.
They are crap. And they’re supposed to be funny, with 12 year old boy humour. So yes, I am horribly embarrassed by this. But I’ve located two of the comic strips that I drew more than 30 years ago. And here they are. Don’t laugh!
