From 1979 to 1981 Star Trek was a daily strip in many newspapers running seven days a week and in color on Sundays. Over those 4 years the strip had ten full story arcs beginning where the first Star Trek film left off.
Honestly I had no idea this existed. I remember the comics from when I was a kid, but for the life of me I can’t recall a daily strip. Reading a comic like this day after day is way to much like a soap-opera for my taste. Reading this whole series collected into a single volume on the other hand sounds pretty cool.
The strip was originally helmed by Thomas Warkentin who incidentally wrote the Flash Gordon strip from 1991 to 1995. Twords the end of the series the strip had changed hands and was being written by Sharman DiVono with art by Ron Harris. DiVono it turns out went on to write for the Silver Surfer and ended up writing for a bunch of animated shows including Duck Tales and G.I. Joe. It really has nothing to do with this post, but I thought it was interesting none the less.
These comics haven’t seen the light of day for an age. “Even most die-hard Trek fans have never seen these strips,” says series editor Dean Mullaney. “It’s going to be a real treat!”
The Library of American Comics has restored the original strips and IDW has collected them together and created a collectors hard bound edition of the complete series.
I’m not a die hard fan of Star Trek by any stretch of the imagination, but this would be a really cool addition to any comic book collection. I’d buy it.
STAR TREK: THE NEWSPAPER STRIPS, VOL. 1 ($49.99, 264 pages, partial color) will be available in October 2012. Diamond order code: AUG12 0371. ISBN 978-1-61377-494-6.
