June IDW Publishing Star Trek Comics
2 min read
Two new IDW Publishing Star Trek comics will arrive in stores this June.
The comics include Star Trek #34, and Star Trek: Harlan Ellison’s City on the Edge of Forever #1.
In Star Trek #34, “the ‘Lost Apollo’ saga, set in the new movie era, ends with this installment. Spock and Bones must work together to save Captain Kirk from a fate worse than death — a fate tied to the earliest days of humanity’s journey to the stars — when they wind up stranded on an alien world and cut off from the Enterprise.”
Written by Mike Johnson, and overseen by Roberto Orci, Star Trek #34 features art and a cover by Joe Corroney. There is also a variant cover by Craig Rousseau for IDW subscribers that features the main characters as Angry Birds.
Star Trek #34 is thirty-two pages in length, and will sell for $3.99.
Star Trek: Harlan Ellison’s City on the Edge of Forever #1 is written by Harlan Ellison, Scott Tipton, and David Tipton, with art by J.K. Woodward, and a cover by Juan Ortiz.
The issue is a “visual presentation of the much-discussed, unrevised, unadulterated version of Harlan Ellison’s Star Trek teleplay script, The City on the Edge of Forever.” In City on the Edge of Forever #1, “fans will finally be able to see the story as Ellison originally intended.”
Thirty-two pages in length, Star Trek: Harlan Ellison’s City on the Edge of Forever #1 will cost $3.99. IDW subscribers and Federation members will also be able to obtain a special variant cover by Paul Shipper.
About The Author
I read in a recent publication that Ellison’s ‘City on the Edge of Forever’ goes far afield from what Trek canon was even at that early stage in the mythos and that the characterizations were way out in left field. In addition, as written, it would have cost about $2m in 1966 dollars to film it.
In terms of what Star Trek was to become, Roddenberry did the right thing with the redirection of the script and the final polish.
Not that it wasn’t necessarily great sci- fi, it just was not good Star Trek.
Some reports say James Blish’s novelization of the episode follows a draft somewhere between Ellison’s final and Roddenberry’s. Others say it is faithful to Ellison’s final work on the script.
We shall see.
I can highly recommend both Memory Alpha’s thorough article on the development of the episode, and Ellison’s 1996 publication of his final draft along with two previous treatments and extensive notes.
All of his versions are very different from what was seen onscreen, and on many key points inconsistent with what had already been written and produced for the first season. Ellison is notoriously unwilling to compromise and has never responded well to even the kindest, most constructive criticism. (We still love you, Harlan. Don’t sue me over this, you brilliant curmudgeonly bastard.)
The episode as filmed truly is a brilliant if unwilling collaboration between very talented, very inventive writers. Gene L. Coon is widely considered to have done the majority of the final rewrite, though Dorothy Fontana and Roddenberry himself also contributed. Blish’s novelization is a compromise using what he considered the best elements of both versions.
I surmise the comic is based on the 2nd revised final draft, which Ellison considers to be his finished version, but there were some elements in the previous drafts which they really ought to consider using.
As a final note, that Ortiz cover is just absolutely, perfectly excellent. I love the dog-ear crease in the lower right. When the entire thing gets issued as a single volume I am so all over it.
Angry Birds? Look, I love the games, but is there no end to their cross pollination with other franchises?