Marvel's Star Trek Overview Part 4: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (1996-1998)

 Hey everyone, I'm back for the next installment of my overview of Marvel Comics's Star Trek comic book series. This week I'll be talking about Starfleet Academy which chronicles Nog's time at Starfleet Academy as part of Omega Squadron, which isn't a TV show thing being that Nog is a DS9 character, but it's still an interesting concept. So let's get into it.

Beginning publication in December, Starfleet Academy is the last of the three series that relaunched Marvel's Star Trek comic book line in 1996, following Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek Unlimited in November. As mentioned before the series follows Nog, played by Aron Eisenberg on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, as he enters Starfleet Academy as the first Ferengi to join Starfleet. He joins Omega Squad and the series follows this unit. The publication arm, both comics and novels, really had an obsession with Starfleet Academy in the '90s as several Young Reader seasons focused on TOS, TNG, and Voyager characters during their Academy days, plus The Best and the Brightest was published 14 months after this comic book series started.

The twelfth issue was the first part of the Telepathy War storyline that was running through all of these books in 1997. As usual I'll talk about this storyline when I get to the one-shot issue later on, but, for now I'll just say that it was ambitious for Marvel to do what was basically a Marvel Universe level storyline in a line of Star Trek comics that weren't selling very well. Especially at a time where the publisher was facing bankruptcy.

Issue #18 is unique because Marvel published two versions. The first was the standard version. However, the second version is written completely in Klingon. Including the front cover. Which is weird and interesting, but not something that should be done if you're trying to get non-Star Trek fans to pick up your comic. Which is most likely why they did a regular, English, version as well. Even most Star Trek fans can't read or speak Klingon. So it's definitely a weird decision on Marvel's part.

Issue #19 ended up being the final issue. According to Memory Alpha, the series writer, Chris Cooper, had plans for further issues, but found out at the last minute that Marvel had lost the license, effectively canceling the series, so he had to change the ending of this issue in order to wrap the series up.

I've never read this series before. I've never even seen any issues of it out in the wild. I'm hoping to someday, but unlike Voyager, because of my strong connection to the TV show, and Early Voyages, because of how good it is, I don't have as much of an interest in this series. So if I find an issue or two, great, if not, oh well. I have nothing against Nog. In fact, Nog is one of my favourite characters from DS9. However, there is no way you can do a show, movie, comic book or novel with Starfleet Academy as the setting, where it doesn't feel like the characters are just in college or where it doesn't feel like it's ripping off Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, which I reviewed a book from that series in the last couple of years. So that's why I'm not as interested in the Starfleet Academy comic book series, as I am in Early Voyages.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back sometime in the next couple of days with my review of the first episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series, "Beyond the Farthest Star". Also, next week's segment of this comic book overview series will either be a day late or a day early, because I have an appointment next Thursday and I don't think I can get one of these out on the same day. So until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.