Marvel's Star Trek Overview Part 8: One-Shots (1996-1998)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back with the finale of my Marvel Comics Star Trek overview series. Today we're wrapping things up with the seven one-shot issues that were published between 1996 and 1998. I haven't read any of these, so I'm not going to have much to say about them. I do want to be as complete as possible in these overview posts, so I'm including them. Let's get into it.

The first of these one-shots was the comic book adaptation of Star Trek: First Contact. This was the last comic book adaptation of a Star Trek movie until IDW published the comic book adaptation of The Wrath of Khan in 2009 and the last comic book adaptation of a new Star Trek movie until IDW published a comic book adaptation of the 2009 Star Trek movie. Insurrection and Nemesis never got comic book adaptations because by the time the marketing campaign for Insurrection started, Marvel had already given up the Star Trek comic book license and WildStorm wouldn't acquire it until 2000, and by the time Nemesis came out, WildStorm had already lost the license, and no other comic book company picked it up until IDW acquired it in 2007.  Like I said, I've never read these one shots so I have no idea how good of an adaptation this is or anything like that. I haven't even seen any artwork from it, besides the front cover.

Next is the Star Trek/X-Men crossover one-shot that has Kirk and his crew teaming up with the X-Men somehow. I don't know if it's time travel or dimension hopping or anything like that. I just know that the crew of the Enterprise, under the command of James T. Kirk, teams up with the X-Men. I found out about this issue because there's an ad for it in the back of Star Trek: Voyager #2. 

Next is Star Trek: Mirror Mirror: Fragile Glass. This is basically a sequel to the season 2 TOS episode, "Mirror, Mirror". Memory Alpha doesn't give any kind of plot synopsis for this issue, so I'm assuming that it tells what happened in the Mirror Universe after the episode, but before we saw the Mirror Universe again in the season 2 DS9 episode, "Crossover", which actually aired about two and a half years before this issue came out. Having not read the issue, I have no idea if the writer of this issue, Tom DeFalco, was influenced by the DS9 episodes or not, as the first three episodes of the DS9 Mirror Universe arc had aired by the time this issue had come out, but the comics don't tend to be heavily influenced by what the TV shows are doing, so I have no idea.

Star Trek: Operation Assimilation focuses on the Romulans who encountered the Borg during the Collective's initial incursion into the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, which was hinted at in the season 1 finale of TNG, prior to the Borg officially being created for season 2. According to Memory Alpha, none of our main characters from any of the TV shows appear in this issue. Which is interesting, considering Star Trek doesn't tend to do a whole lot with brand new, created for the comics or novels, characters without a TV show/movie character showing up at least once in a story. That's usually a Star Wars thing.

Next up is the Telepathy War one-shot that wrapped up the arc that had been running through the ongoing monthly series. This is the issue where the TNG crew from Star Trek Unlimited meet with the DS9 crew, and the cast from Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, with Spock representing TOS, even though the TOS portion of Unlimited didn't play a part in the storyline. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation/X-Men: Second Contact is an interesting comic. While I've never read it, I've read its novel sequel, Planet X, which was published the same month as this issue. Basically, on its way back to the 24th Century, after First Contact, the Enterprise-E is intercepted by Kang the Conqueror and sent to the 20th Century, where Picard and the crew encounter the X-Men. Sir Patrick Stewart had been cast as Charles Xavier for the first X-Men movie, which came out in 2000, so the novel has a scene in the holodeck where Picard, who was also played by Sir Patrick, meets Xavier and notes a similarity between himself and the Professor. I'll talk about that more when I review the novel at a later time. 

 Finally, we have Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Enemy of My Enemy, which features Riker. According to Memory Alpha, Riker goes undercover with the Maquis, shortly after the events of First Contact, and teams up with Ro Laren to get some information on the Genesis Device, which is stolen by the Klingons, tying into Star Trek III. 

This was one of the last Star Trek comics to come out, along with the final issues of Untold Voyages and Voyager - Splashdown, before Marvel lost the license. As mentioned, people believe that these comics ended up not selling very well because too many series were coming out, which killed the market. However, I think the Marvel Comics Star Trek comic book line didn't sell very well because by 1996, Star Trek's popularity with general audiences had dropped significantly, only appealing to the fans, though obviously First Contact did extremely well at the box office. TV wise and merchandise wise, Star Trek just wasn't as popular as it had been only five years earlier when there was only two live action TV shows, an animated series, and five movies, with a sixth on the way. Unlike hardcore fans who stay involved with their favourite franchises their whole lives, general audiences can't be expected to do the same. Plus, at the time, Marvel wasn't a very well known publisher outside of the fanbase, as they hadn't had a solid live action theatrical feature film success yet. Though Blade would come out just as the company's Star Trek comic book line was coming to an end. 

After Marvel lost the license in 1998, there were no Star Trek comics until WildStorm started publishing their series based on TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager in 2000. However, that only lasted a year and once WildStorm lost the license in 2001, just as Enterprise was starting, which is why that series had no comic book adaptation at the time of the show's original run, Star Trek would be completely absent from the comic book landscape until IDW Publishing picked up the license in 2007. Then again, Star Trek was almost completely absent from 2005, when Enterprise was canceled, and 2009, when the first movie directed by J.J. Abrams came out, so it makes sense that no comic books would be published for the franchise. 

The '80s and '90s were a golden age for Star Trek in comic books, between the series, one-shots, and graphic novels being published by DC Comics, and the series and one-shots being published by Marvel. The second Marvel era is extremely underrated. While I haven't read nearly as many issues from that era as I might like, the ones I have read, which are the Voyager and Early Voyages issues that I have, are really good. Marvel in general just wasn't doing very well during this period, and so the Star Trek comics never got the proper attention from the company, or the audience, that they deserved. I even feel that the original '80s run that Marvel did between The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan isn't talked about very much. We wouldn't see this level of competence for a Star Trek comic again until IDW took over in 2007. And IDW still holds the license today, though I don't know how well they sell, because I'm not super steeped in the comic book fan community, or the Star Trek fan community to know which IDW series is well regarded, or not well regarded, and which one has grabbed people's attention outside of the main Trek fanbase. I just know there are some I like, and others I don't.

That my friends is it for this comic book overview series. I don't know if I'll do this with any other Star Trek comic book run. I probably won't because I haven't read any of the WildStorm comics or most of the IDW runs, aside from a few issues here and there of more recent stuff, and the original Gold Key series is a single post overview, since it's just the one series they published, with no annuals or one-shots or anything like that. But, maybe I'll do this with Star Wars because that franchise has a long history with comic books, and I have alot of interest in reading the Dark Horse era of the comics. So we'll see. For now, I'll be back tomorrow or Saturday for my review of the pilot episode of Enterprise, "Broken Bow". So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.