Where Gnome Man Has Gone Before

The Tattie Holidays are almost over for another year. I've had a new boiler installed at Vic Cres, so I couldn't afford a couple of days in Dunkeld as I'd imagined. Well, there's always next autumn.
I've just read Farewell Tour of a Terminal Optimist for the Scottish Book Trust Teenage Book Prize ( which is work, really) and I'm about to begin The Long Drop by Denise Mina for book group.

Since I'm hurrying through the Titan Books German-language-original novel Star Trek Prometheus: Fire With Fire, however, today sees my last post on Eaglemoss reprints of Marvel's first Star Trek licensed comic.
Volume 3 comprises the final five issues of the series plus a Gold Key reprint, which evokes memories of the 1977 UK annual.


14. We Are Dying, Egypt, Dying finds Kirk dominated by an alien computer and believing he's a pharaoh. I like the detailed art of Luke McDonnell. This riff on ancient astronauts seems a bit dated by 1981; I think Kirby did it best in The Eternals. However, it's the kind of melodramatic space opera you might find in season 3. Can't you just visualise a shirtless Shatner in eyeliner, declaiming outside a pyramid?


15. In The Quality of Mercy, a disguised Kirk infiltrates death row on a sadistic prison planet. Pasko make a reference to the shapeshifting techniques gifted to Garth of Izar in Whom Gods Destroy. The story seems a thinly disguised retelling of Chappaquiddick Incident. Also strikingly, the art is by Gil Kane and the setting is a typically savage landscape ( pun definitely intended!) of monolithic buildings.

16. There's No Space Like Gnomes is a tiresome attempt at whimsy which reminded me most of Irwin Allen's excesses in Lost In Space. Colonists are transformed into trolls and goblins by the remnants of an alien race. I wonder if the bat-riding gnomes were influenced by the Atom story, above?
Again, we see an Andorian officer on the Enterprise: Lt. Themon, a sociologist with whom Chekov is having a romance. I wish this idea had been pursued.

17. The Long Night's Dawn. Mike W. Barr , Ed Hannigan and Tom Palmer produce a dull story of  a medieval planet endangered by a toxic probe. McCoy is sentenced to the ducking stool for heresy in a society which rejects Copernican astronomy.

18. A Thousand Deaths. This final issue is cover dated February 1982, and the tone is very reminiscent of early 80s Marvel. Transported to a gigantic worldship by the robotic Sustainer, Kirk and Spock are killed and resurrected, firstly in an illusory pirate ship scenario. Their experiences are intended to teach unconditional love to a self-destructive, hibernating  race  from the planet Solopziz (Geddit?!). Kirk proclaims that "all beings can hope for a better tomorrow". While on point with Roddenberry's vision, this "hurt/comfort" piece is the kind of heavy-handed allegory with which DeMatteis filled the pages of The Defenders for years.

Fortunately. the book doesn't quite end on DeMatties's note of threadbare mysticism.  1975's The Psycho crystals is a charming Gold Key Giolitti tale reprinted, as I noted, in a Xmas annual, which I was given at the same time as the 1977 Dr. Who annual. Both were in a larger format than their predecessors and successors.

 

The Enterprise encounters an idyllic pre-industrial tribe of pacifist crystalline poets and artists who lose their mindbending defensive powers in adulthood. Giolitti's double-page spread depiction of the crystal society is quirky and delightful, albeit drawing on stereotypes of indigenous peoples.

In addition to magnifying a streak of paranoia in Kirk, the infant crystal people draw upon Scotty's childhood fear of witches. I wonder if Pasko, a comics fan, was referencing this at all in issue 11- or is it simply coincidental? The crystal dragon- the Slourda- is drawn differently inside the comic but is destroyed by SCIENCE. The whacky world of Gold Key is more appealing to me than the Kuwaldan gnomes.


The license for Star Trek comics passed to DC  during the 80s although Marvel's Paramount imprint launched some fourteen years later. I may post about Star Fleet Academy and the popular Early Voyages in time but I'll deal with the DC Star Trek comics first.


 Other future posts might reflect the fact that I've also re-read almost all of Roy Thomas's Conan canon lately. I've also greatly enjoyed The Lost Worlds of 2001 by Arthur C. Clarke. Coming soon, there might also be a post on DC's early 80s Thriller series but I've held back from sharing my thoughts on Chris Chibnall's vision of Doctor Who starring Jodie Whittaker. They seem more (ahem!) timely...


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