I had one guiser at Hallowe'en- my colleague's son dressed as Sherlock Holmes with his own Hound of the Baskervilles. Also on Thursday, I started reading Marvel's collected Man-Wolf- very early work by George Perez- but I don't fancy the Kraft/Vosburg She-Hulk stories much. I remember struggling through them before in UK reprints at the very beginning of the Eighties.
Recently, I've been reading some Star Trek novels and comics and today, I thought I'd like to post about genre-mashing crossovers in the Trek franchise.
We'll start in 1996 with the December-dated Star Trek/X-Men which celebrates the 30th anniversary of Roddenberry's creation. This is a 46-page story created by Scott Lobdell. Marc Silvestri and Billy Tan.
The X-Men, pursued by Deathbird and her Imperial Guard, encounter the Original Enterprise crew on Delta Vega. This is the planet where the mutated Gary Mitchell dies in the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before". The Shi'ar have sent the X-Men after Deathbird, who has made an alliance with the mutant Proteus, occupying the corpse of Mitchell.
The Enterprise crew and the merry mutants confront Proteus and the Imperials in a faux-Scottish village ( a nod to Proteus's parentage: Moira and Joe McTaggart). It's not a bad team-up: Gladiator gets a Superman moment when he punches the Enterprise in space and the space anomaly on Delta Vega is an effective McGuffin to bring all three teams together, including two Dr. McCoys.
As a bonus, there's a 7-page pin-up gallery and previews of the Trek comics line: Voyager, DS9, Starfleet Academy, ST Unlimited and Early Voyages. I think I'll post about the latter ,later this month- I enjoyed the first Eaglemoss reprint volume.
Two years later, Marvel initiated "Second Contact", in a 64-page issue teaming up the X-Men and the Next Generation crew. This story is by Dan Abnett, Ian Edginton and Cary Nord.
This time, Kang the Conqueror deceives Picard's TNG crew in the wake of the 1996 First Contact movie. He warns of chaotic time anomalies, dispatching teams of Starfleet and mutants to the Days of Future Past/Sentinels world and to the Borg incident at Wolf 359. The plot involves parallel versions of deceased cast members John (Thunderbird) Proudstar and Tasha Yar, turning up in each other's milieu. Fortunately, for everyone, Wesley Crusher and the alien Traveler turn up to thwart Kang.
There's also a cameo role for Baron Zemo's Thunderbolts.
There are two pin-ups and an unengaging "making of" text feature. But, despite its thematic similarity to a JLA Crisis story of the late 70s, this one just isn't much fun. The art is unappealing; it's very much of the Image era but Marvel's flirtation with Image, "Heroes Reborn", was already over by the time this comic came out. Nightcrawler is dressed like an operetta Pirate King and Storm looks like a stripper.
This story is then continued in a novel, rather unusually. Planet X is written by Michael Jan Friedman, author of Star Trek Starfleet :Year One, one of the first Trek novels I bought on a nostalgia kick in 2002. Unfortunately, neither is a very rewarding read. All the characters are recognisable and the planet Xhaldia's mutant crisis is informed by the X-Men's experience of prejudice. There's no flair or style in the writing, however.
In the twenty years that have elapsed, superhero novels are still a bit plodding although, often, they are now aimed at more of a YA audience. Novels like Superman: Dawnbreaker are coming of age stories but often very slow in their advancement of plot and a little worthy.
In the next few weeks, I'll look at the IDW Star Trek/Doctor Who team-up and some of the Gold Key stories from the early 70s. I'm done for today: three youths in the library -one English and, it sounds, shipped up here for a new start- are discussing how often they've been stabbed. It's just like Easterhouse ten years ago.
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