CHECKER TO REPRINT GOLD KEY STAR TREK

[MattBrady]

<i>Press Release</i>

<blockquote>Checker Book Publishing Group and Paramount Pictures Corporation have announced a licensing agreement under which Checker will reprint the original Star Trek comics in a series of trade paperbacks beginning in May 2004.

Star Trek comics debuted in 1967, the same year the original television series premiered, and continued on an irregular serial schedule until 1979 under Western Publishing's Gold Key imprint (newsprint paperback collections dubbed "The Enterprise Logs" were also offered in the 1970s). The comics feature the original Enterprise crew (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scott) in adventures available nowhere else.

Eventually, sixty issues full-color issues would be published, and Checker's first collection will include issues one through eight, featuring art by Nevio Zaccara (1,2) and Alberto Giolitti (3-8). Though writing credits on the first eight issues were not given, subsequent writers for these rare comics gems included Len Wein, George Kashdan and Doug Drexler.

Checker Book Publishing Group was established in 2000 to bring the absolute best of dormant, unpublished, and under-published serial comics and cartooning back to print. </blockquote>

[avidreader]

Man, I still have two crumpled copies of those Gold Key issues. That was some trippy stuff: sentient crystals, time travel of 1940s movie sets, returning exiles threatening the new inhabitants of their abandoned world and, the best: Captain Kirk returning from beyond the Big Bang to fight the current Kirk.

I'll definitely pick this up.

[OM]

Originally posted by MattBrady
Eventually, sixty issues full-color issues would be published, and Checker's first collection will include issues one through eight, featuring art by Nevio Zaccara (1,2) and Alberto Giolitti (3-8). Though writing credits on the first eight issues were not given, subsequent writers for these rare comics gems included Len Wein, George Kashdan and Doug Drexler. ...An interesting side note about Zaccara & Giolitti's work on that title: neither of them saw one single episode of TOS until almost ten years after they did those issues. Giolitti lived in Rome, while Zaccara lived in Spain, IIRC, and neither country got TOS until it hit syndication after it's cancellation in 1969.

...The two did all their drawings based on publicity photos that had been sent to them. The problem with that was that neither of them had been sent photos of James Doohan or any of the other supporting cast members other than Grace Lee Whitney, who was out of the series by the time the first issue hit the stands(*). That's also why *none* of the ship's interiors look anything remotely like what was seen on the series, and why what *did* resemble the series looked like props that were dropped after regular series filming started. In fact, it wasn't until Gold Key assigned Al McWilliams to the title that accuracy in appearance began to flow into the book, as McWilliams was located in the US and was reportedly a fan of the show.

...Incidentally, Giolitti also had the same problem with his <i>Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea</i> work, in that he'd only seen the 1961 movie with Walter Pigeon, Frankie Avalon and Barbara Eden. The Seaview looked accurate, but he could never draw the Flying Sub the same way one issue to the next, apparently basing the design on a verbal description rather than a photo.

...One other interesting point is that the first 10 issues or so command a high dollar value not because of the story content, but because of the photo covers. Some of the publicity shots used for the covers were, for several years, hard to come by even in convention circuits. The "Transporter Room Group Shot" from the Freiberger-sodomized third season was one of the few of that kind done for TOS - most of them were either Kirk & Spock, or Kirk-Spock-McCoy, or individual shots with the occasional Sulu & Chekov one - and is a favorite even if Doohan sports his "Beehive" hairdo that everyone hates.

...For those interested, I came across this Gold Key Star Trek Comics Data At-A-Glance (http://curtdanhauser.com/Chart.html) chart a while back that provides quite a bit of info on what's known about the book's creators, as well as the discrepancies between the TV series and the early artwork.

[Karloffs Ghost]

This is great. I've spent the last week searching the net for the work of Alberto Giolitti, and along comes this news. I'll be picking this up for sure. Now if I could just find a copy of Albertos' Tex Willer graphic novel 'Lawless Land/Earth Without Law', I'd be an extremely happy man.

Originally posted by MattBrady
<blockquote>
Checker Book Publishing Group was established in 2000 to bring the absolute best of dormant, unpublished, and under-published serial comics and cartooning back to print. </blockquote>

They should start reprinting VALIANT :)

[Fazhoul]

Damn! This is cool! I only ever read one or two issues of Gold Key's Trek because, due to the irregularities of newsstand distribution, I almost never saw it in any of my local stores when I was a kid.

Speaking of Checker Books, has anyone checked out their Supreme reprints? I was going to buy them but heard bad things about their reproduction values and have held off on picking them up. So, how do they look? Are they worth getting?

[Looney As A Toon]

Originally posted by Fazhoul
Damn! This is cool! I only ever read one or two issues of Gold Key's Trek because, due to the irregularities of newsstand distribution, I almost never saw it in any of my local stores when I was a kid.

Speaking of Checker Books, has anyone checked out their Supreme reprints? I was going to buy them but heard bad things about their reproduction values and have held off on picking them up. So, how do they look? Are they worth getting?

Just checked my comic collection database... I have 43 of the 60 Gold Key Trek comics made. Almost all of them I bought back when new thanks to Mr. Alan (never knew his last name), the owner of the sweet shop next door to my old elementary school who set them aside for me between 1967 to 1978 when Marvel started making new Trek comics (FYI the art in the Marvel, when compared to the Gold Key issues, sucked worse than my mom's Hoover vacuum cleaner :rolleyes: :p )

By the way, the Checker collected edition of Supreme - at least the first edition - was a pretty good reproduction IMHO.

[Zig Zag Wanderer]

Originally posted by OM
...An interesting side note about Zaccara & Giolitti's work on that title: neither of them saw one single episode of TOS until almost ten years after they did those issues. Giolitti lived in Rome, while Zaccara lived in Spain, IIRC, and neither country got TOS until it hit syndication after it's cancellation in 1969.


Reminds me of James Blish, who wrote those short story adaptations of the eps. He had scripts, but hadn't actually seen the show when he did a lot of his work.

I've got a bunch of the old comics in storage, and I enjoyed them a lot as a kid, accurate reproductions or no. I may well pick up these trades.

[Darth Presley]

Always a pleasure to see Gold Key stuff reprinted - really great company forgotten or unheard of by most of today's comic fans.

I always got Gold Key digests from the supermarket when I was kid - great horror stuff like Boris Karloff, Twilight Zone, Believe It or Not stories - plus their Disney stuff.

I'll never forget a Gold Key Partridge Family comic i dragged around for years - Reuben was reminiscing about the Golden Age of Radio and there was an awesome full page portrait of the Shadow...

And a great stable of artists, too - this is where you'd find Toth, Spiegle, etc...

I hope the Star Trek stuff has credits - I'm interested to see who worked on them -

Good Luck Checker!

[Looney As A Toon]

Digging into my 56 long comic boxes I've been collecting since my misspent youth... and now well into my nightmare of a middle age :D, a lot of them have been the TV tie-in comics from Gold Key... greatness like Star Trek, Partridge Family, Family Affair :rolleyes: ( yes, we all remember where we were and what we were doing when we found out Anissa Jones had OD'd into that sweet good night :( ) and many others including, to my shock and amazement, Time Tunnel :eek:

To those of you 20-and-under's, Time Tunnel was a short-lived sc-fi TV series on ABC not unlike Quantum Leap EXCEPT the two heroes could go anywhere and not just within their lifetimes. . The American Revolution? Lincoln's assasination? No sweat. Heck, they could go to the time of the cavemen, drop in on the Crucifiction or see Rosie O'Donnel when she was actually thin!!! :eek:

The comic was pretty faithful but I'd give my left foot to see a new TV series based on it ;)

[grphxkindaguy]

Originally posted by Darth Presley
Always a pleasure to see Gold Key stuff reprinted

Good Luck Checker!

I am looking forward to these reprints, b/c I've only read two issues of the GK series and I just miss reading TOS in comic form...:(

How many issues came out under Gold Key?

[OM]

Originally posted by Zig Zag Wanderer
Reminds me of James Blish, who wrote those short story adaptations of the eps. He had scripts, but hadn't actually seen the show when he did a lot of his work. ...A bit of clarification: Blish wasn't just working with scripts, he was working with scripts that weren't final drafts. Those TOS novelizations contained some interesting plot divergences from the final product that for years Blish got the blame for having created the dirvergence to satisfy his writer's ego, partly because he included a couple of throwaway lines that referred to some of his other Sci-Fi work. Those novels are now prized by TOS script researchers as a really good insight into how those scripts changed and mutated from draft to screen.

...Ironically, the most accurate adaptations were in the latter three books, with the final one coming out after Blish died in 1975. By then, the show was off the air, and final versions of the scripts were easily available.

Originally posted by Looney As A Toon
To those of you 20-and-under's, Time Tunnel was a short-lived sc-fi TV series on ABC not unlike Quantum Leap EXCEPT the two heroes could go anywhere and not just within their lifetimes. ...<i>Time Tunnel</i> was arguably the only successful new show for ABC's 1966-1967 season. Billy Ingram over on TV Party has a page dedicated to the show and its demise, with some interesting sidebar commentary by someone familiar to all of the regulars around here: TV Party's Time Tunnel Page (http://www.tvparty.com/tunnel.html) . Interesting reading, natch.

Originally posted by Looney As A Toon
The American Revolution? Lincoln's assasination? No sweat. Heck, they could go to the time of the cavemen, drop in on the Crucifiction or see Rosie O'Donnel when she was actually thin!!! ...I would prefer to see Rosie when she's Crucified, just to see whether they can build a cross to support her mass long enough for her to die on it.

Originally posted by Looney As A Toon
The comic was pretty faithful but I'd give my left foot to see a new TV series based on it ;) ...It was in development about a year ago, along with a <i>Lost in Space</i> revival. While the <i>LiS</i> revival is still sort of plodding along, the <i>TT</i> revival appears to be dead now despite a major bidding war between See-BS, ABC and Fox over it. I suspect they discovered using all those stock movie shots as they did in the old show would be more expensive today than way back then ;-P

[grphxkindaguy]

Originally posted by OM
...I would prefer to see Rosie when she's Crucified, just to see whether they can build a cross to support her mass long enough for her to die on it.

Harsh......but oh so funny! :D

They should also make her wear that horrendous Boy George make-up he wore in Taboo. :eek:

[Reaper]

Originally posted by Fazhoul
Speaking of Checker Books, has anyone checked out their Supreme reprints? I was going to buy them but heard bad things about their reproduction values and have held off on picking them up. So, how do they look? Are they worth getting?

I've bought most of the Checker volumes so far: Alien Legion, Supreme and The Best of Clive Barker's Hellraiser (all 2 volumes each at this point). Also the FANTASTIC collected Clive Barker's Tapping the Vein (as originally published by Eclipse Comics) which represents the illustrated stories from Barker's seminal Books of Blood short story collection. The quality of Supreme and the other volumes is great IMHO.

I'm not a big Gold Key fan but I'll check out these Star Trek volumes nonetheless. Checker re-publishing this material is groovy! :D

-Tim

[Zig Zag Wanderer]

Originally posted by OM
...A bit of clarification: Blish wasn't just working with scripts, he was working with scripts that weren't final drafts. Those TOS novelizations contained some interesting plot divergences from the final product that for years Blish got the blame for having created the dirvergence to satisfy his writer's ego, partly because he included a couple of throwaway lines that referred to some of his other Sci-Fi work. Those novels are now prized by TOS script researchers as a really good insight into how those scripts changed and mutated from draft to screen.


I've got the lot of them, and I'd recommend to fans of the show in general. I knew he didn't initially work from the final drafts and I should have thrown that info in there.

I actually preferred one of the divergences I believe Blish did create, which was the alternate ending for.....oh, I was never good with ep names....the one where Kirk's brother is killed and Spock is taken over by those flying jellies.

[grphxkindaguy]

Originally posted by Zig Zag Wanderer
I actually preferred one of the divergences I believe Blish did create, which was the alternate ending for.....oh, I was never good with ep names....the one where Kirk's brother is killed and Spock is taken over by those flying jellies.

What was the alternate ending?!?

[OM]

Originally posted by Zig Zag Wanderer
I actually preferred one of the divergences I believe Blish did create, which was the alternate ending for.....oh, I was never good with ep names....the one where Kirk's brother is killed and Spock is taken over by those flying jellies. ...Nope, that was the way the actual script was written and originally approved. However, the effects budget *and* the rather vicious nature of the ending forced a rewrite more along the standard TOS "let's try to find a more 'humane' ending since we're in the future".

...Ok, for those in our home audience who're clueless as to what happened here, in the last TOS 1st season episode, "Operation: Annihilate", we had the Enterprise en route to Deneva, which has gone silent in recent days and the E has been sent to investigate why. Seems Deneva is along a line of planets that have all gone "silent" over several centuries, and all due to the population being mysteriously exterminated. As it approaches Deneva, the E encounters a ship flying directly into Deneva's sun. Trying to hail the vessel and get them to stop the suicide run, they instead receive a message from a Denevian pilot declaring he's "free" just before his ship fries. Kirk orders the ship to head for Deneva, as McCoy suddenly realizes that Kirk's brother, Sam, is living on Deneva.

...Beaming down, they discover that mass insanity has taken over the planet. Kirk's brother, is found dead while his wife Aurelan and son Peter, have been affected by the same insanity. Aurelan & Peter are taken to the E for treatment, but Aurelan dies because something is elevating her pain levels to fatal levels. That "something" turns out to be some sort of parasite that has infected the entire planet, and while intending to look like oversized brain cells they wind up looking like something a Mattel Thingmaker barfed up. While studying the parasites, Spock gets infected, and we learn that the parasites are a group mind that infect their hosts to provide transportation from one planet to another.

...They're not too bright, however, as the one that takes over Spock tries to force him to land the E on the planet. Yeah, dumb. In fact, stupid. In any case, Spock is subdued, and through sheer Vulcan will and cussedness, manages to eliminate pain from his mind and therefore neutralize the parasite. He and McCoy eventually discover that the parasites can't stand bright light, and determine that one million candlepower of light will kill them. However, it will leave anyone whose eyes are unprotected totally blind. Spock volunteers to test whether the intense light will work on an infected body, but only after he's blinded it's revealed that it's not broad spectrum light that kills the damn things, but ultraviolet. Of course, at one MCp, that means SPF 9034 and/or a case of quick skin cancer, but that's beside the point.

...In any case, the crew saves Deneva by orbiting the planet with satellites that dump the required levels of UV, which penetrate the surface where the parasites are hiding and kills them all. Later, while Kirk is doing his final report, Spock walks unaided to the bridge. While everyone shits their pants, Spock explains Vulcan's have an inner eyelid that reduces the effects of such blindness, and makes the appendix analogy. McCoy & Spock trade barbs, end of episode and season one.

...Ok, follow me so far? Now, the original approved script went quite different ending-wise. After Spock uses his Vulcan side to control the pain and explains to Kirk & McCoy that the parasites are a gestalt complex, they determine that UV radiation will kill the parasites in the body, but they can't figure out how to save the entire planet. They also determine that these parasites are part of a big brain in space thanks to Spock still being linked to them, and they go off in search of it. Luckily, it's nearby, and they blow it straight to hell. Then, they go back to Deneva, and while Spock and Kirk's nephew, Peter, can be saved, Kirk decides that he has no choice but to destroy all life on Deneva to prevent the spread of the parasites who are about to spawn again in response to the brain's demise.

...So yeah, you can see why this got changed. What's surprising is how far it got up the approval chain before it got the rewrite. Note that the script came across very late in the series, which might have had something to do with it. Then again, it could have just been sitting on Gene's desk for ages before he finally got done using the casting couch long enough to read it. Who knows?

...What's ironic is that while this script was being rewritten for a less-genocidal sterilization ending, the Gold Key TOS comic's first issue received the same ending, with Spock being the bloodthirsty one who not only determines that "Planet Kelly Green" needs to be exterminated, but pulls the trigger himself on the phaser banks! Go Spock!

...One other variant that comes to mind is the original ending to "Doomsday Machine". Up until filming, Commodore Decker was to have survived, only to walk off admitted he was a screwup and deserved to be put out to pasture. When he read the script, actor William Windom proposed the "heroic ending" for Decker that pretty much everyone agrees was one of the things that made the episode work. It also answered one of those rhetorical questions of "if given the opportunity to atone for his sins that caused the Caine Mutiny by sacrificing himself, would Captain Queeg have the balls to do so?" While Decker wasn't Queeg by a long shot, he did redeem himself by providing the clue to defeating the Planet Killer, and making this episode one of TOS' best ones.

[Bytor-Snowdog]

I actually had a few issues of these. The covers were pretty wicked.