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By GustavoLeao / 03:58, 21 November 2012 / Trek Books
Writer and editor Rich Handley is the author of four books: Timeline of the Planet of the Apes, Lexicon of the Planet of the Apes, A Matter of Time: The Back to the Future Lexicon and a fourth book about the Psycho films and novels, all for Hasslein Books, which he co-founded with Paul C. Giachetti.
A former columnist for Star Trek Communicator magazine, Rich has
written or co-written three licensed Star Wars fiction titles—"Crimson
Bounty" (West End Games' Star Wars Adventure Journal #14), "Lady Luck"
(Dark Horse Comics' Star Wars Tales #3) and "Lando Calrissian: Idiot's
Array" (StarWars.com)—as well as the short story "Grateful, The Dead,"
published in the horror anthology Breaking Boundaries.
Rich has written for Planet of the Apes fanzine Simian Scrolls, helped
Ed Gross update his popular reference book Planet of the Apes Revisited,
and has also written for such genre publications and Web sites as Star
Wars Insider, Star Wars Galaxy Collector, Star Wars Gamer, Star Wars
Fact Files, Cinefantastique, Toons: The Animation Magazine,
Dungeon/Polyhedron, Star Trek Magazine, Sci-Fi Invasion!, Cinescape.com,
TrekWeb.com and Pop Culture Zoo.
On top of all this, Rich has taken the time to answer some questions about the upcoming IDW collection of Star Trek Newspaper Strips.
TrekWeb: When did you first become a fan of Star Trek? How did it happen?
Rich Handley: I've been a lifelong fan, and can truthfully say I watched the show during its initial broadcast… from my playpen. My mother was a first-generation fan who watched the series every week in our apartment in upstate New York. I was born in 1968, a few months after the end of season two, and turned a year old a few weeks after the show's final third-season episode aired in 1969.
Now, I obviously have no memory whatsoever of actually watching the series, since I was an infant, but I was there! After the show went into syndication in the 1970s, I became fascinated by it and started watching it every day after school… well, every other day, actually. My sister and I used to fight over whether to watch Star Trek or Good Times, so we struck a compromise and alternated. Since no one has ever produced a series called Good Times: The Next Generation or Good Times: Deep Space Nine, I think it's safe to say that my TV tastes have better stood the test of time.
TW: What's your favorite series and character of them all?
RH: That's such a tough call, and the answer varies depending on which one I'm re-watching. I own all of the series and films on DVD, and enjoy re-watching them from time to time. I'm a major fan of The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, as well as the original-cast films, all of which I consider far better than Voyager, the acting and writing for which were frequently off the mark. Enterprise is a mixed bag; like many fans, I love season four and consider the other three years hit-or-miss. So it's much easier for me to say which is my least favorite (Voyager) than it is to name my favorite.
TOS is what started it all, and as the Star Trek patriarch will always deserve respect and appreciation. It's timeless and brilliant. But it's also a bit over-the-top and dated. TAS is basically the same as TOS, writing-wise, but with silly animation. TNG is a TV rarity, in that it actually surpasses its parent series in many respects, including longevity, effects and acting quality. But its first and final seasons contain some major clunkers. And that leaves DS9, which I consider the most consistently well-written of the various shows, with the most well-rounded cast.
So if pressed to answer, I'd say Deep Space Nine is my favorite. But, really, I can find something to love about all six series and all eleven films (even Star Trek V and Nemesis). As proof of this, the series I'm currently re-watching is Voyager.
TW: If you could own one piece of memorabilia, what would it be?
RH: Hmmm. I'm admittedly not much of a memorabilia collector. My primary interest is in the lore, not the marketing. So I have every episode and film, every comic book from 1967 to date, and many of the novels, but little else. The toys, action figures, cups, ornaments, models, t-shirts, etc., don't really interest me. I guess it would be cool to own a prop (any prop, really) used in "The Cage," since that's where it all began. But I wouldn't know what to do with it, even if I owned one.
TW: How long have you been trying to get this collection of Star Trek newspaper strips published?
RH: My interest in the strips goes back a long time. Many years ago, a friend of mine found a magazine at a sci-fi convention that contained a two-page Star Trek comic strip. Ben knew of my fondness for antiques… no, sorry, that's Kirk, not me. He knew of my fondness for Star Trek comics and wondered if I had ever seen this. And to my surprise, I hadn't.
It was an issue of a British comic called Valiant, and although the strip was pretty weakly written, I was intrigued, as I clearly was incorrect in thinking I had a complete collection of every Trek comic published up to that point. I did some research (and this was before the Internet was widely known, mind you, so my resources limited) and discovered that Valiant had run weekly for several years in the United Kingdom, offering original Star Trek strips. I learned that the strips had previously been published in other U.K. comic magazines, Joe 90: Top Secret and TV21, and that nearly five years' worth of material had run between 1969 and 1973. I was floored by this discovery, and immediately set out to find them all. It took me ten years (and a good deal of money) to do so, but I eventually tracked down all 258 issues.
In the course of seeking these out, I came across another Trek comic strip I'd overlooked, a daily series published by the L.A. Times Syndicate from 1979 to 1983. As you can imagine, I nearly choked. Four more years' worth of strips, after I was finally finished??
By that time, however, the Internet was evolving into the amazing resource that it is now, so it wasn't nearly as difficult to find the U.S. strips as it had been their U.K. predecessors, mainly because I was able to locate several of the creators themselves (writer Marty Pasko, artists Ron Harris, Dick Kulpa and Padraic Shigetani, and editor David Seidman). They graciously shared with me their memories of the strips, as well as copies of everything they had in their possession, enabling me to amass most of the series. A judicious amount of online research and calls for help put me in touch with several fellow collectors, with whose help I filled in all of the gaps in my collection, leaving me with the complete run. (Incidentally, I also discovered that McDonalds had featured original Trek comic strips on their very first Happy Meals. Those were much easier to find, thanks to eBay.)
I pitched an article about these strips to Larry Nemecek at Star Trek Communicator, which he accepted, and then set out to find a publisher willing to reprint these lost gems. So, to get back to your original question, it's been a long time: more than two decades, in fact.
TW: What has been holding up publication, and why has it finally happened?
RH: Well, there have been several false starts along the way. In past years, Pocket Books' John Ordover and Wildstorm Comics' Jeff Mariotte both tried valiantly (pun intended) to reprint the U.K. and U.S. strips. However, Paramount nixed the idea each time, reportedly due to legal concerns. I was not privy to all of the details of those discussions, so I don't know specifically what transpired, but John, Jeff and I were disappointed not to be able to see the project through.
The Star Trek comic strips, while admittedly uneven in quality, are great fun to read nonetheless, sometimes because they're genuinely well written and/or illustrated, and sometimes from a Mystery Science Theater 3000 "This is so ridiculous, it's wonderful" perspective. And yet, at the time, most Trek fans didn't even know they existed, since the U.K. strips had never been marketed overseas, while the L.A. Times strips had been poorly distributed. The three of us were thus determined to put these strips into fans' hands. Sadly, it didn't happen.
In 2010 (if I recall correctly), I decided to give it another try, and so I reached out to IDW's Chris Ryall. Chris was very open to the idea, and put me in touch with Dean Mullaney, the editor of IDW's The Library of American Comics imprint. Dean decided to start with the U.S. strips, and worked with me and several other fans, most notably Allen Lane and Mark Martinez, to find the highest-quality versions possible for each daily strip. Dean was determined to do as great a job on these books as he feasibly could, given the strips' age and relative unavailability, so he didn't want to limit himself to just the versions in my collection. To that end, he mined Allen's and Mark's archives, as well as those of Comics Revue editor Rick Norwood, and also purchased numerous bulk sets on eBay and elsewhere, then used the best of what he'd amassed.
Unlike Pocket and Wildstorm, IDW did not run into the same legal entanglements, presumably due to Star Trek's ownership having changed hands in recent years. Whatever the reason, the hurdles were lifted and the strips are finally being reprinted. Having seen the final product, I believe fans will love the end result.
TW: What was it like to work with IDW?
RH: It's been great. Dean is an extremely approachable and friendly guy, and it's been a pleasure to work with him. I hope to have the opportunity to do so again in the future. In addition to helping Dean compile the strips, I also looked over each PDF proof page for him and was allowed to come up with titles for the un-named storylines. In addition, Dean invited me to write an introduction to the first volume, and I'll also be doing something fun for volume two. Our hope, if these two books sell well, is to eventually do the same for the U.K. strips (so tell all your Trek-loving friends to buy five copies of each book).
TW: Do you think the strips got little backing from papers at the time since they premiered almost simultaneously with the Star Wars newspaper strips?
RH: Quite simply, when it came to comic strips, Star Trek got the short end of the Klingon pain-stick. Nine months earlier, the Syndicate had unveiled a daily strip based on Star Wars. In addition, Buck Rogers had re-launched on television in September, while Flash Gordon had been in print since the 1930s. Most newspapers already running science-fiction strips (considered risky at the time) opted not to pick up a second or third title.
Many papers willing to run sci-fi stories either chose Star Wars (since it was a newer property and thus seen as more marketable) or simply continued with Flash or Buck, relying on long-established fan bases. As such, most U.S. newspapers never carried the Trek strips; not even the L.A. Times itself ran it, despite being the company that produced them.
TW: Did you read the Star Trek strips when they were first published?
RH: I didn't even know they existed until several years after they ceased publication. While they were still being produced, none of our local newspapers carried Star Trek. And that's a true shame, as I was a rabid fan of the Sunday funnies back then, and would certainly have read Trek had I known about it.
TW: Looking at the strips now, what do you think of them?
RH: It's difficult to generalize, as there are a total of nine years' worth of weekly and daily strips, when you take both the U.K. and U.S. runs into account. Some of them (the early U.K. strips from Joe 90) are exceedingly silly, and are more than a little reminiscent of the quality of Gold Key's Star Trek comic books, both in terms of writing and artwork.
On the other hand, some of the U.K. material is exquisitely drawn, if not entirely accurate. There are some truly beautiful renderings in the British material. As for the L.A. Times strips, they're great fun, and are definitely far more consistent than the U.K. run. I have re-read both series several times over the years, and I still have a great deal of nostalgic fondness for them.
The U.S. strips, in particular, often build upon previously established continuity. We get to see the uniforms from The Motion Picture, the eventual changeover to the Wrath of Khan-era uniforms, stories focused on Christine Chapel, the return of Harry Mudd and the Kzinti, a visit from McCoy's ex-wife, the grandson of Admiral Nogura, cameos by Ilia and several alien races seen in TMP, and more. For a fan who knows his or her Trek trivia, reading the L.A. Times series can be very grin-inducing.
TW: Is there a particular storyline of the twenty tales that you enjoyed the most? Why that one?
RH: I have a couple of favorites: Thomas Warkentin's Harry Mudd tale is a hoot (because having Mudd in a story automatically makes it worth reading), as is his story about two renegade Klingons escaping persecution. In addition, Sharman DiVono and Ron Harris turned in an excellent story about humans assimilated by a machine intelligence called the Omnimind, remarkably similar in concept to the Borg, several years before The Next Generation introduced the Collective. The Omnimind story is probably my favorite in the bunch.
TW: Is there a particular storyline that you think the fans will be surprised by?
RH: Actually, yes, there is: the final storyline, by Kulpa and Gerry Conway, in which the Enterprise crew find themselves in an alternate reality in which Star Trek is a popular TV series starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley. (Er, I guess they won't be surprised anymore, since I've just given it away.) Despite some similarities to Ruth Berman's "Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited," from Star Trek: The New Voyages, this tale takes a unique approach, and I think most fans will find it fun. I'm actually surprised that with more than 850 hours of filmed or animated Star Trek to date, we've never seen such a story play out onscreen.
TW: Is there an artist that you think the fans will be surprised by?
RH: Probably L.A. Times staffer Bob Myers, who illustrated a single Conway storyline. His art style was, shall we say, unusual, and noticeably different from the remaining stories.
TW: I noticed that one writer/artist was heavily involved with the strip and has vanished from the publishing scene: Thomas Warkentin. Do you think he deserves more notice?
RH: Sadly, Thomas Warkentin died in 2002. And yes, I do think he deserves more recognition, not only for his Star Trek tales, but also for his work on the cartoon series Animaniacs (for which he won an Emmy), his writing on Flash Gordon in the 1990s, and his contributions to Heavy Metal magazine. He may not be a household name, but he was a fantastic talent.
TW: Famed novelist Larry Niven returned to his race he created for the Star Trek Animated Series, the Kzinti. What do you think of the return of these characters?
RH: The Kzinti storyline, titled "The Wristwatch Plantation," has some great moments in it, mostly involving the Kzinti themselves. Unfortunately, the storyline, in my opinion, goes on for too long, and is hampered by its distracting focus on another species, the rather annoying Bebebebeque. It's a fun story and worth reading, but it admittedly drags at times.
According to Niven's book Playground of the Mind, he and DiVono once considered writing a novelization of this storyline, incorporating their aborted original ending for the story, which was apparently far more epic in scope than what actually appeared on the printed page. It's a shame we never got to read it.
TW: Do you think the time is right for Star Trek to return to the "funny pages," or has that genre passed for dramatic strips?
RH: I'd offer an unqualified "Yes, the time is definitely right." Sure, the funny pages no longer enjoy the exciting draw that they once had during prior decades, but with the right dramatic strip, I think they could do so again. In my opinion, the L.A. Times run (especially Warkentin's contributions) proved that Trek can work quite well as a dramatic comic strip. I'd love to see it happen. And I'd love to write it.
TW: Final question: What's your biggest hope for the upcoming 2013 film?
RH: That it doesn't move the planets Qo'noS, Bajor, Ceti Alpha V and Rigel XII next-door to Vulcan.
No, I kid. Actually, my biggest hope is that it not only matches the quality of the 2009 film, but actually surpasses it. I loved Abrams' first Trek movie, despite its flaws, and have every confidence that the next one will be just as good. But I do hope they step up the game a bit. While Nero was an interesting villain, he was yet another example of someone from a character's past coming back to menace the crew. It's been done in the Trek films, including in The Wrath of Khan and Nemesis. Three such stories out of eleven is enough; we need something new.
At the same time, I also want to become more emotionally invested with the characters. They did a great job of getting us to feel for Kirk, Spock and McCoy, but Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov were rather under-developed. In particular, I want to see Scotty's more serious side; he's not just an Austin Powers-like buffoon.
Actually, now that I think about it, my biggest hope is simply that it comes out on time, and that we don't have to wait four more years for the next one!
TW: We at TrekWeb would like to thank Rich for taking the time to talk with us, and IDW's Star Trek: The Newspaper Strips is due out soon; and let's all buy several copies so we can get the UK Star Trek stips printed as well!
