Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the six hundred and fortieth week where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.
Click here for Part 1 of this week's legends.
COMIC LEGEND:
There was an original Star Trek comic strip in England half a year before the show even began airing there!
STATUS:
True
I held back on this week's Movie Legends Revealed (about Spock and Star Trek: Generations) so that I could tie it in with Part 2 of this week's Comic Book Legends Revealed!
As I noted back in Comic Book Legends Revealed #600 (it is the second legend featured in that column), when they first made Star Trek comic books in the United States, all they had to work with were publicity photos of the show.
That was the same when Star Trek debuted as a featured in Joe 90, a British comic magazine (whose lead feature was a strip based on Joe 90, a puppet TV series of the time, created by Gerry Anderson and his TV Century 21 Productions). It was 1969, three months before the show was set to debut on English air waves. so the people involved really didn't know WHAT the strip was about.
Artist Harry Lindfield only had publicity photos, as well, and so the first storyline was hilarious in that the Captain was called "Kurt"...
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and in the second strip, the Enterprise actually LANDS ON A PLANET!
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In an early strip, when he thinks Kirk has been killed, Spock goes OFF and just wants to WASTE people. It's pretty awesome...
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The crew played soccer against alien Gorilla people...
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The Enterprise shot out actual missiles...
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It's all delightfully absurd. However, it was also quite popular in England, despite the fact that the TV series got canceled pretty much right as it finally began airing in England!
My buddy, Rich Handley, edited a collection of these Star Trek strips for IDW recently...
Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed - What was the surprising reason why there was no Spock in Star Trek: Generations?
Part 3 will be up later on Sunday! Feel free to write in with suggestions for future legends to either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com!