Star Trek: A Comic Book History

[DarkHorizon]

Came across this book searching through Amazon.com for any new pre-orders, due out in April.

Now for the first time the complete history of the Star Trek universe in comic books and newspaper strips from all over the world. Written by pop-culture historian Alan J. Porter, author of the bestselling James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007, this book will be the definitive history on the subject. Nine information-packed chapters detailing the history of Star Trek in comic books and newspaper strips from the first Gold Key comic books, to the English newspaper strip, to the Marvel and DC titles, to the present day. Exhaustively covers all publications of the entire Star Trek universe. Includes creator interviews, unpublished artwork and a detailed checklist. Published to coincide with the release of the new Star Trek movie. Boldly goes where no book has gone before!

Sounds fascinating, especially the unpublished artwork... but kind of pricey for a paperback...

[PaulSimpson]

DarkHorizon wrote:

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Came across this book searching through Amazon.com for any new pre-orders, due out in April.

Sounds fascinating, especially the unpublished artwork... but kind of pricey for a paperback...

I tried to order this and the Bond one a few weeks back but got told that they were both deleted.

Paul

[James Swallow]

There's no mention of this book on the Hermes Press website.

[Allyn Gibson]

Parker just announced the book on his LiveJournal this week. If the contracts were just signed as he wrote, then Hermes Press may not have had time to update their website.

[HIj'Qa]

This will make a nice companion to Voyages of the Imagination.
Oh, if only there were to be a timeline included . . .

[Alan J. Porter]

Hi folks -

Thanks for showing such early interest in my upcoming book.

Just wanted to stop by and answer a couple of the points that have been raised so far.

- Will there be a timeline? - My intention is to include an index of the various comics by Stardate. At least I'm compiling one as I do the research and writing. I probably won't have the time to create a full timeline (ouch - sorry about the pun), so if a story spans several time periods it will most likely only be listed by the establishing introductory stardate. - But this is a work in progress so who knows.

- Yes the contracts were only just signed, so the official announcements etc. will probably only start rolling out after the holidays. The book is scheduled to be listed in the February issue of the Previews catalog, and that's when the Hermes Press website will most likely start carrying the information too. I expect the Amazon listing will get more detailed info and a cover image about that time as well.

- For Paul who tried to pre-order this, and a copy of my James Bond book, - First off - Thanks. - Secondly I passed your note onto the distribution folks at Hermes Press and hopefully they can find out what happened. The Bond book is available, and I know people are getting their Amazon orders.

- With regard to the price - the Hermes Press books are all published on very high quality glossy archival paper and designed to last. They aren't mass market paperbacks, they are closer to glossy art books - hence the price point.

- And on a personal note - while I have a full run of all the US Trek comics and am talking to various comics publishers about background material - if anyone has copies of rare Trek comics art, particularly the newspaper strip and the stories produced for the UK market, that they would like to contribute and can do high quality scans, then I would love to hear from them.

I can be contacted on the email below.

Alan J. Porter
http://alanjporter.com
E-mail: alan@alanjporter.com

[LightningStorm]

Oooo.. another author joins us.
Welcome. Welcome.

[Christopher]

Alan J. Porter wrote:

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- Will there be a timeline? - My intention is to include an index of the various comics by Stardate. At least I'm compiling one as I do the research and writing. I probably won't have the time to create a full timeline (ouch - sorry about the pun), so if a story spans several time periods it will most likely only be listed by the establishing introductory stardate. - But this is a work in progress so who knows.

Hmm, there would be pitfalls in going by stardate. Plenty of stories have no stardate. The Gold Key comics had anomalous stardates like 13:07.9 or stuff like that. And the Marvel Early Voyages stardates were inconsistent; the first half-dozen issues were between 2252.34-2396.6, but then someone had second thoughts and they dropped a digit, ranging from 259.9 into the 300s.

[Ktrek]

I decided to pre-order this as I think it will make a fine companion to the Star Trek: Complete Comic Collection DVD-Rom.

Kevin

[Daddy Todd]

When will this be published? if contracts were "only just signed," will we really see this in April of this year?

[mmtz]

Mr. Porter occasionally twitters about progress on his writing projects and summarizes the twitters on his blog.

[Daddy Todd]

Thanks!

PS - I love the Star Trek Comics Checklist. I use it for reference all the time!