The Best of Star Trek

by Robert Greenberger (editor), Mike W. Barr, Tom Sutton

The Best of Star Trek collects eight issues from DC Comics Star Trek (TOS) Volume 1 (two annuals) and Volume 2 - spanning from 1984 to 1991.

It depicted the events of a later missions taking place between the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

This DC Comics series, including "Mortal Gods" from 1984 [set in the time between "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock"] and the three-part story "The Trial of James T. Kirk" [set between "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" and "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country"] from 1990.

It also includes an introduction by Nicholas Meyer, writer/director of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" as well as a foreword by Robert Greenberger, the Editor of Star Trek for DC Comics.

Chapter:
- Mortal Gods by Mike W. Barr (Vol 1 #5)
- The Final Voyage by Mike W. Barr (Vol 1 Annual #2)
- Double Blind, Part I by Diane Duane (Vol 1 #24)
- Double Blind, Part II by Diane Duane (Vol 1 #25)
- Retrospect by Peter David (Vol 1 Annual #3)
- The First Thing We Do... by Peter David (Vol 2 #10)
- ...Let's Kill All the Lawyers! by Peter David (Vol 2 #11)
- Trial and Error! by Peter David (Vol 2 #12)

Genres: Star Trek, Comics, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1991

Reviews

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It was so much fun to boldly return to space with Kirk and the gang. I had watched the original series with my brother, we never missed it. And I saw the first few movies as well. (I missed the last couple, though.)

I don't think I would consider myself a full-blown 'Trekkie' but I confess I was so annoyed when The Next Generation came out that i never watched it until years later on cable. And then I saw that the Star Trek vision could handle having a different captain and crew involved. I saw a few of the Deep Space Nine episodes also, but never got into that quite as much as the others.

Anyway, all of that babbling helps explain why I couldn't resist this book. I thought the five stories presented here were great examples of everything that was good about Star Trek. It was fun to read and remember various episodes the same way the aging characters did. Except I did think it was funny that in the three part tale The Trial Of James T. KIrk he was shown all super muscled up and with only a couple of gray curls in one panel. Everyone else was wrinkled and looked a bit tubby, just as they should have been for their ages, but not Captain Kirk! The only thing revealing his age here was the fact that his arm wasn't long enough for him to be able to read a message sent to his quarters. On real paper, of all things. Would they even still be making paper at that time in the future?

Anyway, I was surprised at this book because I had never known there were any comics devoted to Star Trek. I learned about them in the interesting introduction by Robert Greenberger, the editor of Star Trek at DC Comics at the time this book was published. which was 1991. Mr. Greenberger also explained the timeline of the stories selected for this collection, and I must say that they gave the reader a nice feel for the entire Captain Kirk era. Sort of a broad outline, so that if a person never knew anything at all about Star Trek (I suppose there might be someone like that somewhere?!) he or she could read this and have an idea of what it was all about.

I've mentioned only the story about Captain Kirk's trial, but I think my favorite was actually the two-part Double Blind, in which some rough tough characters find out how complicated life can be when a reputation is more fearsome than the truth. This was funny and clever, and of course allowed Captain Kirk to do what he loved best to do: accomplish his goals while tweaking the rules just a bit. But how will he explain that tweaking to Star Fleet?

Something wonderful about the idea of life in the Star Trek universe is that somehow humans have generally become truly civilized. The way things are going these days, I have to admit that I do wonder if that is possible on a universal level. Even though the Klingon emperor was making this statement as a beginning of his argument that Kirk should be found guilty during his trial, but it is still a profound truth that we can see demonstrated for ourselves every day.
Bigotry, my respected sentients, is an ugly emotion. One that enlightened races have managed to rise above. But every so often there comes along one member of a race in whom bigotry festers like a cancer.

Just one?! We have a long way to go to match that, don't we.

Thankfully Star Trek will always be here to help guide our journey, no matter how long it may take.

[Cyndi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I completely geeked out while reading this! Love all the references to the original series.

[Shazza Maddog · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much fun. <3

I have read a few Star Trek comics over the years. These collected comics are full of great stories and live up to the title. Good art, great storylines, it's an all-around blast to read.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anthologies often have their ups and downs, this is no exception. The stories are lifted from a six year span (1984 to 1990), long after the end of 'The Original Series'. Outside of perhaps the first Chris Pine movie the TOS and original Capitan Kirk were compelling fare, where as all else with the Star Trek label were not nearly in the same league even with the improved sets, at least for me. I would also urge whoever decided which were the 'best' stories to include here very much needs to go back and re-examine their selection criteria. So the early stories? Pretty good. The later stories? Mostly pretty bad.

[Dee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I mean, of course I'm biased.

But, Seriously, it felt like I was ​watching TOS episodes. I loved it. ^_^

[Jdetrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like most of the licensed Trek comics, these are solid, but nothing really remarkable.

[Melody · Rating 5 out of 5]

great stories ...

[River · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m glad I read this as an introduction to Star Trek comics but I don’t think I’m going to read many more of the original series ones because the sexism and racist tokenism was hard to get through.

[Robert Garrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Star Trek, and I like comics. There are plenty of Star Trek comics to read, but…I’ve given a pass to most of them. The quality has varied greatly in the comics that I’ve sampled, and “back in the day,” the comic stories were never considered part of the official canon (Perhaps this has changed. I don’t really know.). I thus have no interest in owning a complete collection of Star Trek comics. A trade paperback containing some of the better stories, however, is something altogether different, and thus, when I saw THE BEST OF STAR TREK in a comics bargain box, I snatched it up.

DC published this in 1991 to commemorate the original series’ twenty-fifth anniversary. Of course, the fiftieth anniversary has just been observed in 2016, and this collection contains no stories from Gold Key or Marvel, who had published Star Trek comics before DC. Thus, we are really only looking a small slice of the franchise’s history here. On the plus side, most would agree that DC had published the best Star Trek comics up to that time.

Regardless, I simply sought some good Star Trek stories, and these fit the bill. The best, in my opinion, is from STAR TREK ANNUAL #3, originally published in 1988. That story, written by Peter David and drawn by the late Curt Swan, tells of Scotty’s doomed romance with the love of his life, and it’s touching. I’m not fond of tear jerkers, but this one was well executed, and you really feel for Scotty here. While I wouldn’t want every Star Trek story to be like this one, it did provide a nice change of pace from the usual fare.

The other stories were enjoyable, as well. Diane Duane writes a fun tale of Kirk surrendering to aliens clearly outmatched by his ship and crew (Huh? Read the story!). Mike W. Barr pens a tale of the Enterprise’s final adventure of the original five year mission and another tale of a starship captain who foolishly ignores the Prime Directive. The book concludes with Peter David’s three part “Trial of James T. Kirk,” which contains plenty of fan service and some of David’s patented cutesy humor, but also a number of genuinely good moments.

I suspect that most Star Trek fans are more interested in the stories than the art, and admittedly, the art isn’t really the highlight here. That said, all the artists prove good storytellers and provide good likenesses of the actors in question, so I have no complaints. As a bonus, several stories take advantage of the comic format by giving us some truly odd-looking aliens that likely wouldn’t have been seen on a live action tv series in 1991.

I wouldn’t say that DC’s BEST OF STAR TREK is an essential read, but it satisfied a Star Trek fix and passed the time for me agreeably on a slow New Year’s Day. I asked for nothing more.

[Christopher Rush · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though the range of this collection is wide, that isn't to say there are really any awful issues in here. It does get better as it goes along, however. The 3-part Trial of Kirk still holds up well, 20 years later, even if the reader hasn't read the other stories up to it. The reader may be somewhat confused by all the new supporting characters (in both eras of the DC Star Trek line), but it's not substantial enough of a confusion to genuinely interfere with the nostalgic trips of the better issues. The introductory words by Greenberger help clarify some of the era confusions (why are they on the Excelsior? why is Kirk an Admiral here and a Captain there?). The words from Nicholas Meyer are not very comforting, though. It's rather disheartening to read and here so many key players/creators in the Star Trek universe really had no interest in it before and beyond their particular roles. I'm glad Meyer has a better attitude to Star Trek after all his work, but this doesn't seem like the more enthusiastic introduction for a collection of pretty decent Star Trek stories. All together, it's an enjoyable collection of stories. The reverse chronological story of Scotty is possibly the best of the bunch, despite its sorrowful mood. Non-Star Trek fans (if any exist) might not enjoy it as much, since a lot of it depends on a good knowledge of the characters, the series, and the movies (especially), but how many non-Star Trek fans are there, really? Fans will like it, of course, hopefully for the right reasons.

[A. Nixon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun read. I picked it up at 50% off at Paradise Comics on a whim and I wasn't disappointed. There were a great variety of stories in here (one about Montgomery Scott, a longer one about Kirk on trial, and a a cute little one about scary, scary aliens).

It was also interesting to read, as a budding letterer, to see some issues with lettering, some things I just would have done differently, and a couple of typos.

It was a great, nostalgic read.

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Peter David ones are really the only part of this collection worth reading. Those ones are totally enjoyable though.