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Some months back I read collection # 3 and thought, man, this is such utter crap I won’t ever read another of the Gold Key collections. Yet, here we are.

There is a rare level of enjoyment in these dated, completely un-Trek like first comics. I mean, even the GOOD comics have their ridiculous qualities. Take the rather artfully painted TNG graphic novel The Gorn Crisis. Who can deny that part of its pleasure is that the baddie is named Captain Slesssh?!?

Anyway, with these early stories you get a crew that says things like “Holy Asteroids! What in Blue Blazes IS that thing?” The bridge looks like the inside of a submarine with planetarium equipment. Away teams beam down in teleport chambers, sending “radio TV transmissions” (read on reel-to-reel tapes.) Warp drive takes a back seat to “rocket power” and various nebulae are known as “space walls.” Spock only acts like a Vulcan when the writers seem to remember, the rest of the time he is quaking in fear or shouting.

This collection is pretty massive – 200 or so pages – and there’s a moronic chuckle on each on.