Star Trek: The Return of the Worthy

Star Trek: The Return of the Worthy 

By Peter David, Bill Mumy, J. Michael Straczynski & others

(Titan Books) ISBN 1-94576- 319-X

Titan’s reprinting (issues #13-18 of the DC series from the 1990s) of the venerable TV phenomenon continues with a sly pastiche of Lost in Space courtesy of Mumy and David, with art from Gordon Purcell and Arne Starr. The maturing crew find the preserved ship of a legendary family of Space Heroes, (complete with a pneumatic-tube-arm waving robot) and must help adapt to a time that has largely left them behind. There are dramas and in-jokes aplenty in this fond romp, balanced in part by Worldsinger, a more traditional Star Fleet tale from J. Michael Straczynski, Purcell and Starr as the crew must convince a poetic alien survivor not to die with his doomed homeworld.

Ken Hooper and Bob Dvorak illustrate Howard Weinstein’s Partners?, a two-parter that fills out the volume. Once again the Enterprise is in a deadly face-off with Klingons after a suspicious border incident threatens to start a shooting war.

As always, these licensed comics are a welcome treat for Trek-deprived fans and in purely strip cartoon terms they are well-written, competently drawn and thoroughly readable. The added fillip of silver screen creators can’t hurt either.

™ & © 2006 CBS Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Fountain

The Fountain

By Darren Aronofsky & Kent Williams

(Vertigo)  ISBN 1-84576-171-5

Lavish companion to the Aronofsky film of the same name, this book tells of a love that challenges time itself and shows how human will is the ultimate force in the universe.

Divided into three vignettes, and interwoven with flashes forward and back along the narrative, The Fountain follows Tomas in 1535 as he ravages Central America for gold and converts, but finds instead The Tree of Life; as a desperate medical researcher in contemporary America, struggling to complete the cancer cure that will save his one, true love; and as a futuristic star-traveller seeking to restore that fabled Tree by catching a super-nova.

Lyrical and metaphysical, this pretty volume wafts along carried by the loose and evocative watercolour illustration of Kent Williams.

Completists should note that although designed as a companion to the film, that production was shut down as the book was being produced. When production was restarted, with an altered script, the Graphic Novel was completed according to the original conception. Think of it as a Directors Cut that you can read in the bathroom.

© 2005 Phineas Gage Productions. All Rights Reserved.