Mike W. Barr

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

Let's start with the complaints about my IDW version. There is a vast body of uncollected Star Trek comics out there. IDW's Star Trek Omnibus line was a decent effort to get some of it into print. While two of its five volumes were already-collected IDW material, the other three reprinted material that had largely not been collected before: the original Marvel ongoing, Early Voyages, and the film adaptations.

The Star Trek show more Archives line, on the other hand, was ferociously misguided. Very little of DC's ten-year run of well-regarded Star Trek comics have been collected, and yet the majority of the issues reprinted in volume 1 of the Archives, published 2008, had just been reprinted by Titan in its Star Trek Comics Classics line in 2006! Why not try to reprint something never before reprinted? Volume 6 of the Archives reprints issues #9-16 of DC's Star Trek vol. 1, a storyline called New Frontiers, already reprinted by DC itself under the title of The Mirror Universe Saga; you can still get that collection for $11 including shipping on the secondary market, while IDW charged $25 for its new collection! Why? (I still bought it, though, so I guess that's why.)

Plus the paratext is, as always, bad. The indicia claims the collected issues are #9-16 of a series called Star Trek: New Frontiers, and I don't get why the title is "Best of Alternate Universes." Is it really a "best of" if it only has one story in it? And why "alternate universes" when the story is from one specific alternate universe, the so-called "mirror universe"? If "The Mirror Universe Saga" was out of the question, then surely "Best of the Mirror Universe" would have been better?

All that aside, I read this between the adaptations of Star Trek III and IV in the Movie Classics Omnibus. I remember reading this in high school and finding it just okay, but rereading it in context reveals what a good job scripter Mike Barr did. In Back Issue! no. 5, he says the difference between his work here and his work on the Marvel Star Trek series is the Marvels were written like tv episodes, but the DCs were written like comics.

However, this reads like a film to me. If instead of The Voyage Home, the third Harve Bennett-produced film had been a trip to the mirror universe, it would have been exactly like this. Barr totally nails the scope of those films, the humor, the moments of characterization, the sense of fun. Big, titanic things happen here-- this isn't the small-scale adventures of Marvel's Star Trek. It draws together threads from the two films before it; I like that Amanda, Spock's mom, gets an appearance (there was no room for her in Star Trek III). I like that Tom Sutton draws Saavik as Kirstie Alley even though she'd been recast as Robin Curtis by this point. The idea that Spock's post-resurrection mental confusion would be cured by melding with mirror Spock is completely delightful. The use of David is neat (though it could be more emotionally impactful). I like the idea that after destroying his ship, Kirk kind of gets to step foot on its ghost. I like that Kirk gets a worthy adversary-- himself!-- and I love that mirror Kirk outplays our Kirk by using the same trick our Kirk used on the Klingons in Star Trek III.

It starts to flag near the end (the final showdown seems one too many), and I'm not sure Kirk needs two order-following martinets as antagonists, nor that his defiance of orders really makes sense, but this is unabashed greatness in comics form. Has the Excelsior even been this impressive? I love The Voyage Home, but there are moments where I wish this had been made instead. Or maybe as Star Trek V? With some small tweaks, I could see it. show less

One of my reasons for loving Clone Wars Adventures, the series (based on the 2-D cartoon) that was replaced by this series of The Clone Wars graphic novellas (based on the 3-D cartoon), was the art of the Fillbach Brothers, who I think are cartoonists par excellence; their work on the series was kinetic and delightful. Unfortunately, their style I think suffers a bit when forced to conform to the style of the 3-D cartoon, which is in the case in The Suncrasher Trap, a story of Obi-Wan, show more Anakin, Ahsoka, and company trying to stop a Separatist superweapon. It's basically fine; as a big fan of DC in the 1980s, I was glad to see Mike W. Barr on scripting duties (I had no idea he was still writing comics!) but it's a bit staid. I think the flat coloring of the 2-D series suits the Fillbachs' art style much more than the shaded coloring attempting to mimic the 3-D series. (In some later novellas, the artists don't seem to have to conform to the show's art style as much; I wish that had been true here.) show less

I remember Camelot 3000 as having made a big, favorable impression among comics readers in the 1980s, but I don't think it has aged very well. As futurism, it's risible. And its mythic elements seem confined to transplanting and simplifying the Arthurian tale, without enough further engagement to help us understand why the story has had such durability in the affections of storytellers and readers.

Features of the characters that might have been considered complex or even "daring" in comics show more writing thirty years ago (e.g. transsexual reincarnation and its upshot) aren't very impressive now, after comics have (rightfully) taken their place as a medium capable of as much cultural transgression and advance as any. The settings are, as mentioned earlier, simply silly -- an unreflective and sometimes inconsistent notion of our civilization's future.

Bolland's art is solid, and still looks okay, but I don't think this was his best work. (That might be "The Actress and the Bishop"!)

Much of the buzz about the original Camelot 3000 may have had to do with its pioneering position in the direct-sales comics market as a 12-issue "limited series" from DC. The reprint volume I read, a hardcover 2008 "deluxe edition," was certainly a lovely piece of material work, on heavy gloss paper, with a ribbon bookmark. show less

As awkward as this has become for the 21st century, man this was a fun read.

I will say, that I read this as a part of an Arthurian Literature class, and I think that it becomes more fun and more interesting if you've read most of the other main Arthur texts (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chretien de Troyes, Mallory, T.H. White, etc.) as you'll then understand all the real subtle humor. Outside of what is really a short graphic work, Camelot 3000 leaves a lot of the character development up in the show more air for people to interpret or develop for themselves. While the character Thomas acts as a guide for the audience's attention to this detail, it is much more fun when you're juxtaposing these characters with their origins in literature.

Camelot 3000 has.......aged. Not well, not particularly bad; it simply has, well, aged. I think it is hard to not read this as 1980s work, the style of how we do comics, view the future, and make narratives has simply changed so much that it is hard for an educated reader to view this as "old." The main ire for this outside of style comes from Tristan, who embodies the largest sexual discourse in 3000. Writing from 2017, where sexuality and gender has become a large part of public discourse, we would absolutely treat Tristan (and frankly most of the characters since they are rather polarized in their masculinity or femininity) very differently. However, with 3000 as a define relic, reading it as so doesn't detract from the enjoyment, as it is very easily viewed as a part of a larger historical tradition in literature, whether that literature is Arthurian or Graphic.

However, Camelot 3000 is in the end is a piece of pulp fiction which is shiny, escapist fun. show less