Customer Reviews

Star Trek: The Complete Comic Book Collection

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As the packaging suggests, this collection includes every issue of Star Trek comic books ever published on a single DVD-ROM. From the classic DC Comic releases to the more obscure fare such as the nearly forgotten Star Trek comic/record sets from the seventies (included here under "Bonus Material"). It's all here - even the annuals, movie adaptations, and mini-series events.

In the unlikely event a user is unfamiliar with the Star Trek universe, there's even a helpful "Bios" section which briefly explains the role of each major crewmember. In addition, there is a four-page summation of Star Trek history as well. Neither are particularly detailed, but they're a welcome bonus for a collection already brimming at the seams with material.

The comics are read through Abobe Acrobat (which is included) and the interface is quite efficient and user-friendly. To begin with, you simply click which of the five publishers you want and you're brought to an organized listing of the works they published. Once you select the group of issues you want, you'll be taken to a table displaying all the covers and issues numbers (see user images for my example of this). Simply select one and begin reading!

Of special note is how complete these comics are - all the original advertisements are intact as well as the "Letters to the Editor" sections. The ads are always interesting, especially the older ones. I believe every comic book since the beginning of mankind has an ad that promises you an instant muscled physique for only a few dollars. The Letters sections typically have insightful comments from the readers as well as often amusing rants and technical nitpicking as only Trekkies can do!

Naturally, reading from a computer screen is less than ideal. Nothing can match a hard copy, especially where comic books are concerned. Of course, the comics are fully printable, though I shudder to think how much ink and paper just a few dozen of these would require!

As far as quality is concerned, the older issues do not make as fine a scan as the newer ones. Typically the ones from the mid-eighties and older are more difficult to read, as the ink is slightly hazy and blurry in places. They're still fully readable, just not as crisp and clear as the issues from the late-eighties onward are.

One last note, the promotional material prior to the release of this indicated that the newspaper comic strip material would be included as well. Due to a variety of rights issues, they were not able to include these. Still, with over 500 issues here, it's possible even the most ardent Star Trek fan will require months and months to sift through all this material!

This is an incredible value and a very fun disc to have. The comics are perfect for a brief study break or a lazy Sunday marathon reading session. I can honestly say my purchase was worth every penny, and that's a rare thing these days!

(A note about the packaging: the disc is housed in a standard dvd case and comes shipped in a cardboard sleeve. The sleeve contains a listing of all the issues as well as a brief distillation of the "Classic Issues" included in the DVD-ROM. I think it's a good idea to cut these out of the sleeve and place them within the dvd case - as I said, always nice to have a hard copy!)

Review:
I'm not a comic book fan for the most part. I didn't grow up with them and so, never got into the mania. That said, I'm a huge Star Trek fan, so when the Complete Comic Book Collection came out, I picked it up eagerly.

Star Trek: The Complete Comic Book Collection, published by GIT Corp., is a compilation of Star Trek comic books condensed onto a PC/MAC compatible DVD. It contains almost all the comic books published under the Star Trek license between 1967 and 2002 from five different comic book houses (Gold Key, Marvel, DC, Wildstorm & Malibu). This includes the full runs of the Gold Key comics, the TOS post movie comics, TNG, DS9 and Voyager runs as well as the various miniseries over the years.

It does not include the latest comic series that have been published in the past couple years. Still, that ends up being around 500 comic books or more, including the entire run of a good number of monthly series. That's quite the bounty indeed.

The comics are presented in high quality scans of the actual comic books themselves in Adobe Acrobat PDF format (Adobe Acrobat is included on the disc). The entire collection is organized fairly clearly by publisher and series, with PDF files serving as menus to open the various comics. The entire comic books are included, including covers, ads and letters to the editor pages. The images are fairly high resolution and printable as well.

GIT Corp has done a fine job with this collection. For the most part, all of the scans are high quality images. They didn't use the original proofs, instead scanning actual comic books to make the collection. For that reason, occasionally you'll come across a page that has been ripped, or find that the pages have yellowed. I suppose it adds a bit to the experience.

I'm somewhat amazed that they got together all of the licenses to put this out. I was fascinated to read the old original Gold Key comics from the late 60's and early 70's. One could tell that the writers didn't watch the show, as for years, rocket flames sprayed out of the ship's nacelles and the ship's interior bore little resemblance to the real thing.

There are only a few minor complaints a person might have about this collection. Pages are presented in a two page spread format rather than a single page spread. It would have been nice to have the pages separately for viewing as even on larger monitors, two pages at once makes the print small and hard to make out.

Also, some of the graphic novels were clearly scanned in bound format rather than from a book that was taken apart. The glare on the middle of the two page scans makes this obvious. I suspect that the scans were done very quickly and imperfections sneaked in as a result.

Overall, I highly recommend this collection to fans and collectors. Before this collection, the only way to see all of these comics was to hunt comic book stores and spend loads of money. That's fine for the avid comic book collector, but what about the rest of us? Few star Trek fans would ever see most of these comics. Now, they're available all in one place for a relatively cheap price. That really can't be beat.

Bottom Line: Highly recommended.

This is really an impressive collection. I remember reading some of the Gold Key comics as a kid and when I saw this I had to check it out. With over 500 comic books to read you can spend many long hours reading the comics in this collection, or print out any pages that you find particularly captivating.

I like some of the flaws in the early Gold Key comics with fire coming out of the Enterprise nacelles, or seeing the Enterprise skimming over the treetops of some planet, or better yet the complete annihilation of an entire planet of diverse intelligent plants-talk about ignoring the prime directive.

In any event the entire collection is well worth it, great stories, great artwork, all for about 8 cents a comic. If you enjoy Star Trek this should hold you over until the next movie.

I have been on a lifelong search through comic stores across the country for Star Trek comic books. Never to purchase, as that would burn a decent hole into my already empty pocket, but simply to glance through the pages and read the stories in a manner so much more different than what I was used to. Comics are fun to read, and they offer a unique vision of a story and its characters. Imagine my surprise when I learned there was a compilation DVD in the works for the Star Trek comic series!

I have glanced through a good chunk of the comics included in this set, and am pleased as punch to see these stories again. Some of my favorites included the Mirror Universe Saga, the Tabukan Syndrome, the parallel universe Borg invasion, and of course Peter David's "Who Killed Captain Kirk?" I also enjoyed being able to finally read Shatner's comic adaptation of "The Ashes of Eden," which I missed out on when it fell out of publication.

However, I have noticed several errors in the scanning process used to produce this set. Some of the comic pages will have half or so of the image tinted a solid color, and some will be cut off completely. Fortunately, the vast majority were scanned correctly, but there are enough that weren't to make the experience somewhat annoying. Nevertheless, I am still glad to finally have these stories available to me whenever I want. If you are a serious Star Trek fan, then these are a must-have.

First with the good. The product, as advertised, has every "official" Star Trek comic book in PDF format. One can view each comic book and see it as it was originally published, including the advertisements contained. Every PDF page shows 2 pages from the comic book side to side.

Now the bad. The resolution of the comic books is far from optimal. The reason for this is probably that the publisher needed to get the full collection on to one DVD instead of 2. If only the publisher would have put them on 2 DVDs instead of 1. For only a slightly higher cost it would have permitted a much higher resolution standard to be achieved.

When I was a kid in the 1960, I used to go to Cappy's in Bronx, NY. Now, you must understand , I loved movie comics and I had many other Gold Key and Dell comic TV and movie adaptaions more than I liked Superman and Batman type of comics. I invested in Star Trek number 1. Gawd it was like the holy grail for me.

Now its 44 years later, I have read trek comics for years and suddenly this collection captures all the books I collected over the years.

Many years ago, I wrote an article in Strange New Worlds Magazine about the Trek comics. Here collects all of my past loves in their glory..ads included

You can get the checker Enterpeise logs, The IdW Early Voyages and many of the DC graphic novels..they are all in here and cheaper. The colors sparker. It seems they get the better versions to be put in PDF files.

One of the nice extras is the Peter Pan book and record comics. Even with the Pan gaffs (Mr Sulu was a black man, etc) it is nice to capture lightening in a bottle

One could wish they would do all the Thunderbird comics, Captain Scarlet comics , Dick Tracy strips. Disney Movie comics, The Tintin books and Disney Sunday Movie strips in this format..However, I will enjoy these while I can

Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD

If you are either a fan of comics or a fan of Star Trek, you should stop reading this review and order this product immediately. This collection of Star Trek comics leaves nothing out. Even the harcovers that originally were between $20 and $40 are here. Remember that hardcover you wanted to read but didn't want to spend $30+ on? Now you can. Even such fare as Debt Of Honor (hardcover special) and Ashes of Eden are in there. I remember my babysitter reading me Gold Key star trek comics when I was a small child. I still remember asking what a "banji fruit" was. Later, my grandma, who worked at the old Woolworths store bought me three of the Gold Key log books. Suffice it to say, this product made me wax sentimental.
But the Gold Key books are not all. The Marvel, DC, Wildstorm, and Malibu books are all there as well. Did you collect the six issue Next Generation Mini Series? If not, here it is. How about the Modala Imperative? No? Then get it here as well. Many of the later books are at least as good as episodes of the show, and some are so much like the movies you'll hear musical scores for them in your head.
This also does not have the weak point that almost ruined GIT's Mad Magazine collection. Except for the Gold Key Log collections, all the collected graphic novels containing previously collected material are intact. This means that both the original issues and the collected graphic novel versions are intact. In the mad magazine collection, it was annoying to pull up your favorite Super special only to find only ten or so pages were included. They set up a system where clicking on a feature would take you directly to the original issue as opposed to reprinting the article. The only place where there are incomplete books here are the mission logs, and there is a message explaining the original content is in the Gold Key series.
All things considered, this collection is pure Trek and comics history. For my own guilty pleasure, I have to say the Gold Key books, as campy and completely non-canon as they are, are the reason I bought this. I'm not complaining about the inclusion of everything else in the run, however, as I am rediscovering some of the great stuff I missed the first time around. The only mar in the collection? The horrific Next Generation "Christmas" issue. But complete is complete!

I've read most of the reviews here regarding the shoddy packaging, the unpopular choice of scanning the pages 2-up, and the general mediocre quality of the scans themselves ... and yes, they're valid points. But, seriously, don't let this discourage you. To carry around the totality of Star Trek's 40+ year run in comic books for $7 bucks!? (Well, except for the Star Trek/X-Men crossovers, but that may actually be a blessing...) How can anyone give this less than four stars? We're talking about 500+ issues here, gang, some of which (if you can even find them) go for a lot more than $7 per issue. There are some great stories in here, some laughably bad stories in here, but it's ALL here. I've spent probably four or five hours revisiting some of my favorite issues from my childhood, and I haven't even scratched the surface of this collection yet. This is the best bang for my entertainment buck I've seen in years!

OK. Let me start by explaining that I have been in the scanning and printing business for well over 7 years and I have personally scanned or imaged over several million images or pages of text. OK now that's out on to the product.

I feel that the overall content is very good, covers all the issues out there and is all in one place. This contains a lot of great stories some may have missed or you could be just getting started in comics and you chose this genre / group. So lots of value for your buck. Lots of great stories, great content and variety.

Now for the bad news. The biggest gripe I have is the scanning. Starting with scanning the comics leaving the pages connected. To further explain, anyone who has read a comic always focus on the one page unless it is a large landscape action or establishing shot. So to my surprise when I open the first comic and see two pages of comics side by side. At first I thought it was fluke then moved down to the second page of the pdf, yes all comics are in secure pdf with only the option to view and print, this was actually page 2 and 3 of the comic again attached at the comic seem. You could even see the staple hump. I thought huh, this must be how they processed the DC comics and I went on and everyone one I opened was two page up, until I came to the bonus folder and in that had a folder named Peter Pan. These were the only scans that were single page up. I know and have used several scanning applications and even copy machines have a function called BOOK SEPARATION where it creates two pages or images at a predetermined area. This would have made the collection SO much better.

1. It would have allowed the user better printing options if they wanted to do so and are currently allowed to do so.
2. When actually viewing the comic it would have offered the reader the option to fit width of page and then you wouldn't have to screw with zooming and panning. I found you have to PAN AND PAN like mad on a small screen and the idea of reading on a Netbook (my main PC) or Ebook reader like a Nook which was my original idea is totally out.
3. This would have given the reader the option to view 1 page, 2 page or whatever up on the screen.

TPB (larger paperback books around 100 pages) should have been sacrificed and the spines cut to allow a true flat scanning of the page. They did not opt for this so pages throughout the book will have a shadow in the crease just as if you have ever made a copy of a book at the library.

Next issue. Although not a complete deal breaker is the naming convention. Now first off I am glad they didn't do something stupid like keep it to 8 character DOS limit. But if you are not familiar with the Star Trek universe you may have an issue with finding what you want to read. Lots of acronyms like ST_NG, DS9, TPB, TOS and etc. They do a decent job putting the comics into a logical hierarchy so you can find publisher, series or type. The actual names of the files could be more descriptive and less cryptic. UV001.pdf if you didn't know means Untold Voyages Volume 1.

And just as an FYI if you attempt to print you will automatically apply a water mark in the shape of the common Star Trek insignia.

Disc contains close to 590 Pdf files to give lots of reading, however the size on disc is about 6.3gb so be sure you have lots of space to dedicate.
I will attempt to upload a example sample but I don't know it will be allowed.

Nice product. The artwork is scanned from original comics, so some pages are yellow or very badly printed.

I constantly need to adjust pages up/down to read on my 17 in. laptop monitor. There's no really good way to get a full page on the screen. Wish there was a way to click through panel-to-panel.