These Were the Voyages, pt. 7: Who's Who

DC put out these two Who's Whos in 1987. Wonderful stuff. If you're familiar with the whole Who's Who/ Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe approach, you know what to expect: encyclopedia-style entries for characters and concepts of the Trekverse as it existed up to that point of time. 

Re: that last point, the up-to-1987-ness: this is Trek as it existed just prior to TNG. I don't know how much of the Trek-watching audience these days can still look at such thing and say "This was the Trek of my childhood/ adolescence, or even (shudder) college years." I bet it still happens, but to that portion of the audience to whom it happened not by choice but by virtue of being the only Trek to exist up to that point, it's an interesting window. 

Would such a project coming out only a couple of years later include Kevin Riley?

Or how about Mr. Leslie? Extra points to the writer, here (see credits for everything at end of this post) - the actor who played Mr. Leslie was Kirk's stunt double in many episodes. 

Even with the limited source pool, they had to leave several folks for the inside back cover.
Poor Landru.

The covers are by Howard Chaykin. I used to be a big Chaykin fan but grew steadily disenchanted over the years. So full disclosure, maybe he just annoys me. The overall design is fine for these, but some things baffle me.

Who are these folks? Just Starfleet randos? Why are they on the cover?
Is it supposed to be Sulu? If it is, why put him a new outfit?

Okay, that's Saavik, but... Cyrano Jones? And slimmed down? I mean, who else would it be, with a Tribble in his hand. Who' the blonde, though? Marsha Mason? And again: CYRANO JONES? Arms akimbo with Saavik? It's just crazy talk. 

Someone might point out "Hey, that's not Sulu/ Cyrano Jones." And they might be right. The better choice would've been to make all six characters easily recognizable to avoid the issue and to (always) leave Cyrano Jones out of it. If you showed me the first picture and told me it was Trek, no time frame, I'd assume it was probably Travis from Enterprise and Harry Kim from Voyager, maybe. (Do the limbs and legs in both pics look off, to boot? Pick pick pick.) 

I left out some of the better ones, below, like George Perez's rendering of Gary Seven, John Byrne's of Sarek, Ron Frenz's of Yeoman Rand, and more. I figure if you don't have it, those will be your reward for getting there. Aren't I thoughtful! Also: lazy. (Insert bitching about from-iPhone-to-Gmail-to-Paint-to-blog process here.) A lot of these artists I've never heard of. Some are not quite my cup of tea, but it's cool for the lesser-knowns they got to write their names in the Big Book of Trek. 

Let's start with some cast members:

These depictions of Natira look more like Majel Barrett than her other entries:

The less said about this one the better.
Although to be fair she was pretty sexed-up in "The Paradise Syndrome" as well.

Scotty and Bones by Gray Morrow, Kirk by Tom Sutton.

"YOUR MANUAL OVERRIDES
ARE EXTREMELY LIMITED IN LIFE!"

Let me give you the artist credits:

Andorians by Mike Clark. Bones and Scotty by Gray Morrow. Carol Marcus by Kevin Maguire. Covers by Howard Chaykin. Excalibans by Jim Reddington. Ilia by Ron Randall. Kirk by Tom Sutton. Klingons by Dan Jurgens. Redjac by Marc Pacella (and Klaus Janson). Riley by Jan Duursema. Romulans by Walt Simonson. Talosians by Bill Wray. Orions (and USS Surak, below) by Todd McFarlane. 

These others are by Jim Brozowski and Ken Penders.

~

That's a wrap on tonight's 80s DC Trek revisit. I jumped ahead a bit - these actually came out either alongside Star Trek IV or thereabouts. Next time we'll jump back in where we left off, Star Trek, DC v1, issue 26. 

Excellent job, everyone, particularly Allan and Robert.

Harry Mudd, FFS.