Christmas Comics Cavalcade – Star Trek: The Next Generation #2 (DC Comics)

In the past two years, I’ve become a fan of Star Trek.

Previously, I never had much use for Star Trek. I was always more of a Star Wars kid growing up and, if I’m being honest, I found a lot of the Trek canon to be nothing but a slow, boring slog as a teenager. Star Trek was the first Geek Certified property I never quite got a handle on enjoying… and it perplexed me!

“By all rights,” I thought to myself back in 1992,  “I should be incredibly interested in Star Trek! Look at all these other socially unacceptable pursuits I undertake that make me comically unappealing to the opposite sex! Comics! Toys! Video games! Science Fiction! Star Trek fits right in there!”

…and what was worse, I now realize it was never a better time to be a Star Trek fan than in the 1990’s. Ample opportunities to become a Trekkie existed in the during that decade, with a hefty amount of new spin-offs and movies being cranked out by Paramount.  Still, nothing ever really appealed to me outside of kind of enjoying Star Trek: First Contact when I saw it in theaters.

Trek caught my attention in a big way in 2016 when I suddenly found myself very discouraged about the state of humanity in general. 2016 seemed to usher in a cruel, stupid new paradigm for my country and I didn’t like what I was seeing.

As with many before me, I found solace from the harsher realities of the world in some of the loftier ideals of Star Trek. The idea that some day… some day, humankind sheds the base, antagonistic bullshit we always seem to be caught up in and we get to explore the stars?

During much of the last two years, I’ve needed that kind of hopeful escape.

At any rate, I started getting into Star Trek: The Next Generation in a big, bad way.

Christmas doesn’t come up much in Star Trek. Besides a couple of throwaway lines and scenes over the last 50 years, no Star Trek series has ever directly tackled a holiday episode. That’s why I’m doubly excited today as both a fan of Star Trek and a fan of Christmas comics to look at Star Trek: The Next Generation #2, published in 1987 by DC Comics

…an honest-to-God Star Trek Christmas story. Look at Captain Picard defend that Christmas tree!

The comic was written by Mike Carlin with art duties from Pablo Marcos, Carlos Garzon, and Arne Starr.

Christmas Comics Cavalcade: Batman Family #4

This week, we’re going to be looking at Batman Family #4, published in March-April of 1976 (ah, the vagaries of copyright information!) by DC Comics.

This one of the DC Giant issues that featured newly commissioned stories in addition to reprints of classic tales, sort of an inexpensive way to publish a big ol’ comic for not a lot of money.

Batman Family was an anthology series which primarily featured solo and team-up tales starring Robin the Boy Wonder and Batgirl. This was a fun period for both characters, well before they would be swept away by their 1980’s characterizations… Robin mainly defined as the leader of The New Teen Titans and Batgirl/Barbara Gordon by her spine-shattering encounter with The Joker in Batman: The Killing Joke.

Indeed, during the 1970’s, various DC Comics’ writers had worked up a pretty fun take on both Robin and Batgirl’s solo adventures. Let’s check ‘em out!