Let's consider the seemingly unusual case of Starfleet Captain Jean Luc Picard...
Perhaps, over the long years, he'd grown weary of always "being in second place" when it came to beloved Star Trek captains...
Not satisfied to be comfortably ahead of Captains Pike; Sisko, Janeway, Archer, Georgiou, and even "whatever version of Captain Lorca" we might have seen, Picard may have obsessed over James T. Kirk long enough that, in his "older age" (note the hair and beard), he finally decided to do something about it!
Such is apparently the case, as seen in STAR TREK #47 (Gold Key Comics: Cover Date: September, 1977)! ...Published a decade BEFORE any of us even heard of Jean Luc Picard! Talk about a prescient comic!
Here, Picard "makes it so" with a vengeance!
7 comments:
Ooh! That's a lovely cover at that. I love those ethereal, painted silhouettes; they could've easily been ordinary "energy beings" in solid colors (as indeed they are in the plash panel of the actual comic), or contained generic starscapes and planets, but the unusual color choices really make them stand out without making the whole look too silly.
While we're on the topic of spuerious actor likenesses… is it just me, or does the man running from the entity in the splash panel in question look just a little bit like Matt Smith? (And as you probably know, the Eleventh Doctor *did* meet Captain Picard in a special IDW crossover miniseries ten years ago. It's all connected!)
Oh, and the “T(h)ree Bears” got an audible chuckle.
P.S.: It's proved surprisingly hard to locate a picture of Stewart with hair that looked *anything* like that of "the Immortal", but I've at least found a picture with *some* kind of a beard to check against, in the right angle, and it does rub in the similarities. Astounding coincidence.
https://i.imgur.com/qnORBMD.png
Achille:
Great to see you back in our Comments Section!
One thing Western Publishing did VERY WELL, and better than any other publisher even through its later period of relative decline, was the parade of quality painted covers, of which this is a sterling example!
Wellll… “the man running from the entity in the splash panel in question” is supposed to be Captain Kirk… but, yes, there is some resemblance to Matt Smith.
The entire basis for this post is the uncanny resemblance of the character to Patrick Stewart / Jean Luc Picard, noticed when I filed this issue as part of (all together now) The Great Comics Organization and Storage Retirement Project… I just created a backstory for it, and ran with it.
HERE is Achille’s link to an image of Patrick Stewart made-up with hair and a beard. I first thought that it might have been from the classic fan-favorite episode of STAR TREK TNG “The Inner Light”, but he didn’t have hair in that. Anyway, it’s the bald top of his head that really sells the comics image to me as Picard. I’m guessing it might be from “Dune”, or something else I didn’t see.
I'm glad to be back too. I do keep up even when I'm silent, but, you know how it is…
Oh, that's supposed to be *Kirk*. Oh dear. I really couldn't tell. It feels obvious now — but who put him in an *orange* jumper? I haven't seen that much Trek, but I am fairly confident in my knowledge that he's meant to be yellow! (…But not that kind of yellow, even if he's running away at the moment.)
Achille:
Yellow is indeed the color for command-level uniform jerseys during the period of STAR TREK THE ORIGINAL SERIES – though it would change by Jean Luc Picard’s time of STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION.
…And, honestly, I see it as yellow rather than orange. But, maybe that's my “Star Trek-trained mind” filling it in that way.
On the subject of Gold Key, I'm not sure if you've heard, but they are officially back in business: https://www.comicsbeat.com/gold-key-comics-is-back-with-boris-karloffs-gold-key-mysteries/?fbclid=IwAR2bDm1lWjX2WdyFGewQ04ZhIlj05Sm46W4piZyzx1dRU2bmSxndofNzsAk
Sergio:
Yes, I am DELIGHTED to see Gold Key is finally back! I had begun to wonder if it were ever going to happen, as I posted on it a while back!
I fully plan to support their efforts with BORIS KARLOFF TALES OF MYSTERY, a title I liked anyway, and hope they expand in directions also once dominated by the original incarnation of Gold Key!
HERE is Sergio’s link to tell you more about the New Gold Key!
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