[Jason Powell, in his final epilogue to his HUGE look at every issue of Claremont's initial X-Men run. This has been a tremendous ride. Thanks for everything Jason. And of course you are always welcome to come back and write about whatever you want, whenever you want.]
This one is from 2003, I believe. Claremont was well past the peak of his popularity, and I’m sure one could make a strong case that his writing skills had atrophied by this point as well.
I don’t care – I love these comics.
The premise here: A Lovecraftian race of otherworldly demons is attempting to make an incursion into our world, at a dimensional junction point located – conveniently – in the same physical space as a resort where Wally “Flash” West and Kyle “Green Lantern” Rainer are vacationing. (This trope is a Claremont favorite, of course. See: The N’Garai, Fall of the Mutants, Inferno, Star Trek: Debt of Honor, etc. ) (Alan Moore, an avowed Lovecraft devotee, also uses this one a lot.)
When it becomes clear to Wally and Kyle that something’s amiss here, they summon Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter and Plastic Man to help out. And once again – just as with Renegade in “Aliens/Predator” and Huntsman in “WildCATs” – Claremont seems to be using this story as a pilot for his own original superhero. This time it’s a female cop – half-Black, half-Native American – whose tribal ancestors fought the Lovecraftian demons several generations back. So yeah, Claremont is doing the “magical Indian” cliché again. Not very politically correct, but … well, look, I happen to have dated a Native American for years, and hell I’ll just say it: they ARE pretty darn magical.
At six issues, the story is maybe a little long given the straightforward nature of the premise. As the simplistic title suggests, this is just the JLA fighting monsters for six issues. Still, I very much like how Claremont uses his large page-count: He demonstrates a really shrewd understanding of the iconic DC characters, and he fills this series with truly charming character bits. Oh, and since I’ve gone to such pains to suggest that Grant Morrison did absolutely nothing “new” on New X-Men, that it was all just a recycling of Claremont … it’s only fair to concede here that Claremont’s JLA characterization in “Scary Monsters” has got to have been influenced here by Morrison’s revisionary take.
Claremont’s vision of the Superman/Batman relationship I find particularly convincing. As someone who has come to hate the whole “Batman is an ass-kicking genius, and Superman is a hick and a wimp” line of thought (thanks a lot, Frank Miller), I love Claremont’s intelligent, articulate Superman. Clark and Bruce are intellectual equals in this story – and they both know it -- yet each is able to offer something unique to the situation at hand. (Unfortunately I don’t have the issues in front of me, else I’d quote some dialogue from my favorite Batman/Superman scene in the series.)
The other characters are done just as well by Claremont. This is a superhero writer who knows how to craft a story so that each member of the team has something significant to contribute, and at his best he comes up with some delightfully original stuff. Claremont’s use of Plastic Man at one point is hilariously novel, and the use of the Martian Manhunter – not only his powers, but his alien origin – is marvelously creative.
No hidden Easter eggs here for X-Men fans, although there is a more blatant nod to Claremont’s roots: At one point, during a very inventive use of The Flash, Wally comments that what he’s doing is straight out of “Lee and Kirby.” I love a reference to the founding fathers of the Marvel Universe, right smack in the middle of a story starring DC’s biggest icons. Nice one, Chris.
Despite leaving matters perhaps a bit too open-ended in order to set up a solo series for his new super-heroine (which he must’ve known was unlikely to ever see fruition), the story nonetheless ends extremely satisfyingly, with a neat twist that even explains a slight inconsistency in the nature of the Martian Manhunter. (Not being a DC fan, I have no idea if Claremont’s take on DC’s martians accords with canon, but personally I thought it was fantastic.)
Although “Scary Monsters” was published in the era of TPBs, I guess the miniseries didn’t sell well enough to warrant a collected edition. That makes this a fairly obscure little gem, and one I’d heartily recommend. The individual issues are worth picking up anyway, just for the awesome covers, all six of which are drawn beautifully by Art Adams. God, it would have been great if Adams could’ve been convinced to do the interiors as well … !
And so ends my little post-1991 Claremont examination.
I think I have now said all I can say about Claremont’s work. And about comics in general, to be quite honest. With this, I’m hanging up my comics-blogger hat. Thanks for reading, guys!
-- fin --
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Miltonic Allusion in Kill Bill: What is Miltonic Allusion?
Miltonic Allusion AKA Transumption AKA metalepsis.
John Hollander calls transumption “the figure of interpretive allusion.” So transumption is when one work intentionally reminds us of another work, not just to say "hey, wasn't that thing awesome?" but to change the way we think about the work we have just been reminded of.
In the process it also changes the way we see the work that is doing the reminding. The artist alludes to previous work in order to increase his own artistic power. The aim of transumption, says Harold Bloom, is to capture an image away from canonical tradition. If the artist does a good enough job interpreting, he will basically own the thing he interprets. See Frank Miller, the definitive Batman guy, for a good example. It does not matter that he did not invent the character. He did it best, so he wins.
J. Hillis Miller writes “[transumption] puts early late … as late’s explanatory predecessor.” Normally, if you were an artist you would complain "Dammit everyone thought of everything else first." But with transumption you change the game. If you do transumption right guys that came first stop being BIG INVENTORS. They become merely your footnotes, the things people only need to understand to fully appreciate YOUR AWESOME WORK.
All of this is very abstract. Let's go to an example. Here is Milton talking about Satan just after his fall.
FROM MILTON’S PARADISE LOST (BOOK 1)
Nathless he so endur’d, till on the Beach
Of that inflamed Sea, he stood and call’d
His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans’t
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th’Etrurian shades
High overarch’t imbow’r;
Milton's leaves, metaphors for fallen angels, are not just ordinary leaves -- he is calling on a poetic tradition of the metaphor of the leaves. These are the leaves mentioned in the Bible, Homer, Virgil and Dante
FROM ISAIAH (34:4)
“And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll; and their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine.”
FROM HOMER’S ILIAD (6.145-150)
As the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.
The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the fine timber
Burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning.
So one generation of men will grow while another dies.
FROM VIRGIL’S AENEID (6.310-319)
Thick as the leaves that with the early frost
Of autumn drop and fall within the forest,
…
They stand; each pleads to be the first to cross
The stream; their hands reach out in longing for
The farther shore. But Charon, sullen boatman,
Now takes these souls, now those; the rest he leaves;
Thrusting them back, he keeps them from the beach.
FROM DANTE’S INFERNO (Canto 3)
“The demon Charon, his eyes like glowing coals, beckons to them and collects them all, beating with his oar whoever lingers. As the leaves fall away in autumn, one after another, till the bough sees all its spoils upon the ground, so there the evil seed of Adam: one by one they cast themselves from that shore at signals, like a bird at its call. Thus they go over the dark water, and before they have landed on the other shore, on this side a new throng gathers.”
Here is Harold Bloom on Milton's use of these guys:
I am still working out exactly what some of that means, but you get the idea: Milton "carries across Dante and Virgil to their tragic Homeric origin." Milton references more than one guy here in order to link them. None of the guys are doing the exact same thing with the image. Homer Virgil and Dante may have thought of everything first but Milton has one big advantage to being the last guy at the party -- he sees more history than they do, and can position them in relation to the bible, which for Milton is the super-truth. Say what you want about that but it is certainly something Homer and Virgil cannot have known. This is how he will beat them. He comes late, but because he comes late he knows more than they do.
Bloom says
In other words Milton wins because he makes it look like Homer Virgil and Dante are squished between the BIBLICAL TRUTH and MILTON'S TRUTH (which is basically a new biblical truth). Squished like that there is barely room for Homer, Virgil and Dante. Milton has no problem if his work makes you thinks of others, because rather than you just noticing similarities and calling him a rip off artist he is going to highlight the similarities and then point out the DIFFERENCES. He is going to interpret them according to his new, super-persuasive vision of HOW THINGS SHOUD FUCKING BE.
And Tarantino is doing the same thing in Kill Bill. More next week.
John Hollander calls transumption “the figure of interpretive allusion.” So transumption is when one work intentionally reminds us of another work, not just to say "hey, wasn't that thing awesome?" but to change the way we think about the work we have just been reminded of.
In the process it also changes the way we see the work that is doing the reminding. The artist alludes to previous work in order to increase his own artistic power. The aim of transumption, says Harold Bloom, is to capture an image away from canonical tradition. If the artist does a good enough job interpreting, he will basically own the thing he interprets. See Frank Miller, the definitive Batman guy, for a good example. It does not matter that he did not invent the character. He did it best, so he wins.
J. Hillis Miller writes “[transumption] puts early late … as late’s explanatory predecessor.” Normally, if you were an artist you would complain "Dammit everyone thought of everything else first." But with transumption you change the game. If you do transumption right guys that came first stop being BIG INVENTORS. They become merely your footnotes, the things people only need to understand to fully appreciate YOUR AWESOME WORK.
All of this is very abstract. Let's go to an example. Here is Milton talking about Satan just after his fall.
FROM MILTON’S PARADISE LOST (BOOK 1)
Nathless he so endur’d, till on the Beach
Of that inflamed Sea, he stood and call’d
His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans’t
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th’Etrurian shades
High overarch’t imbow’r;
Milton's leaves, metaphors for fallen angels, are not just ordinary leaves -- he is calling on a poetic tradition of the metaphor of the leaves. These are the leaves mentioned in the Bible, Homer, Virgil and Dante
FROM ISAIAH (34:4)
“And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll; and their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine.”
FROM HOMER’S ILIAD (6.145-150)
As the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.
The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the fine timber
Burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning.
So one generation of men will grow while another dies.
FROM VIRGIL’S AENEID (6.310-319)
Thick as the leaves that with the early frost
Of autumn drop and fall within the forest,
…
They stand; each pleads to be the first to cross
The stream; their hands reach out in longing for
The farther shore. But Charon, sullen boatman,
Now takes these souls, now those; the rest he leaves;
Thrusting them back, he keeps them from the beach.
FROM DANTE’S INFERNO (Canto 3)
“The demon Charon, his eyes like glowing coals, beckons to them and collects them all, beating with his oar whoever lingers. As the leaves fall away in autumn, one after another, till the bough sees all its spoils upon the ground, so there the evil seed of Adam: one by one they cast themselves from that shore at signals, like a bird at its call. Thus they go over the dark water, and before they have landed on the other shore, on this side a new throng gathers.”
Here is Harold Bloom on Milton's use of these guys:
“Homer accepts grim process; Virgil accepts yet plangently laments; Dante is more terrible since his leaves fall even as the evil seed of Adam falls. Milton remembers standing, younger and then able to see, in the woods of Vallombrosa, watching the autumn leaves strew the brooks. His characteristic metonymy of shades for woods allusively puns on Virgil’s and Dante’s images of the shades gathering for Charon, and by metalepsis carries across Dante and Virgil to their tragic Homeric origin. Once again, the precursors are projected into belatedness, as Milton introjects the prophetic source Isaiah. Leaves fall from trees, generations of men die, because one-third of the heavenly host came falling down. Milton’s present time again is experiential loss; he watches no more autumns, but the optic glass of his art sees fully what his precursors saw only darkly, or in the vegetable glass of nature.”
I am still working out exactly what some of that means, but you get the idea: Milton "carries across Dante and Virgil to their tragic Homeric origin." Milton references more than one guy here in order to link them. None of the guys are doing the exact same thing with the image. Homer Virgil and Dante may have thought of everything first but Milton has one big advantage to being the last guy at the party -- he sees more history than they do, and can position them in relation to the bible, which for Milton is the super-truth. Say what you want about that but it is certainly something Homer and Virgil cannot have known. This is how he will beat them. He comes late, but because he comes late he knows more than they do.
Bloom says
“By arranging his precursors in a series, Milton figuratively reverses his obligation to them, for his stationing crowds them between the visionary truth of his poem (carefully aligned with Biblical truth) and his darkened present. ... Troping upon his forerunners’ tropes, Milton compels us to read as he reads, and to accept his stance and vision as our origin, his time as true time. … Milton’s design is wholly definite, and its effect is to reverse literary tradition, at the expense of the presentness of the present. The precursors return in Milton, but only at his will, and they return to be corrected.”
In other words Milton wins because he makes it look like Homer Virgil and Dante are squished between the BIBLICAL TRUTH and MILTON'S TRUTH (which is basically a new biblical truth). Squished like that there is barely room for Homer, Virgil and Dante. Milton has no problem if his work makes you thinks of others, because rather than you just noticing similarities and calling him a rip off artist he is going to highlight the similarities and then point out the DIFFERENCES. He is going to interpret them according to his new, super-persuasive vision of HOW THINGS SHOUD FUCKING BE.
And Tarantino is doing the same thing in Kill Bill. More next week.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Video Games, Choice, Japan
[Jill Duffy, who you should totally remember from her Twin Peaks blogs, is back with a look at video games.]
Sid Meier, best known for the Civilization series of games, is almost as well known for saying: "a [good] game is a series of interesting choices" (Game Architecture and Design, Rollings & Morris, eds., 2000).
Among video game designers and developers, "choice" is a consummate word. “Choice” is the thing that defines a good game. What the user can choose to do at any particular moment, and how those choices are presented, is the most crucial question that game designers ask themselves as they design and iterate their creations.
Generally speaking, developers agree that the more open the game environment — that is, the more "choice" the player has — the closer the game gets to realizing the ultimate vision of what an interactive world can be. This is especially true of virtual worlds and other games that strive to be immersive.
But there is more than one kind of "choice," and not all players want choice the way that developers assume they do.
Some of us believe in constraints. Back in 2004 Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, gave me a demo of Second Life about a year after the game first debuted. This was before Second Life really found its footing as a true virtual business world, before online universities were holding classes there, before organizations were using it to connect employees who lived far apart. At the time, users (and Rosedale himself) saw it more as a game.
He launched us into Second Life. We flew around for a while. We checked out a virtual rave. And I thought, “But what am I supposed to DO?”
The so-called freedom that comes with sandbox play isn’t for everyone. Even as a child, I sought out board games and organized outdoor play, like tag and kickball, where clearly defined rules protected me from the whims and exploitations of older kids, especially my sister, who could otherwise manipulate the unspoken rules of play.
A game of Grand Theft Auto, where there is “something to do,” a series of tasks to complete, but always the open “choice” to do something else instead, is too much freedom for me. I will always want to complete the tasks as efficiently as possible.
A recent New York Times article about the 2010 Tokyo Game Show got me thinking about this, especially because only a few days earlier I had listened to Sheena Iyengar's TED talk on the art of choosing.
The Times article reflects about Japan's place in the world of video game development, and to an extend consumption. Jake Kazdal, a game developer with a history at both Sega and Electronic Arts, was interviewed for the article:
In light of Iyengar's talk, and other ruminations about choice and false choice (including Malcolm Gladwell's "spaghetti sauce" TED talk), Kazdal's point makes a lot of sense. But I don't think it’s a matter of "taste" so much as culture. The Japanese are not "lagging behind," as Keiji Inafune of Capcom tells the Times reporter. It's that their whole ideology doesn't embrace "choice" the same way that Western cultures do, but they're being asked to both produce and consume games in a global marketplace.
Sid Meier, best known for the Civilization series of games, is almost as well known for saying: "a [good] game is a series of interesting choices" (Game Architecture and Design, Rollings & Morris, eds., 2000).
Among video game designers and developers, "choice" is a consummate word. “Choice” is the thing that defines a good game. What the user can choose to do at any particular moment, and how those choices are presented, is the most crucial question that game designers ask themselves as they design and iterate their creations.
Generally speaking, developers agree that the more open the game environment — that is, the more "choice" the player has — the closer the game gets to realizing the ultimate vision of what an interactive world can be. This is especially true of virtual worlds and other games that strive to be immersive.
But there is more than one kind of "choice," and not all players want choice the way that developers assume they do.
Some of us believe in constraints. Back in 2004 Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, gave me a demo of Second Life about a year after the game first debuted. This was before Second Life really found its footing as a true virtual business world, before online universities were holding classes there, before organizations were using it to connect employees who lived far apart. At the time, users (and Rosedale himself) saw it more as a game.
He launched us into Second Life. We flew around for a while. We checked out a virtual rave. And I thought, “But what am I supposed to DO?”
The so-called freedom that comes with sandbox play isn’t for everyone. Even as a child, I sought out board games and organized outdoor play, like tag and kickball, where clearly defined rules protected me from the whims and exploitations of older kids, especially my sister, who could otherwise manipulate the unspoken rules of play.
A game of Grand Theft Auto, where there is “something to do,” a series of tasks to complete, but always the open “choice” to do something else instead, is too much freedom for me. I will always want to complete the tasks as efficiently as possible.
A recent New York Times article about the 2010 Tokyo Game Show got me thinking about this, especially because only a few days earlier I had listened to Sheena Iyengar's TED talk on the art of choosing.
The Times article reflects about Japan's place in the world of video game development, and to an extend consumption. Jake Kazdal, a game developer with a history at both Sega and Electronic Arts, was interviewed for the article:
"Part of Japan’s problem, Mr. Kazdal said, is a growing gap in tastes between players there and overseas. The most popular games in Japan are linear, with little leeway for players to wander off a defined path. In the United States, he said, video games have become more open, virtual experiences."
In light of Iyengar's talk, and other ruminations about choice and false choice (including Malcolm Gladwell's "spaghetti sauce" TED talk), Kazdal's point makes a lot of sense. But I don't think it’s a matter of "taste" so much as culture. The Japanese are not "lagging behind," as Keiji Inafune of Capcom tells the Times reporter. It's that their whole ideology doesn't embrace "choice" the same way that Western cultures do, but they're being asked to both produce and consume games in a global marketplace.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
WildCATs 10-13
[Jason Powell writes his second to last Claremont X-Men epilogue. Though I was instant messaging him the night before last and he was reading the Claremont Willow novels, threatening to blog about them. The man is an addict, I tell you, an addict.]
Back when these comics were published – 1994, I believe – I was still not entirely recovered from the sad way that Chris Claremont and Jim Lee’s collaboration on X-Men was cut so short. This four-issue “WildCATs” arc was a nice gift from Lee to Claremont fans, reuniting the team from the author’s final issue of X-Men – not just the writer and penciler, but inker Scott Williams and letterer Tom Orzechowski as well.
I hadn’t read any previous WildCATs stuff, so the characters were pretty unfamiliar. And there were a LOT of characters in these four issues. Generally speaking, the story is a bit over-stuffed. For someone coming in fresh, it was too much. Not that the story is hard to follow, really – just that the surfeit of characters made it hard to latch onto any one and find them sympathetic.
Still, it’s a great action movie. The Claremont/Lee chemistry had not atrophied in the three years between X-Men 3 and WildCATs 10. And Claremont certainly seems to be having fun with Lee’s creations (although who knows, maybe he was faking it just for the paycheck).
The point of this storyline was actually to introduce an original Claremont character, the Hunstman, who was theoretically going to be spun off into his own solo series. Had this happened, I believe Claremont would have been the first non-artist to bring an original character and series into the Image fold. For whatever reason, though, the Huntsman solo series never materialized. There WAS a later Huntsman appearance after WildCATs, in a Claremont-penned 3-issue “Cyberforce” arc. Cyberforce was Marc Silvestri’s series, so it was another reunion between the author and a former X-Men collaborator. As a huge devotee of Claremont/Silvestri, I was really looking forward to the Cyberforce arc, but it turned out just terribly.
This WildCATs arc, on the other hand, is a lot of fun. The Huntsman character is your basic “awesome at everything” action hero, very much cut from the Wolverine or Gambit cloth. He is a striking member of Claremont’s ouvre simply in that he is male – though he does have a female companion (“Tai”), and there are implications that she is actually the really significant half of the pair, in some oblique way.
The plot here is all over the place: There are something like six or seven different villains, an alternate timeline, and maybe an evil duplicate at some point too. Despite that, there is a spine to the story, and it leads to a turning point in the relationship of Zealot and Voodoo, two female members of the team (surprise). There is also, if I’m remembering right, an easter egg for X-Men fans at one point. When we’re in the office of Savant, one of the several WildCATs cast members that is much older than she looks, one of the photos on her desk is of her and Wolverine. The image is very reminiscent of the photo of Logan and Rose Wu in Uncanny X-Men 257 (Jim Lee’s third X-Men issue, and his first time drawing Claremont’s Wolverine).
If one is not a fan either of Claremont or of WildCATs, this little arc might read as just a lot of mindless action. But if one is willing to put in the concentration, it’s a fairly rewarding piece, and a fun addendum to the Claremont/Lee X-Men run.
Back when these comics were published – 1994, I believe – I was still not entirely recovered from the sad way that Chris Claremont and Jim Lee’s collaboration on X-Men was cut so short. This four-issue “WildCATs” arc was a nice gift from Lee to Claremont fans, reuniting the team from the author’s final issue of X-Men – not just the writer and penciler, but inker Scott Williams and letterer Tom Orzechowski as well.
I hadn’t read any previous WildCATs stuff, so the characters were pretty unfamiliar. And there were a LOT of characters in these four issues. Generally speaking, the story is a bit over-stuffed. For someone coming in fresh, it was too much. Not that the story is hard to follow, really – just that the surfeit of characters made it hard to latch onto any one and find them sympathetic.
Still, it’s a great action movie. The Claremont/Lee chemistry had not atrophied in the three years between X-Men 3 and WildCATs 10. And Claremont certainly seems to be having fun with Lee’s creations (although who knows, maybe he was faking it just for the paycheck).
The point of this storyline was actually to introduce an original Claremont character, the Hunstman, who was theoretically going to be spun off into his own solo series. Had this happened, I believe Claremont would have been the first non-artist to bring an original character and series into the Image fold. For whatever reason, though, the Huntsman solo series never materialized. There WAS a later Huntsman appearance after WildCATs, in a Claremont-penned 3-issue “Cyberforce” arc. Cyberforce was Marc Silvestri’s series, so it was another reunion between the author and a former X-Men collaborator. As a huge devotee of Claremont/Silvestri, I was really looking forward to the Cyberforce arc, but it turned out just terribly.
This WildCATs arc, on the other hand, is a lot of fun. The Huntsman character is your basic “awesome at everything” action hero, very much cut from the Wolverine or Gambit cloth. He is a striking member of Claremont’s ouvre simply in that he is male – though he does have a female companion (“Tai”), and there are implications that she is actually the really significant half of the pair, in some oblique way.
The plot here is all over the place: There are something like six or seven different villains, an alternate timeline, and maybe an evil duplicate at some point too. Despite that, there is a spine to the story, and it leads to a turning point in the relationship of Zealot and Voodoo, two female members of the team (surprise). There is also, if I’m remembering right, an easter egg for X-Men fans at one point. When we’re in the office of Savant, one of the several WildCATs cast members that is much older than she looks, one of the photos on her desk is of her and Wolverine. The image is very reminiscent of the photo of Logan and Rose Wu in Uncanny X-Men 257 (Jim Lee’s third X-Men issue, and his first time drawing Claremont’s Wolverine).
If one is not a fan either of Claremont or of WildCATs, this little arc might read as just a lot of mindless action. But if one is willing to put in the concentration, it’s a fairly rewarding piece, and a fun addendum to the Claremont/Lee X-Men run.
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Star Trek: Debt of Honor, from DC
[Jason Powell continues his Claremont epilogues.]
This one is a relatively short graphic novel (96 pages, I think?) set after Star Trek IV (the whale one), and published around 1992, maybe. (Sorry, these dates are easily found online, I realize, but I’m just kinda cruising through this stuff.)
People who are Claremont fans but not Star Trek fans possibly need not apply to this one. Claremont is very clearly a huge devotee of Star Trek, and this book is in many ways just authorized fan fiction. (But then, that is true of a lot of the licensed Star Trek stuff, really.)
On the other hand, if you’re a Trek fan (which I am), this is great fun. The gimmick here is that at key moments in Star Trek history (which we are shown in sequential flashbacks), Captain Kirk had multiple encounters with the same species of hostile alien. But so shrewd were these creatures that they were always able to cover their tracks, and Kirk has never been able to prove that these guys exist, or convince anyone that they pose a credible threat. (We learn that they inhabit another dimension, much like the limbo demons and N’Garai in X-Men, which is an idea I liked so much I pinched it for my musical, “Invader? I Hardly Know Her.”)
The only other person who knows about these aliens is another starship captain: Basically a female equivalent of Kirk (of course!) who also happens to be a Romulan. Kirk goes rogue to team up with both her and a Klingon captain (whom I think Claremont made up, although he might be from an old “Trek” episode …) to take down these aliens once and for all.
The fan-fictional elements include cameos by a ton of old Trek characters, an explanation for why Klingons used to have smooth foreheads and now don’t (years before “Enterprise” offered a different explanation; I like Claremont’s better). And I think there is at least one Mary Sue in this book as well. (Not being an expert on original Trek, I have trouble distinguishing the cameos of canonical characters from the Claremont originals … there are a LOT of people who turn up here.)
Oh, and there is also a reference to “Cat’s Laughing,” a band whose members Claremont is personal friends with, and who also have cameos in issues of Claremont’s “Excalibur” series in 1988. Claremont likes to link his different stories via musicians.
Despite all the indulgences, though, this is a tight adventure story, a great example of intelligent and rousing space opera. The artwork here is by human dynamo Adam Hughes (with inks by Karl Story), which means that the evil other-dimensional aliens are suitably terrifying, and the sexy Romulan captain is suitably gorgeous. Just visually alone, this is a beautiful package, but the intelligent story is what makes it worth the read. Plus, Claremont writes an awesome Spock. In another universe, a movie adaptation of this book would have made a spectacular Star Trek V or VI, and a much better final adventure for the original crew.
Sometime later, Claremont contributed a story to an issue of DC’s “Star Trek: The Next Generation” comic series (one of the annuals), wherein a teenage ensign from Debt of Honor (very Kitty Pryde-esque) comes back – now much older, of course – and resolves a semi-dangling thread from the original graphic novel. The details are fuzzy in my memory, though I think they involve the woman – a human -- getting adopted by a Klingon house, which leads to her crossing paths with Worf, a Klingon adopted by humans.
I guess you could call it an epilogue to “Debt of Honor.” It’s a well-written piece, with a very satisfying ending, although I don’t think it would make even the tiniest impression on anyone who hadn’t already read “Debt.” But it is a great little addendum. I personally would have preferred a full-length sequel to “Debt” set in the Next Generation era, but perhaps that was not viable.
This one is a relatively short graphic novel (96 pages, I think?) set after Star Trek IV (the whale one), and published around 1992, maybe. (Sorry, these dates are easily found online, I realize, but I’m just kinda cruising through this stuff.)
People who are Claremont fans but not Star Trek fans possibly need not apply to this one. Claremont is very clearly a huge devotee of Star Trek, and this book is in many ways just authorized fan fiction. (But then, that is true of a lot of the licensed Star Trek stuff, really.)
On the other hand, if you’re a Trek fan (which I am), this is great fun. The gimmick here is that at key moments in Star Trek history (which we are shown in sequential flashbacks), Captain Kirk had multiple encounters with the same species of hostile alien. But so shrewd were these creatures that they were always able to cover their tracks, and Kirk has never been able to prove that these guys exist, or convince anyone that they pose a credible threat. (We learn that they inhabit another dimension, much like the limbo demons and N’Garai in X-Men, which is an idea I liked so much I pinched it for my musical, “Invader? I Hardly Know Her.”)
The only other person who knows about these aliens is another starship captain: Basically a female equivalent of Kirk (of course!) who also happens to be a Romulan. Kirk goes rogue to team up with both her and a Klingon captain (whom I think Claremont made up, although he might be from an old “Trek” episode …) to take down these aliens once and for all.
The fan-fictional elements include cameos by a ton of old Trek characters, an explanation for why Klingons used to have smooth foreheads and now don’t (years before “Enterprise” offered a different explanation; I like Claremont’s better). And I think there is at least one Mary Sue in this book as well. (Not being an expert on original Trek, I have trouble distinguishing the cameos of canonical characters from the Claremont originals … there are a LOT of people who turn up here.)
Oh, and there is also a reference to “Cat’s Laughing,” a band whose members Claremont is personal friends with, and who also have cameos in issues of Claremont’s “Excalibur” series in 1988. Claremont likes to link his different stories via musicians.
Despite all the indulgences, though, this is a tight adventure story, a great example of intelligent and rousing space opera. The artwork here is by human dynamo Adam Hughes (with inks by Karl Story), which means that the evil other-dimensional aliens are suitably terrifying, and the sexy Romulan captain is suitably gorgeous. Just visually alone, this is a beautiful package, but the intelligent story is what makes it worth the read. Plus, Claremont writes an awesome Spock. In another universe, a movie adaptation of this book would have made a spectacular Star Trek V or VI, and a much better final adventure for the original crew.
Sometime later, Claremont contributed a story to an issue of DC’s “Star Trek: The Next Generation” comic series (one of the annuals), wherein a teenage ensign from Debt of Honor (very Kitty Pryde-esque) comes back – now much older, of course – and resolves a semi-dangling thread from the original graphic novel. The details are fuzzy in my memory, though I think they involve the woman – a human -- getting adopted by a Klingon house, which leads to her crossing paths with Worf, a Klingon adopted by humans.
I guess you could call it an epilogue to “Debt of Honor.” It’s a well-written piece, with a very satisfying ending, although I don’t think it would make even the tiniest impression on anyone who hadn’t already read “Debt.” But it is a great little addendum. I personally would have preferred a full-length sequel to “Debt” set in the Next Generation era, but perhaps that was not viable.
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