Finishing this up tonight, I appreciated reading through the sample script and other supplementary materials included at the end of the book. I have the horrible habit of consuming media without any technical appreciation for how it is made. I write for a living, so I have some appreciation for what writing fiction must be like, but I have zero understanding of film (or at least very little), and it occurred to me while reading this script that I read a lot of comics without really understanding the creative process there.

It’s probably unfair to get pickier about these comics over time, because this is the kind of story I would have liked to see when I first began reading through, but now it’s boring compared to some of the more interesting arcs. Alas.

On vient d’annoncer que l’ascenseur au travail sera en panne toute la semaine prochaine. Il faudra que je réfléchisse sur les conséquences pour mon vélotaf.

This picks up near the end with some interesting ethical dilemmas (though it’s not clear how much of a dilemma they actually are), but it feels like the interesting premise of the first volume has kind of run out of steam. I’m still considering picking up the third volume (and I wonder if I’ve been too harsh on this one), but I can’t say it’s kept my attention as much as I’d hoped.

I REALLY like “Take on Me,” but I can’t watch the music video without complaining that comic books don’t look like that (except maybe the low-quality first Tintin album, but even then, not really).

Now this is how a comic book company uses a Star Trek license: Using a universe-hopping Q to take the Kelvinverse Enterprise to a bad future Deep Space Nine setting for plenty of extradimensional being nonsense and fanservice. Keiko O’Brien is a starship captain! Q merges with one of the Prophets! It’s not high art, but it’s exactly what I want from the medium.

I have been meaning for months to embrace Kagi, and this is pushing me further over that edge.

There is one really good story in here and one okay one, but I finally found the limits of my impatient with Star Trek and/or comics nonsense, and it was a Star Wars-like “let’s take a character who barely appears on screen and explain why they are the most important person in the world” story smack in the middle of the volume. Not going to stop reading the series, but it’s definitely slowing me down.

I ran some errands yesterday morning, visiting two stores and a library that were all relatively close to where I live. I regularly bike a much longer distance to get to work and back, so by any right, I should have done the same for these small errands. If there had been some bike racks at the shopping center where two of the errands were, I almost certainly would have done so, but faced with the (relatively minor) inconvenience of not having anywhere to lock my bike while in a grocery store or optician’s office, I took the coward’s route and drove.

Lots of comic book nonsense mixed with Star Trek nonsense, but it’s still a fun read, and that’s what I care about right now.

Some interesting original stories in here, even if the pon farr one obviously riffs on TOS material (I even admit that it does an interesting job of considering the alternate continuity’s implications for that storyline). Some of the art was weird, but I’m used to that at this point.

Okay, I finally listened to one of these that convinced me how good Discworld can be. This is a clever, expert skewering of what religion so often is—but holds out hope for what religion can be. I ought to read the original book, because I imagine I’d be copying a lot of passages down.

The problem with trying to make comic characters look like their screen counterparts is in those panels when Spock looks nothing like Zachary Quinto (or either of the other options, for that matter).

Some more dodgy art in this one, but also some fun exploration of backstories. It’s not the best the comics medium has to offer, but I’m enjoying it a lot.

I have some complaints about this show, but I was so relieved to find myself smiling at the jokes that I’m giving it some grace. It’s a wonder I keep listening to these, but I spent a lot of time driving this weekend and needed something to listen to—besides, I’ve owned this collection for years without ever getting past Mort. I don’t know how much longer I’ll keep going, but I want to give it a try, at least.

I’m beginning to wonder if I just don’t like Discworld, which would be a tragedy, since Pratchett is revered, and it seems like I should like his style of fiction. I at least know that I didn’t really like this series, which also seems a shame, since I’ve always wanted to get into the Sam Vimes stories. I suspect some of it may be the adaptation: It seems just too hard to follow.

One of the stories in this collection has the creepiest attempt at capturing the Kelvinverse actors yet, and that was pretty hard to get through. The stories in this volume were all pretty good, though, so I can try to look past it. Playing with the Mirror Universe within the Kelvinverse was a fun idea in particular.

This weekend, I read some Star Trek comics, did some cool stuff in Kerbal Space Program, and bought a new tin of my favorite chocolate mint tea. It’s exactly what I needed to let my mind relax for a bit.

There’s something inherently fanservice-y about spinoff comics, especially comics that are interested in reimagining beloved stories for a reboot. Not all fanservice is bad, though. I think the art is getting better, I appreciate those riffs, and if it’s not the best Star Trek, it’s fun to spend time with Star Trek.

This continues to be better than I expected. I’m just not likely to watch TOS anytime soon, so it’s interesting to see these takes on old stories, even if the off-model Chris Pine and company art bugs me. There’s also finally some branching into original stories, which is interesting.

I expected to rate this lower, because there’s a lot stacked against it. From what I can tell, the first stories are rehashes of TOS episodes within the Kelvinverse continuity, so you’ve got episodic 1960s plot points transported into a comic book spinoff for a reboot movie. The uncanny valley take on the 2009 Star Trek actors in the art isn’t doing it any favors either. It was a fun read nonetheless.

I think I’ve finally finished all of my Hugo taxonomy-and-template side projects. Time to write up a summary post and then find something else to do as productive procrastination.

This is the kind of week where I really needed a Friday morning runner’s high, so thank goodness for that.

I can’t claim to have read all of the “choose your own adventure” comics in the world, but I’ve read a few in my time, and this is a good one! (Though I really need to figure out how to finish Jason Shiga’s latest…) The art and the dialogue capture Lower Decks perfectly—I could hear the characters’ voices in my head as I read. I loved the puzzle-y bits, too, where you have to explore multiple paths (and also “cheat” at certain times) to get to a true ending.

Okay, also: In the ranking of Khans, Cumberbatch is way down at the bottom, and Montalbán should be clearly at the top, but this Lower Decks!Khan is at least a close second… and might even be my favorite?

Every once in a while I surprise myself with how well I can read music, despite all I’ve forgotten since long ago piano lessons. Getting the musical jokes in Ryan North’s Lower Decks comic is the most delightful this has ever been, though.

C’mon Daylight Savings, read the room.

This felt more consistent than the second season. The in-jokes and continuity nods continued to be great, especially the Deep Space Nine episode and its riffs on that series’s opening credits. I love so much that this is a Star Trek show about loving Star Trek (even its dumb bits).

Nothing like a windy day for a “don’t get blown into traffic” bike commute home.

As I wrote in my last review of this volume, this really steps things up. It better captures the ugliness and senseless brutality that The Sandbaggers also did—it also liberally cribs from Sandbaggers plot points, but I see it more as loving homage than plagiarism. I still don’t think it’s as good as The Sandbaggers, and the changing art style sometimes bugs me, but I think this might be the peak of the series.

I don’t know if I didn’t like the adaptation or if I wouldn’t have liked the source material, but this just felt like a slog to get through, and I didn’t really enjoy it.

This bounced off of me at first, which surprised me, because I remembered liking it when listening to it years ago. I think it might have been a case of the Mondays, though, because by the last episode, I was totally on board. It’s funny, adapted well to radio, and worth the listen.

This is mostly because I grew up in Northern Kentucky, but my favorite Lower Decks throwaway joke so far is the idea of an adopted Orion growing up in Cincinnati.

I’ve been revisiting a lot of my comics collection in recent months, and after finally finishing XIII, I thought I’d revisit this series. In fact, I’ve been wanting to reread Queen & Country basically since I first read it. This first volume in particular has seen a lot of revisiting, especially the early pages. That made it hard to appreciate the volume this time around, and it was harder to get through.

Posting this in the interest of fairness, but I’m still not happy with Mozilla right now.

Le sigh.