This was a very interesting subversion of stories like The Last Starfighter, where a young “chosen one” is called to save not their own people but another, not through violence but through peace. It wasn’t perfectly done, but it was a compelling story and invoked the then-contemporary Gulf War in all the right ways.

I had an awful experience with the last Sam Vimes adaptation, so I wasn’t sure about this—especially since it is one of the longer adaptations in the collection I have. I think the key is the adapter, though, because Robin Brooks’s shows have been my favorites, and this one was quite good.

I really got why people like Sam Vimes stories, I appreciated nods to Discworld continuity even if I didn’t understand them, and I am a real sucker for “time travelling into your own past” stories. It was even not terribly problematic for a cop story, which was nice. I am finding some renewed faith in Discworld!

And thus ends my Queen & Country reread! I remember being disappointed by the final volume when I first read it, and I’m glad that it held up better this time around. I also appreciated some of the technical details that came up in the supplemental materials. There is so much that goes into comics that I just don’t notice!

Word of mouth and website games are exactly what got me to watch Napoleon Dynamite.

This ended in a confusing rush that spoiled all the fun that I was having, but up until that point it was great. Not high art by many means, but exactly the sort of thing two comics companies should do as a crossover so long as they had the licenses to make it happen.

Comics are an undervalued medium capable of telling powerful stories with great beauty—and also they let you do dumb-but-fun franchise crossovers like this one here.

I have more Star Trek IDW comics to read, but I’ve completed this whole series! It ended on a good note, with a tribute to Leonard Nimoy and then some semi-fourth-wall breaking explorations of what it means for there to be two timelines in “main” Star Trek canon.

I have a lot of complaints about this volume, not least making Khan look like Benedict Cumberbatch. It also has some of the stronger stories of this series, so I’m trying to give it some benefit of the doubt.

I was excited about the prospect of a Mirror Universe good guy Khan in this comic, but it sure seems like they put a Benedict Cumberbatch drawing in brownface, and ugh.

Another day, another TPB’s worth of Star Trek comics. Not terrible, but not keeping my attention either.

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. That was a good thing to think about.

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.