Where No Dredd Has Gone Before?!?!

Since IDW seems dedicated to using their Star Trek license for every team-up conceivable--Star Trek/Green Lantern! Star Trek/Doctor Who! Star Trek/Planet of The Apes! Star Trek/Legion Of Super-Heroes! Star Trek/Transformers!!--is it to much to ask that they next make this one real?

After all, IDW does have both licences right now...

I mean, instead of doing their, what, 19th Mirror Universe story, they could give us...

OK, not this, precisely. This was fun enough, but never really rose above the level of a one-off Mad Magazine parody.

Which is fine. But why settle for that, when you've got the chance to do the ultimate "optimistic future meets pessimistic future" 6-issue mini-series and highly marketable trade paperback?

Hopefully, it would have a better ending for the Federation boys than this one...

C'mon, IDW--what do you say?

From 2000 AD #1232 (2001)

Where No Pin-Up Has Gone Before!

So, you wanted to see Walt Simonson draw Star Trek?

DONE!

How about Dave Cockrum?

DONE!!!

OK, OK, just one more...How about Kevin Maguire & Terry Austin?!?

Admit it--now you want to see a BWA HA HA version of Star Trek...

From Star Trek #24 (1991)

Manic Monday Bonus--Everyone In The 60s Wanted To Do This Story, Apparently!!

A few months ago, we discussed how remarkably similar the Star Trek episode Miri and a Supergirl story were to each other. They even came out on the same day!!

Well, the coincidences just won't stop. Just over a year later, in the very first appearance of Guy Gardner...

So, wait. Once again, a planet where a disease wiped out all the adults, leaving the children in charge, and they never aged??

Now, as I said, this was a year after the Trek and Supergirl stories, so there was certainly time for their "influence" to have been felt here. And as I noted last time, it's certainly possible that all 3 stories were just tapping into the "don't trust anyone over 30 because adults will destroy the world" and "if kids take over they'll ruin everything because the new generation sucks" zeitgeists that were floating around in the late 60s. Thank gosh that today we're past all that sort of generational blaming, eh?

Anyway, this planet's kids or substantially more destructive than the kids in Miri, because they've also got a healthy dollop of the episode A Taste Of Armageddon:

They don't realize that war and destruction are evil?!? Yup, this must be where DC got the idea that Superman had to snap Zod's neck in order to learn that murder is bad...

Anyway, Guy whips up some space armor to block the kids from mentally dominating him (because the story is borrowing from And The Children Shall Lead, too!), and puts an end to this war.

Mighty convenient.

Hmm, by the way, did you notice the way that robot emphasized that it was a yellow plague that killed all the adults? I wonder why...?

Oh. Man, they just took that yellow thing waaaaay too far, didn't they?

And so...

Oh, wait, I forgot to mention---this story never really happened!! Hal's just watching some magic Guardians machine that shows him what would have happened if Abin Sur's ring had called Guy Gardner instead of him!!

Oh, you goofy Elseworlds stories!! See, it can't be plagiarism if it's an imaginary story!!

From Green Lantern #59 (1968)

Supergirl Vs. Miri?!?

OK, there are plenty of coincidences out there. There are a finite number of ideas, and it's only makes sense that sometimes different folks will come up with similar ideas at virtually the same time, at different places. Think Swamp Thing/Man-Thing, whose debuts were separated by two months, or Doom Patrol/X-Men, which came only three months apart.

But sometimes you come across coincidences that are so unlikely, so staggeringly impossible, that you wish you'd bought a lottery ticket that day.

We start with the classic Star Trek episode Miri. Here's a trailer:


Long story short, the Enterprise finds a planet 100% exactly identical to Earth (which is kind of silly, and completely gratuitous to the story, unless you really want to hammer on the "it could happen here" lesson). A few centuries ago, a plague (created by ill-advised biological experiments) killed off all the adults, so only kids survived.

Meanwhile, in Action Comics #344, Supergirl, while doing stuff in space, encounters...a planet exactly like Earth!!

Well, that can happen. But that's probably the only similarity, right?

Except Kara finds that teenagers are the authorities on this world!!

And not only that...

A plague wiped out the adults!!
On a world identical to Earth.
And now the youngsters are in charge!!

Now, clearly, these are not identical stories--there are substantial differences. But for these two tales with similar starting premises, to come out at close to the same time, boggles the mind.

Of course, someone at DC could have been acquainted with someone at Desilu (and vice versa, of course), and overheard something, and maybe subconsciously adopted parts of the others' idea. Or it could just be two different sets of creators tapping into the same bit of flotsam in the contemporary zeitgeist.

Say, which story came first? How close were they in appearing?

Miri first aired on NBC on October 27, 1966.

And according to the Library Of Congress, Action #344 was published on...October 27, 1966.


Mind. Blown.

I mean, what are the freakin' odds..?

BONUS FACT: The BBC banned the Miri episode for 2 decades after some viewers complained. Also banned: Plato's Stephcildrem, Whom Gods Destroy, and The Empath. Go figure. Sorry, British Trek fans of that era.

BONUS FACT II: In the Action Comics story, Linda Danvers was elected president of America on this "duplicate Earth":

This was 5 1/2 years before Prez. And nearly 8 years before they met:

You'd think Supergirl would have mentioned having been a teenage president herself to him...

In The Days Before Food Replicators!!

Commander Scott's temporary pet dog (long story) just saved an entire planet!

But Captain Butthead is not impressed!!

(Obviously, this sensible rule was enacted post-TheTrouble With Tribbles...)

Ha ha ha...wait, he is kidding, right? Right?!?

From Star Trek #18 (1973)

When Nova Fought Megaman On Star Trek!!

You know who really freaked me out as a kid?

THIS guy freaked me out.

 All right, all right, make your Capcom video game hero jokes. Get it out of your system. This was a full decade earlier!

So who was Mr. No Face?

Well, about 6 months ago, Caps Cooper and his uncle Nat were hiking in the wilderness, when they stumbled upon one of those incendiary time-portal pools that you hear so much about:

Fortunately, when he wakes up a kajillion years in the future...where Marv Wolfman...ahem...homages...about three different Star Trek episodes:

That "we don't know how to rebuild humans properly" is straight from The Cage/The Menagerie...

Well, Nat manged to sneak away and come back to our time, where he called himself Megaman, and tried to get back with his awful wife and family.

Let's emphasize that the helpful molecule was a female molecule, just so we can crib from another Star Trek episode, Metamporphosis...

After a couple of issues of pointless fisticuffs, we completely and totally using the ending from Charlie X:

For comparison...the end of Charlie X:



All righty then.

Megaman turned up quite awhile later in a Quasar story, because of course Mark Greunwald lived to revive obscure Marvel characters. Then he had a teeny tiny cameo during Secret Invasion. Since then...nothing.

C'mon, Marvel...bring back the no-face who freaked me out as a kid. There are generations who haven't been freaked out yet (and hundreds of more Star Trek episodes to borrow stories from)!!

From Nova #8-9 (1977)

Manic Monday Bonus--Lest We Forget...

Just a reminder:

We're only 350 years away from the Battle Of Wolf 359. Start your preparations now.

[Before anybody complains, Voyager is there thanks to a time vortex/anomaly/rift thingy. Don't worry, they didn't change history or anything...]

From Star Trek: Voyager #10 (1997)

Sexy, Sexy Spock!!

See?

It wasn't just Kirk who got his shirt ripped open all the time!

From Star Trek #76 (1995)

Crazy Crossover Fever!!

I'm not sure which insane cross-intellectual property cross-over was the more joyously nuts yesterday...

I mean, it's hard to beat Tarzan fighting General Ursus:

And yet, when you have John Stewart, Guy Gardner and Kilowog summoned to a meeting with a Star Fleet admiral:

And Hal Jordan discussing logic and temporal mechanics with Spock:

AND Carol Ferris knocking boots with Scotty:

Well, I'm only human, guys. Star Trek/Green Lantern for the nerd win!!

From Tarzan On The Planet Of The Apes #5 (2017) and Star Trek/Green Lantern #2 (2017)