Lots and lots of random spoilerific things about Star Trek comics
Gold Key's old run was written by people who had never actually seen the show. Later they involved fans like Doug Drexler to make things a bit more authentic
This however made them, IMHO, amazing
Blond scotty. Wearing green.
Voodoo planet, with papier mache versions of Earth landmarks which, when blasted with a death ray, cause the real ones to collapse
Spock learns voodoo to combat this threat
The Enterprise completely razes a planet of hostile plant spore things. Like full on extermination of all life
There's a locked room on deck 7 full of evil Vulcan spirits. A yeoman blunders in and all hell breaks loose
Kirk doesn't know what a god damn black hole is
Spock is kidnapped by aliens, has their entire knowledge downloaded into his brain which makes him into a bobblehead for awhile
The Enterprise is briefly taken from Kirk and given to Captain Zarlo, who is a total bellend
Spock forgets to have pointed ears sometimes
The old UK newspaper comic strips were even worse. The first few issues feature "Captain Kurt" and he wears a red shirt. Bailey is also a lead character, giving away which one episode they had knowledge of
Depictions of the Enterprise in their very first strip will shock and horrify you, but after that the art becomes amazing and maintains a very high standard
Marvel did a series following The Motion Picture, and it was a vast improvement, although they technically had rights to the movie and not the series, which led to a little weirdness. Tons of references still were snuck in, though
There's a series of Book and Records, which you can listen to on YouTube and are goofy fun. The Enterprise desperately needs a meal in the art, though.
They draw Romulans as green wizards
They didn't have the rights to Nichelle Nichols or George Takei's likenesses, so get ready for White Uhura and Black Sulu!
They didn't have the rights to The Animated Series either, so M'Ress is a human with weird face paint and Arex is substituted for just some guy
There's an unlicensed Chinese adaptation of The Motion Picture's novelisation (made with zero prior knowledge of Star Trek), which features an all-star cast like O.J. Simpson as Decker and James Brolin as Kirk. It's called The Star Trek, which is a better name than The Motion Picture, IMHO.
DC comics' first run is considered some of the best Trek ever. They're made with love and a deep knowledge of the source material
You know how Star Trek III takes place right after II? WRONG. It was several months later and the crew (with Saavik taking over from Spock) had tons of adventures in the interim. It just seemed like it was right after๐
Before Worf and long long before Ash Tyler, Kirk had a Klingon on his crew
He was a cowardly Klingon named Konom who fled the Empire
He fell in love with a human woman named Bryce
They adopted an albino Klingon/human child with dwarfism which they named Bernie
Kirk has an unhinged, insubordinate crewman on board named Bearclaw and they hate each other
Tension escalates and eventually there's a stabbing
Sulu/M'Ress happens and I don't think people knew what furrys were in the 80's
You know how Spock comes back at the end of III but isn't his old self until the end of Star Trek IV? WRONG AGAIN. He came back just fine, and lost his marbles following an incident months later that just happened to line everything up to make it all seem like it was right after.
After STIII, Kirk becomes captain of the U.S.S. Excelsior NX-2000 and Spock becomes captain of the U.S.S. Surak. We get a few issues exclusively focusing on Spock's ship and his band of merry weirdos.
The U.S.S. Surak keeps changing design, starting off as a sort of Oberth-class ship, then randomly becoming an Excelsior-class ship and finally ending as the warp sled shuttlecraft from The Motion Picture
The Surak's crew include a giant chicken man, a Vulcan hating racist lady and a balding man with a bicycle
They all die horribly and a massive reset button is pressed so everyone is exactly where they were at the end of Star Trek III
In order to make that work they had to bs that the Klingon Bird of Prey was hidden in Excelsior's shuttlebay all this time despite it being way, way too big for that
There's a full on mirror universe invasion
Kirk becomes a celebrity from saving the galaxy all the time
Mr. Arex comes back and becomes chief of security but doesn't really do much
HORTA CREWMEMBER. It's as amazing as it sounds
The first Next Generation comic miniseries was made with knowledge of the first 2 or 3 TNG episodes and nothing else
Everyone is hench as fuck. Picard has washboard abs and bulging muscles
Data is emotional and Troi feels the emotions she senses a la "Encounter at Farpoint"
Wesley is drawn as if he's 10
The B-shift con and ops team are a husband and wife who wear caped superhero versions of Starfleet uniforms with bare legs.
The crew meet an alien Santa Claus and Q loses his powers years before "Deja Q"
The whole Q Continuum visits the Enterprise and they're all John De Lancie but in Starfleet uniforms of every colour under the sun.
After that initial miniseries, the Next Gen crew lose a lot of their muscle mass and start resembling their on screen counterparts a lot better
Picard had a brother who fell down a hole and died as a child. Q offers to rewrite history so he doesn't die. Claude Picard grew up to be Space Superhitler and turns Starfleet and the Federation fascist.
Before all this Q turned Jean-Luc into a goat for the lolz
Marvel's The Early Voyages was very literally Strange New Worlds before Strange New Worlds.
They have a pyrokinetic security officer named Nano and he's awesome
Marvel lost the Trek license quite suddenly, and so the series ends on a cliffhanger where Admiral April is up to something iffy.
Marvel did a Starfleet Academy series featuring Nog and its utterly fantastic
A female Andorian cadet tries to make Nog feel at ease by greeting him in the nude, but Nog fails to take it as an innocent gesture and she immediately sends him flying across the room
Romulan agents with split personalities in Starfleet Academy!
They visit Talos IV and get help from Captain Pike, who's still alive
IDW comics did a prequel to the 2009 reboot where Picard is an ambassador, Data is captain of the Enterprise-E and Nero has hair. It was co-written by the movie writers and was considered sort of vaguely semi canon ish for a time
They originally wanted the Romulan supernova to destroy a lot more, including Earth and have Nero kill the TNG crew. It was the Star Trek Online devs that got them to scale things back because they'd have no universe left to set their game in.
Nero's ship looks like it does because after Romulus was destroyed he took it to a secret Romulan base and had it equipped with reverse-engineered Borg technology
You thought DC struggled to keep ship designs correct? IDW's comics keep using traced fan art from Google Images, and fan art (sometimes with unique ship designs) has shown up on multiple occasions as the Kelvinverse U.S.S. Enterprise
In one IDW TOS comic, the bridge is totally covered with TNG LCARS graphics.
In another, an Orion ship is a gigantic Stargate sticking out of the middle part of Battlestar Galactica.
Wanna see Kelvinverse versions of TOS episodes? That was their first comics run, picking up after the 2009 reboot movie. They start off very faithful and as the series goes on things diverge more and more
To the extent some stories have very different backstories and outcomes
We visit 2 Kelvin mirror universes and a genderswapped universe too. No, Kirk doesn't do what you're thinking.
Q visits the Kelvin Universe and brings the crew forward in time to their version of Deep Space Nine
Nero's time in Klingon prison (from the Star Trek 2009 deleted scenes) and escape is fleshed out
Nero mind melds with V'ger.
V'ger turns away due to the sheer force of Nero's hatred.
I wish I was making that up.
Klingons get their hands on Narada's technology and go to war
We get a Khan backstory where the Eugenics Wars are a full on nuclear conflict and "Khan" is the title that little Noon Sing adopts when he takes power
After being revived in the 23rd century, Admiral Marcus has Khan surgically altered to look like Benedict Cumberbatch as part of his John Harrison cover identity
They did a series of shorts called Waypoint, and in the first one Geordi is captain of a future Enterprise and his crew is made up of holographic versions of Data and it's a really sweet concept (this was several years before before ST: Picard brought Data back twice)
There's a prequel series centred around Number One where nobody manages to say her name before being interrupted. If you put the bits together it seems her name was Eureka Robbins. Of course, this is long before novels and SNW made her Una Chin-Riley.
