Star Trek: The Manga

Production

The manga series was produced by Tokyopop to time with the 40th anniversary of Star Trek in 2006. The writers of the first volume included Mike W. Barr, who had previously written for the DC and Malibu Comics Star Trek series as well as Dr Christopher Dows, Jim Alexander, Joshua Ortega and Rob Tokar. The stories in the second volume included those by Mike Wellman, Paul Benjamin and Christine Boylan.

The writer for the third volume was The Next Generation cast member Wil Wheaton, It was Wheaton's first professional attempt at writing fiction, which was something he had aspired to do, and in order to write the story he placed his reviews of The Next Generation for TV Squad on hold.

Another third volume writer was David Gerrold, who had previously written The Original Series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" as well as two episodes for Star Trek: The Animated Series. His story in the third volume was based on one of the original pitches he made alongside the first Tribbles story. An omnibus of the three volumes was released. TokyoPop subsequently published a Star Trek: The Next Generation manga in April 2009, which featured writers who had worked on The Original Series volumes including Duane and Gerrold.

Volumes

;Shinsei/Shinsei :Released September 5, 2006

;Kakan ni Shinkou :Released September 11, 2007

;Uchu :Released July 15, 2008

;Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Manga – Boukenshin :Released April 2009

Reception

Writing for IGN, A.E. Sparrow said that Star Trek: The Manga made him reminisce about Sunday morning re-runs of the original series. Of the art, he thought that on occasion it was difficult to tell Dr. McCoy apart from other characters and also each story had a different style of drawing Captain Kirk and he was pleased to see the return of Nurse Chapel in the story "Til Death". John Tenuto, in his review of the third volume for TrekMovie.com, praised the writing of Wheaton but while he was pleased with the dialogue in Gerrold's story, he felt that it now seemed like a "derivative of Tribbles".

References

References

1. "Star Trek: the manga Volume 1". TokyoPop.
2. (December 6, 2005). "The Final Frontier: Joshua Ortega talks "Star Trek" Manga". Comic Book Resources.
3. Tenuto, John. (August 13, 2008). "TrekInk: Review Star Trek Manga Volume 3". TrekMovie.com.
4. Hoffman, Jordan. (April 15, 2009). "F.J. DeSanto – Star Trek TNG Manga Interview". UGO.
5. Sparrow, A.E.. (September 8, 2006). "Star Trek: The Manga Review". IGN.