Jay Willson (11:50 PM on Sat Oct 25, 2008)

Continuity Associates had the contract to produce all of those POWER Records comics, so you are correct in saying that Neal Adams probably did some inking on those pages. You can see that frequent Continuity artist Russ Heath pencilled part of the story, as did Neal, Dick Giordano, Joe Brozowski, and others. Neal would also go out and get some others in the industry to produce those jobs, which is why Buscema was used.

Tony Isabella (8:41 AM on Sun Oct 26, 2008)

What strikes me as nothing short of incredible is that, with all the young artists who worked at Continuity or rented space there, no one pointed out the errors to Neal.

steevo (10:04 AM on Sun Oct 26, 2008)

I'm curious as to if the character changes were a flub or because of some licensing issue. Maybe they didn't have the rights to all characters likenesses, only their names. For any casual fan of the series this mistake is glaring and one would think someone would have fixed it before publishing. For this reason I'm assuming it was intentional. Any thoughts?

MARK WHEATLEY (1:34 PM on Sun Oct 26, 2008)

I think the real question, Glenn, is why you were digging out your STAR TREK Peter Pan comic book and record. How does it sound after all these years? But I too would vote for a licensing issue at work here.

Keith R.A. DeCandido (8:44 PM on Sun Oct 26, 2008)

The Power Records comic books only featured Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, and Uhura. Scotty and Chekov were nowhere to be found and, as explained, the characters were not recognizable. My guess? Power only had the likeness rights for The Big Three. (Also "The Crier in Emptiness" was obviously written to have Lieutenant Arex from the animated series, but was hastily redrawn and rewritten for a human navigator -- I suspect they didn't have the rights to that character, either....)

Jonathan Miller (12:12 PM on Mon Oct 27, 2008)

Reading this article gave me a surprising sense of deja vu. :-) I guess "great minds think alike" applies here? (Assuming you consider yourself and Bully to be great minds, of course...)

Evan (12:41 PM on Thu Oct 30, 2008)

Top o' the mornin' to ye, Lieutenant O'Hura! Warp factor three, Mr. Zulu!

Bob A (1:06 PM on Thu Oct 30, 2008)

A few years ago we did a parody of TREK IV ( The Voyage the Hell Home)... since we didn't have an actress of af/am decent, we used my red-headed wife.... Scarlet O'Hoohrah!
"What's the matter, Jimmy boy? Doncha LIKE girls?"

Anonymous (9:42 AM on Fri Oct 31, 2008)

Johnathan Miller's link is correct, the artist's model for Uhuru is blonde Lieutenant Palmer.

The model for Sulu looks an awful lot like Lieutenant Boma from Galileo 7, also.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Boma

Anonymous (2:22 PM on Thu Oct 30, 2008)

The ellipses aren't there to simulate Shatnerian speech patterns. Sadly, I remember this story (I'm just a freak that way), and the reason those ellipses are there is to indicate that time is running at the wrong speed and the characters' speech is being slowed down. That's why Sulu has them in his speech, as well.

Anonymous (6:25 PM on Sun Oct 26, 2008)

I recall, as a little teeny tiny Star Trek fan (okay, so I was about 16, maybe not all THAT teeny), owning some of these (I don't have them anymore.. I swear it... I know it sounds insane but you MUST believe me...) and I also recall meeting Nichelle Nichols and her manager (whose name now escapes me) at a Star Trek convention back in 19-coughty-cough. At the time, I mentioned this rather... um, interesting... continuity gaffe to the manager; neither he nor Ms. Nichols had known anything about it and were slightly perturbed.

So it does seem likely that Uhura's and Sulu's little makeovers were a question of licensing issues; Paramount probably never bothered to contact Nichols or Takei to ask permission, and simply instructed Continuity to draw them as unlike the actors as possible.

Jay Willson (6:23 PM on Sun Oct 26, 2008)

I think the issue was licensing, as the variations in characters changed from the television show, but were consistent in the stories (i.e. Sulu was black in both of them). I think Neal and Continuity just drew the work, as the stories in all of those records were rather wacky, almost as if they existed in some sort of Power Records universe and didn't relate to the DC, Paramount, etc. universes that were so familiar to us at the time.

Actually, I haven't listened to it in years, but I'll bet that the voices of the Star Trek characters only match Shatner and Nimoy, with the rest being done by voice actors that didn't require separate licensing deals. I think that the characters were redesigned to deal with the fact that George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, etc. weren't a part of the voice cast.

I don't think that Neal drew much of the Star Trek record, but just inked them in his heavy-handed inking style.