Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "harland-ellison"

Star Trek: Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay by Harlan Ellison

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This graphic novel is an adaptation of Harland Ellison's original teleplay for the classic Star Trek episode, City on the Edge of Forever.

First of all, the art is gorgeous. It's on the same level as Alex Ross. It does a great job recreating the original Enterprise crew in glorious detail. At the same time, there are some just stunning artistic bits in that you couldn't have done on television.

The story is a very good story. Yet, I think that those who rewrote it for the TV show were mostly right. There were some parts that would have been budgetarily challenging such as the space pirates who'd taken over the Enterprise. In a book or comic, it's easy to show that, but it complicates a TV production. In addition, I don't think Ellison quite had the Kirk-Spock dynamic in this story and the aired version did a better job capturing that.

Again, that's not to say that this one is a bad story. It might even be a better story for a generic captain and an alien first officer but not quite fitting for Kirk and Spock. Still, the story is worth a read, particularly when paired with the compelling artwork.



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Batman '66: The Lost Episode #1 by Len Wein

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Len Wein adapts Harland Ellison's script for a 1960s Batman episode featuring Two-Face.

This story is a somewhat typical Two-Face origin story like you might read in the 1960s. As a story, it felt like this needed to be fleshed out a bit (particularly the second part) in order to make it really feel like an episode of the TV show. That said, it's still an okay story and the art is nice to look at. It's just not a lost classic.



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