Star Trek (DC Comics) #25 and Top Dog #9 (Cool Comic Covers #13)

It’s Friday! That means another Cool Comic Covers, a weekly (sometimes more!) look back at some of the most interesting, intriguing, and engaging artwork in pop culture. This week:

Our cool comic covers come not from the artwork, but from something more personal. Be warned — things from antiquity, like bookstores and magazine racks, are mentioned in this post.

When I was a a lad, back in 1986, I was in the bookstore and while I was pursuing the comic book section of the magazine rack, I saw the following two comics next to each other on the shelf. They had nothing to do with each other. Two different companies, two different audiences . . . but one punchline:

I only know I saw these comics in 1986 because of the dates — Star Trek is cover dated April, 1986 and Top Dog is cover dated August, 1986. I would have been 12 years old, and at that point in my life I was getting into Star Trek because of the TV show, but the only comics I bought were Star Wars, G.I. Joe, or the random superhero comic that caught my eye. So while I thought it was pretty funny that both of these comics happened to be on the shelf together, I wasn’t interested in buying either.

Still, it stuck with me to this day. And not long afterward, I DID start collecting Star Trek comics.

Currently, I owe two full runs of the DC Comics Star Trek and two full runs of the Marvel Star Trek series. Why two? One is on paper, the other is digital. If anyone’s interesting in buying a run of Star Trek comics, drop me a line. It includes such gems as this, the only Star Trek comic I owned when I saw those two comics on the shelf, and a comic I thought was cool not because of the image, but because of the cover date and issue number. Issue #16, October . . . and my birthday is October 16.

Look, I love Star Trek The Motion Picture FAR more than the next guy, but even I can agree that the above comic book, telling stories that used that movie as a springboard, is about as UNCOOL as you can get. They’re wearing the pajama-styled uniforms, Spock’s holding an actual gnome in his hand, and neither of them seem to notice they’re about to be attacked by an Elfquest reject.

Then again, perhaps this was the first meeting between . . .

So, THREE coincidences (the punchline, my birthday, and Shatner’s hatred of lawn gnomes explained), hopefully make for more than enough “cool” for a cool comic covers installment!

Join us next Friday for another Cool Comic Cover! Also, do you have a favorite comic book cover? Share it with us! It just may be featured as a cool comic cover!

~ Ben

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