Cover Story - Top 12 Star Trek: The Next Generation Covers

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And so we come to year two of the Star Trek celebration.  If you haven’t been following along, 2016 was the 50^th anniversary of Star Trek’s first airing, an event I celebrate with a whole bunch of articles.  2017 marks both the 30^th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as the premiere of the all-new ongoing series Star Trek: Discovery.   

As both of those events are in the upcoming week I’ve elected to honor them the only way I know how: a deep dive into cover art.  I already dedicated a whole Cover Story to Star Trek covers last year but the great thing about Star Trek is they keep giving you options so while last year I looked at Original Series related covers this year will be Next Generation related covers.  Presumably, come 2021 we’ll mark Enterprise’s anniversary the same way- assuming we make it that far.  And on that oh so cheerful note let’s dive into the top 12 Next Generation comic covers.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword 1st Trailer

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I’ve been saying for a couple years now that the fantasy genre is unmoored.  It’s basically a slogan of these articles because it lets me talk about form and style and genre history, the stuff I know the most about.  However, I’m starting to wonder how true that actually is anymore.  After a decade at the top of the blockbuster fantasy has definitely receded in the 2010s, producing fewer Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings level sagas in comparison to the success of superheroes and sci-fi properties. 

That translated to a thoroughly unsure nature for the first few years of the decade, especially when it turned out The Hobbit wasn’t as successful as everyone was gearing up for it to be.  However, as we pass the midpoint of the decade and begin the slow trickle towards its twilight years it’s starting to seem more and more like the new defining affect of fantasy is what I call Number Zero stories.  I’ll get into what that means in a little bit but there’s no greater example of it than the fact WB is giving Guy Ritchie the reigns of a new big budget King Arthur movie.

1st Dr. Strange Images

So, I guess it’s about time to talk about Dr. Strange.  Honestly I’ve been kind of mixed on this whole project since the beginning, and I say that as one of the few genuine Dr. Strange fans.  I know a lot of folks are getting into the sorcerer supreme now thanks to the publicity of the film production but I’ve actually been a big fan of his since before the MCU got started and even I was pretty skeptical about a Dr. Strange movie.  The main reason for this is just that not every character or comic can work across several mediums. 

There are some comics that just only work as comics, the same way there are TV shows or books that could only work and be as resonant as they are in one particular medium.  It also didn’t help that I’m not really a Benedict Cumberbatch fan.  Now we’ve got our first look at him in costume along with some interesting concept art sketches and…while, I’m still not convinced this is going to work it certainly looks more interesting than it did before.

 

Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur Set Pics Surface

Guy Ritchie is an English director who first broke onto the scene in the ‘90s with a pair of hard bitten but quirkily delightful crime comedies called Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch.  His style was very much in the wake of Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez coming into cinema and infusing it with professional level panache wedded to a passionate love for grindhouse schlock.  Since then, however, Ritchie’s kind of fallen into the background, spending nearly a decade doing nothing but being Madonna’s husband.  Even his 2008 return to form with RocknRolla went virtually unnoticed and unimpactful on his future career.  Since then Ritchie has successfully followed the route of a lot floundering auteurs such as Bryan Singer or Kenneth Branagh by transitioning into a sought after blockbuster director.