Star Trek #1

History

Gold Key, the comics imprint of Western Publishing (later Whitman), acquired the Star Trek license and launched the series during the show's first season, with writer Dick Wood scripting and Italian artist Nevio Zeccara providing interior art. Crucially, neither Wood nor Zeccara had seen the television series when the issue was produced; both worked from only the briefest production outlines and publicity photographs supplied by Paramount, which explains the array of continuity discrepancies — wrong uniform colors, Rand's famously mis-colored hair, and story concepts (such as the Enterprise crossing between galaxies) at odds with the show's established lore. The issue carries no creator credits in the printed comic itself, a standard practice across the entire Gold Key run, meaning Wood's and Zeccara's contributions were only confirmed later through interviews with Gold Key staff.

Trivia · 7 facts

• First Star Trek comic book ever published — the debut of the franchise in the comics medium, cover-dated July 1967 by most references (the publisher's internal code on the cover points to October 1967).
• Story title: 'The Planet of No Return' — Kirk, McCoy, and Rand beam down to planet K-G, a world where predatory plant life converts mammals into vegetation; Spock remains aboard the Enterprise.
• Written by Dick Wood (veteran writer of Batman, Daredevil, Doctor Solar, and Crime Does Not Pay, among hundreds of other series); art by Nevio Zeccara — neither credited in-print, as Gold Key carried no creator credits across its entire Star Trek run.
• Both writer Dick Wood and artist Nevio Zeccara worked from only scant publicity materials and had not seen the TV show, resulting in notable discrepancies with television canon (wrong uniform colors, incorrect ship details, galaxy-spanning travel).
• Yeoman Janice Rand appears as a landing party member — her only substantive appearance in the entire 61-issue Gold Key run (she receives only a one-panel cameo in issue #24).
• The story was reprinted as Gold Key Star Trek #29 (March 1975) with a new painted cover by George Wilson and internal recoloring that corrected uniform colors and Rand's hair; one page of the original was removed. It also appeared in The Enterprise Logs Vol. 1 (Golden Press, 1976).
• The Gold Key run that this issue launched was subsequently collected in: The Enterprise Logs (Golden Press, 1976–77), The Key Collection (Checker, 2004, five volumes covering #1–40), and the remastered Gold Key Archives hardcovers (IDW, 2014–2016, five volumes covering #1–31).

Cast · 5 characters