With the new Star Trek movie out, it is a guarantee that anything that is connected to Star Trek will be swarmed in the market. And it is also definite that these items will find themselves into someone’s pocket or backpack one way or the other. It will also, with all certainty, awaken the red warm blood cells of Star Trek fans all over the globe. Star Trek super fans would agree that some of the most prized possessions that a Star Trek fan must have are complete sets of collectible Star Trek comics, the roots of all the Star Trek mania.

If we go back to memory lane and take a look at how these collectible Star Trek comics lived their lives, we will see that it somehow started between 1967 and 1978 under the roof of Gold Key. Since the first Star Trek comic book was published by Gold Key. The Italian artist, Alberto Giolitti, gave life to the first comic book. He illustrated the Star Trek comic book even without having seen the series and with only the publicity photos as his point of reference. These comic books were eventually known to fans and readers as “The Key Collection”. Frankly stands as the top notch of must-have collectible Star Trek comics.

From Gold Key the Star Trek comic books moved to Marvel. The transfer happened in 1979. Marvel’s version was solely based from the Star Trek: The Motion Picture since their license which happens to be from Paramount prohibited them from utilizing the concepts and characters in the original series. The circulation lasted for two years which told the tales of Kirk throughout his apocryphal second five-year mission with the Enterprise. This story was supposed to be shown as Star Trek: Phase II but failed to grace the boob tube. It was never produced.

Then there came the comic strips that ran both in Britain and in the US. British comic magazines like Joe 90, Valiant and TV21 produced a total of 258 issues. TV Comic did the reprints of the serialized versions from the US which was from Gold Key. In the US, it was the Los Angeles Times Mirror Syndicate who hosted a daily comic strip that was based upon Star Trek.

There were other publishers who managed to produce Star Trek comic books like DC Comics and Malibu. DC published two Star Trek: The Next Generation comics in 1988 which happened to be a six-issue limited series during its first season. Malibu took over in 1993. Malibu published an issue which focused on the Romulans and two “celebrity series” which were written by Mark Lenard and Aaron Eisenberg whom were Star Trek actors themselves. In 1996 Marvel got the license back.