Today in Comics History, January 20: Happy birthday, DeForest Kelley!

Born on this day in 1920: actor DeForest Kelley, who has actually been on screen in many roles (a lot of Westerns, and Night of the Lepus, anyone?) but who will be forever remembered by me as my favorite Star Trek character, Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy.





I love all the versions of Star Trek, and that's not just counting the television series and movies: the thousands of books, comics, fan fiction and collectibles that make up what we fondly call "The Star Trek Expanded Universe." It's probably my favorite shared fictional franchise, and there's dozens of characters and reasons I love it. (For example, here's 100.) But no single Vulcan or Trill or Kelpian or Borg is so endearing to me as McCoy, quick with a quip and a medical scanner, rude to Spock but the first (well, the second) to rush in and save him.

There's a enlightening section in one of the early non-fiction Star Trek books (it's either The Making of Star Trek by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry or The Trouble with Tribbles: The Story Behind a Star Trek Show (Amazon ad)) that suggests good television science fiction (or westerns, or historical dramas) are not an accurate portrait of humans in that time period, but instead depict contemporary humans, to increase viewer understanding and empathy with that character. Jim Kirk is certaionly one of those — when writers try to ascribe speculative future tropes to him, it comes off as sounding weirdly atypical of a character we already know (for example, the footnotes in the Star Trek: The Motion Picture novelization). Bones is a great reminder of how well Roddenberry and the writers of the original show shaped and developed his character. McCoy has the frailty and foibles of the twentieth century human and the curiosity and determination of a man on the edge of the unknown future frontier.

And hey, he'll break the Temporal Prime Directive just to help someobody.


There's a lot of great Leonard McCoy portrayls in comics (and even some of them as portrayed by Karl Urban), so I could be here all day showing them to you. Instead, here's some scenes from one of my favorite McCoy stories, from DC's first Trek comic series. (It helps that it's by Diane Duane, a pretty great writer, and drawn by Gray Morrow, one of the best of the "realism" school of comics.)





from Star Trek (1984 series) #28 (DC, July 1986), cover pencils by Joe Brozowski, cover inks by Ricardo Villagran, script by Diane Duane, interior pencils and inks by Gray Morrow, colors by Michele Wolfman, letters by Agustin Mas
Let's sum up Dr. Leonard McCoy, shall we? Or...just look at his data pages. hey, do his strength levels say if he could beat the Hulk?

"Leonard H. McCoy" from Who's Who in Star Trek #1 (DC, March 1987), text by Allan Asherman, pencils and inks by Gray Morrow, colors by Michele Wolfman
(Click picture to V'Ger-size)

We miss ya, Dee, an awful lot, but thankfully to us you're as closer as our TV screens. Live long and prosper, sir. To paraphrase a certain Starship captain: "Of all the souls I have encountered in my watching of Star Trek, his was the most...human."


from "Do the Copyright Thing" in Simpsons Comics #90 (Bongo, January 2004), script by Ian Boothby, pencils by John Costanza, inks by Phyllis Novin, colors by Art Villanueva, letters by Karen Bates