Stuff Bully Got*: Star Trek Fotonovels

*Ages ago but only just rediscovered: I completely forgot I had these stored away in Mama Bull's basement: stripped cover Star Trek Fotonovels!

That's Fotonovel with an "F!"


See here for more about Fotonovels and the one I have that does still have a cover!

To Boldly Go Where No Screen Capture Has Gone Before

The 41(!)-year-old Star Trek franchise has had a lot of comic book tie-ins from many varied publishers: Gold Key, Marvel, DC, Wildstorm, IDW have all published four-color adventures of Kirk, Spock, Picard, the guy with the bumpy head, A Man Called Hawk, Hooty McBorg and all the gang. Some have been pretty bad, others not too bad at all (I'm partial myself to some of the DC runs and the Marvel books like Starfleet Academy and The Early Voyages that weren't based on the same old characters), but by far the most faithful and accurate of all Star Trek comics were Bantam's series of "Fotonovels" published in 1977 and '78.

But are these comics, even tho' they're photos and not drawn? Why, sure, they are. While it never caught in in America to the extent of Europe and Latin America, photo comics (fumetti) are a popular subsection of the graphic novel medium. Yes, long before the days when Greg Horn traced photos, you could get comics made up of photos, thus cutting out the middleman!