DINOSAUR IN YOUR FACE

We redid the first five pages of Dinos and I'm bat-shit crazy over the results. The book's fallen into place. Astronauts, laser guns, dinoaurs, 1950s russian paranoia, and no apologies.

MORE ON STAR TREK

Reaction is starting to trickle in. There's a nice review here from PatBorg. The book gets an A-.

And then there's a negative review here. It's by 8of5, the same person who did the post below, and seems to post a lot of places. He couldn't get beyond one of the setups of the book, though he seems to think that setup is about racism amid starfleet and the early Enterprise rather than it being about Spock's difficult mixture into the crew and them not knowing how to deal with him -- whether it's because he's a vulcan or not.

And my comp copies came from IDW. It was a nice surprise to find all four covers in there. Thanks IDW!

TODAY

And it feels official now. My first criticism from a Star Trek fan before the book has even come out. From 8of5 on the IDW boards:

. . . it's an outdated interpretation of that era, Spock being such an oddity may fit if only earlier TOS existed and Spock was the only alien in Starfleet we ever knew. But that stopped being the case a long time ago, later TOS and subsequent series established there is nothing odd about living along side aliens by the 23rd century. Canon (and even more so in non-canon) Trek now makes it clear Humans have had formal relations with the Vulcans for two centuries prior to the setting of this comic. And assuming Starfleet was formed on, or shortly after, the formation of the Federation there will be Vulcans there with close and regular contact with Humans throughout the hierarchy of Starfleet for at good century preceding. And frankly by that time there are far more alien aliens known to, and part of, the Federation than the Vulcans. Even if Spock was say the first Vulcan to go to Earth's Academy rather than studying at the Vulcan Science Academy, and even if it was uncommon for ships to feature mixed species crew, its still silly for a crew (from a more civilised accepting future Human race) to have such a problem with something that by then really isn't that odd. Incidentally the Early Voyages comics established a crewperson under Pike called Nano, who served on the Enterprise from before Spock had transferred aboard. His species, the Lirin, are actually not all that different to the Vulcans, the crew managed not to be a bunch of xenophobes towards him. Or if they ever were managed to grow up before the time Spock came along.