Trekker: Battlefields, New Kickstarters to Back, and Comics

Last November, comics creator Ron Randall released Battlefields, the latest volume in his long-running series, Trekker, about future interplanetary bounty hunter Mercy St Clair. I have written many times on this blog about how much I enjoy this series (I have added a Trekker label to those posts, rather than put all the links here). This volume continues to demonstrate all the qualities that make this a great series, but while I do want to talk about this book, they also connect to some larger thoughts I’ve been having about comics in general.

Trekker:Darkstar Zephyr

Trekker is back! Ron Randall has launched a Kickstarter for the next book in his science fiction series about bounty hunter Mercy St Clair, so this seems like an opportune time to talk about the most recent volume, The Darkstar Zephyr. I’ve written about the previous stories here and here, so I’m going to focus less on the background and more on the current book. Also, I have a pretty cool personal connection to this one.

Ron Randall's Trekker

Recently, I was trying to remember how many creator-owned comics from the 1980s are still being produced today, still being created by their original creators. I could only remember a handful, and I was embarrassed to see that not only had I forgotten quite a number of them, like Mage by Matt Wagner and Elfquest by Wendy and Richard Pini, but they were all titles I am still buying and reading. What prompted this question? The launch of a new Kickstarter campaign to bring the latest volume of Ron Randall’s Trekker into print. I’ve enjoyed Ron Randall’s work since his early days, on a science fiction backup in the pages of DC’s Warlord, called The Barren Earth. And I’ve been a fan of his series Trekker, featuring a female bounty hunter in the future, since it first appeared in Dark Horse Comics Presents #4, from 1987. Seeing new stories coming out today, over 30 years later, makes me extremely happy, and I want to share some of that joy with you.

What's in the Box?!? May Funko DC Legion of Collectors

While we have been enjoying the Funko subscription boxes Star Wars Smuggler’s Bounty, Marvel Collector Corps, and the new Disney Treasures, my wife and I had been holding off on subscribing to the DC Legion of Collectors box. I used to be a huge DC Comics fan, but my interest in their books has dropped sharply in recent years, for a number of reasons. Plus, most of their movies do not interest us, so when Funko puts out a box featuring characters from the Suicide Squad or Superman vs Batman movies, we know it’s going to a box chock full of stuff we probably don’t want.

However, when we watched the unboxing video for the March Superman box, it all looked pretty cool. And we do watch the DC TV shows. Plus, one DC movie we are excited about is the Wonder Woman movie. Unlike the other DC movies to date, the trailers show Wonder Woman fighting bad guys, not other heroes, they show characters making jokes and smiling, and there are even scenes that appear to take place during the day and without any rain. My wife loves Wonder Woman as a character, so we took the plunge and ordered this box. Here’s what we found inside.