1/3/10 New Year and New Stuff!

Hey everyone! The Next "Terilynn's Trek" over at Airlock Alpha isn't due until the 7th, but I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to talk about today. Terilynn's Trek will likely focus on this weekend's exposure to Dr. Who and my thoughts on that, so don't forget to read it when it comes out. You will be able to find the column, as well as all my past past columns HERE. Just click on "Features" and look for "Terilynn's Trek" and click on "Read More" under the column header.

But here at Blogger and (as it's connected via Networked Blogs)Facebook, I wanted to talk about another one of my favorite things.

Cartoons.

I love cartoons - whether it's art done for the comic book industry, graphic novels, comic strips or animated shorts or features for theatre or television, I've been a cartoon nut since I first heard Bugs Bunny crunch a carrot or read Peanuts in Los Angeles Times.

I never missed a single day of Calvin & Hobbes while it was in print. Ever. I bought the big ol' books of the C & H strips because I adore them so much.

The Hubby is also a big fan of animation and comics. He was the first to really introduce me to Berkeley Breathed's work in Bloom County and he bought many books of comic strips of The Far Side and we both became big fans of Citizen Dog (sadly no longer with us) and Sherman's Lagoon.

Three years ago, when my love for Star Trek was renewed, I went to StarTrek.com a lot. It was the first forum I tried out (I quickly left it as well as TrekBBS for the unbelievably rude people who inhabit the threads) but it was a pretty good resource for this budding ficcer. However, I fell in love with the brand new regular comic strip done by David Reddick called "The Trek Life."

The Trek Life never failed to make me laugh out loud. It was the tale of a die-hard Trekkie and his maybe-not-quite-as-fervent friends as well as his clueless boss and his TNG adoring cat. OMG the cat...so freaking funny.

Alas - CBS fired everyone at StarTrek.com a few months after I began to visit it regularly and they let the site stagnate. I was afraid I would never see another Trek Life again...and honestly, I really haven't except for their bi-montly appearance in Star Trek magazine. It's really hard to wait 60 days to see another strip with those characters!

However, I have had the opportunity to meet David Reddick on a few occasions now. He currently inks the well-known Garfield strip as well as two original strips for Roddenberry.com called "Rod & Barry" and "Gene's Journal."

Rod & Barry are two Earth pop-culture loving aliens who have taken up residence on our planet under the guise of planning our assimilation...but they're simply too lazy and too caught up in our televised shows to really give a hoot about their reports.

The boy on Gene's Journal however, is a different thing altogether. Everyone knows the boy is supposed to be Gene Roddenberry living his most unusual life as a pre-adolescent being monitored by two aliens - aliens who try to help him out but in the best "Bewitched"-type way, only serve to make the boy's life more of a challenge.

They're both hilarious and I urge you to read them at Roddenberry.com

After discovering these two strips, I became aware of David's completely original strip called The Legend of Bill. This strip is a hilarious take on the Barbarian cartoon. Yes, Bill is slightly similar to the Disney animated show "Dave the Barbarian" but Bill, Frank, Princess Gina and gang are just a bit more risque and therefore, in my opinion, are twice as funny. Besides, The Dark Queen rocks my world.

After reading Legend of Bill, I became aware of a completely different original strip available on the net called Moon Town. This wholly unique comic is done by Steve Ogden, whom I've had the pleasure of meeting only over the internet. One day I hope to meet him in person, because he's a genuinely nice person. He's also extremely talented. The colors and styles he uses are just beautiful and really remind me of those (in a good way) "Spaceman Spiff" strips that Calvin would always imagine up when he didn't want to do his school work.

But what struck me so much about Moon Town? Its female character. I seriously know of no other strips that treats its female characters so...well...realistically. Okay - so maybe realistic isn't the actual term, as we don't have spaceships or a mining facility on the moon - but the women aren't just the g-string clad or cat-suit wearing fluff. Captain Cassandra Quinn is a real character - flawed, funny and yes - she's still sexy in her uniform, but she not drawn to the point of distraction or disproportion. I really like her.

Do yourself a favor and give Steve's beautiful work a look-see. I think you'll like it very much.

I'm just now getting into more of the Trek fan animation now. Luckily, Kirok of L'Stok at TrekUnited tends to keep a list of people who are creating some pretty amazing Trek-based work - you can access most of it HERE at the Trek United Animated Fan Production board. If you stop by there, do yourself a favor and delve into the other threads as well, especially for Dispatches from the Romulan War - a great combined effort by a few of the members to tell the untold story of the Romulan War after the end of the Enterprise series. There were intimations that they were going to move forward with an animated strip of the series, and a few sketches were done but nothing has come into fruition yet. Hopefully you can help trigger them into finishing it by showing your interest.

Well- that's kinda all I wanted to do with this post today - was to share the amazing talents of these cartoonists with you today. Please check their work out! I promise you won't be disappointed!

Until my next black-booted blog - t