Getting reacquainted with some old friends once lost. Michael Jan Friedman’s run on DC’s Star Trek: The Next Generation ongoing original content comic series.

Fun story I have been retelling the past month or so. In the early 1990s, I worked in comics retail at Alternate Worlds in Cockeysville, MD. My first day on the job, they sent me directly to the Star Trek Shore Leave convention in 1992 in its original location in nearby Hunt Valley. I loved the original series as a kid, had toys, posters, went to all the films. But I was way out of my league helping man a table in the dealer room with Next Gen running hot and back to yeoman status for the deep minutiae from the original series that sets apart the devout from the posers. I got eaten alive that night not knowing what the customers were after and a complaint was issued about this by one of the conventioneers who wanted the then-coveted “Mirror Mirror” pin, which was in a box beneath the table, but I had no clue what I was looking for.

I was sent back to the store to finish my shift but in the process of leaving, I ran into DeForrest Kelley zipping to the elevators. He gave me a kind, toothy smile and a wave to acknowledge me when I called out to him. Simply rad.

I made it my business from that night on to get educated on everything Trek to avoid having such an embarrassment occur again. I was a comic book expert, which got me the job, but AW considered themselves a boutique shop with a fierce Trek following. I recorded the first three seasons of Next Gen on VCR through syndication, then kept on with the show, then Deep Space Nine and Voyager. I ravenously devoured Trek as I did comic books. Vonda McIntyre and Michael Jan’s Star Trek novels advanced my education, but MJF’s Next Gen comics put me on par all the way and I soon became a guy the Trekkers could b.s. with in the store and depend on.

I had the entire run of Michael Jan’s Next Gen run, which, like my old baseball, got sold off when times were desperate. The early 90s of comics was inventive in some ways with Vertigo and the rise of the indie publishers. A train wreck more often than not with the Big Two. STNG was almost always quality in Michael Jan’s hands. Happy to have some of these back in an ongoing rebuild of my Star Trek comics section. Gotta love that Predator 2 insert ad from Issue 14.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.