Current 'Classic' BSG comics.., any fans..?

[Colonel Bolter]

Just curious, I've been picking up a few 'Classic Series' Dynamite comics with the painted covers here and there. Personally I've been focusing on the variant and 'Special Convention' issues which don't have those UPC codes.

The stories inside are paper thin (slight pun intended) but the painted interior art of some are quite good.  

The vintage Marvel comics were alright, but hated the '90s junk with the 'Galactica Extreme' stuff like 'Apollo's War', terrible art which was trendy at the time.

[Spectre]

YES--I read the Dynamite series!!!
Anxiously awaiting the upcoming "steampunk" series in Oct--got a sneak peek and looks cool.
A complete retelling, but with a steampunk look.

[Colonel Bolter]

No kidding, sounds interesting. A steampunk Cylon..? Huh.

Anywho, I'm pretty hard on artistry, especially with television/movie characters. It's been slightly hit/miss, but the new classic comics are striving pretty hard to embrace the storytelling style of the series.

[spcglider]

I've been nothing but disappointed with everything comics-wise since the Realm Press stuff.

The current series really started off reading like it was written by people who didn't ever watch the show. Just MHO.

[Jubal]

My thoughts on the various classic Battlestar series:

Marvel Comics: A fun read. They only had the material from the first three of so episodes so a whole lot of time spent in the great void, Sire Uri as the villian and stories around the fleet itself. That is one aspect a lot Galactica stories have forgotten is the worlds of stories just within the fleet itself. Jolly gets some good coverage.

Maximum: the artwork of the 90's was terrible. Some of the stories were interesting.

Realm Press: Good stuff. Sometimes out there weird stuff, but then, some of the episodes of the classic series really got out there too. A good read.

Galactica 1980: Even with great artwork this was worst than the Maximum series of comics and worst than the original Galactica 1980!!

Dynamite: I liked this series because we got some good stories that dealt with ordinary items as well as extrodinary. Athena and what it took to maintain the Galactica and fleet for a shift. A story with Boxety and Muffet (a fun part of the show). And there were other interesting aspects to the story. Really hated that the comic series had to end.

[spcglider]

Opinion time. Take it for what its worth. (Not much).

What I felt was a major problem with the latest comic offering was the bizarre mixture of old Galactica, Gal80, and NuGalactica. It smacked of horrible understanding of the Galactica fandoms (because the are more than one and while there is some fan cross-over, there is still a very definite separation of the two). It felt like the writers weren't familiar with the show( s) and just assumed they were all the same thing somehow.

If you're doing a comic about the original Galactica, you're not going to endear yourself to readers by including Doctor Zee. Or elements from the new series. Zee is an abomination of a character. And stuff from the new series just doesn't fit.
You want all those nostalgic fans of the original show to pick up that comic and devour it. But they won't if you throw everything they hate into it. And let's face it, you're NOT going to be CREATING classic Galactica fans with your comic. So you've got a limited base to draw from to begin with. Your best course of action is to feed the old fans exactly what they want if you want your comic series to last. Which is why at least two of the available series almost immediately did a "Starbuck" miniseries to boost their sales. Unfortunately, it couldn't save Galactica 1980, so there's not much hope of it saving your Galactica comic.

And you've got to be delusional to think that a Galactica 1980 comic will have a broad enough readership to maintain itself for more than a few issues.

New Galactica is probably the best bet for a comic series, but since the ending of that show I've seen so many serious fans drop it like a hot rock after the final episode. And since we know where the new series ends, it's awfully hard to try to tell meaningful and impactful stories when you know who has to survive and who has to die along the way.

[Colonel Bolter]

Jubal, THANKS for the great review.. From what little I've seen thus far, it seems spot on. Being a big Jolly fan, I was a bit irked they drew him a 'bit caricaturish' in his larger size in the old Marvel comics (loved the final issues..).

For all practical purposes, what I liked most about classic BSG in general was it's ability in the second half of series to become more than the sum of it's parts, adding secondary characters, more ordinary stories of life in the fleet. So it sounds like the Dynamite series is worth hunting down.

Like mentioned, I'm primarily going for the cooler Dynamite variant covers, but I've liked the approach of Dynamite series thus far, going so far as to include the original 'opening sequence' title inside the front cover (nice touch..), like it was an actual 'lost' episode.

I've been pretty selective in what I've been collecting lately, from the original MIB Mattel stuff to any decent current items, so I'll stick with hunting down cheap back issues of Dynamite on eBay..

Thanks again for the excellent posting.

[monolith21]

I agree about the odd mix. I get that they were trying to get some crossover fans but that ship has kind of sailed. lol
I've bought them all but the stories are just aren't quite up to their potential in my opinion. At least Realm really went big with their stories.