Just found out that the Star Trek: Alien Spotlight Trade Paperback is due in comic stores today.  Although my contribution, the Andorians issue, garnered mixed reviews, I was pretty happy with the way the story came out.

Beyond the Andorian tale by myself and artist Leonard O'Grady, the spotlight also falls on the Gorn (written by Scott & David Tipton with art by David Messina), the Vulcans (written by James Patrick with art by Josep Maria Beroy), the Orions (written by Scott & David Tipton with art by Elaine Casagrande), the Borg (written by Andrew Steven Harris with art by Sean Murphy) and the Romulans (with story and art by comics legend and longtime Trek fan John Byrne). If you're a Trek fan, I think you'll be intrigued and entertained by these explorations into the cultures of the various alien races.

I have to say, as a lifelong Star Trek fan myself, getting to contribute to the legacy, even in a small way, was a pretty damn cool experience. 

Hope that those of you who snag the TPB (or read the Andorian issue when it came out) enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

As regular readers of the P(ull)-List know, I've been pretty jazzed that Marvel was releasing Captain America: Red, White & Blue in trade paperback.  Well I just got my copy and now I'm even more jazzed that before.  Because this isn't just an exact reprint of the original volume!

Don't worry, all the original stories created for the anthology are still there, from folks like Paul Dini and Alex Ross, Darko Macan and Bruce Timm, Mark Waid and Mike Huddleston, and yours truly and David Lloyd.  But instead of reprinting "The Origin of the Red Skull" by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, "Tomorrow You Live, Tonight I Die!" by Stan Lee and Jim Steranko, "Home Fires" by Roger Stern and Frank Miller and "Dust" by John Rieber and John Cassaday (all excellent stories, by the way), there's a new batch of great Cap stories, originally presented in Captain America #50 (2002) by Katherine Kuder and Stuart Immonen, Dan Jurgens (with help from John Romita Sr., Ron Frenz, Rick Veitch, Sal Buscema and Mike Zeck), Brian David-Marshall and Igor Kordey, Jen Van Meter and Brian Hurtt and Evan Dorkin and Kevin Maguire.

Then the book wraps up with a reprint of the recent Marvel Spotlight: Captain America Remembered.  That particular publication highlighted the exceptional "Death of Captain America" storyline that writer Ed Brubaker and artists Steve Epting and Mike Perkins are currently telling in the pages of the monthly Captain America comic. 

All in all, a very cool collection of Captain America tales.  One that a Cap fan may want even if he or she already has a copy of the Red, White & Blue hardcover! 

My only disappointment is that Marvel didn't emphasize all the new material in the pre-publication hype for this collection, so that readers would know that this is a different animal than the hardcover.  Not that they didn't make it clear for those who were paying attention, but even I missed the following lines in the solicitation copy for this book:

"In all, more than fifty creators have crafted timeless stand-alone stories each told with a color palette limited to Cap's signature colors of red, white and blue! In addition to these original short stories, this anthology reprints the back-up stories in CAPTAIN AMERICA #50 (2002) and MARVEL SPOTLIGHT: CAPTAIN AMERICA REMEMBERED."

Guess I should have been paying closer attention.

It reminds me of the immortal words of another great American hero, Ferris Bueller:

"Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."