Posted on September 15, 2024

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, 1994

If I’m ever hauled into interrogation for some reason and they demand to know my whereabouts on the night of January 3, 1993, I can answer with confidence. I was in the club room at someone’s LA apartment complex with a bunch of my coworkers from Malibu Comics. We were there for a very specific occasion: the TV premiere of Deep Space Nine Episode 1.

Why? Because, despite all the shenanigans that went on behind the scenes at Malibu every day, they managed to score the rights to publish the first Deep Space Nine comic book series. We gathered together on that January night to see what we were in for.

I never considered myself a true Star Trek fan. I’d seen nearly all of it on TV and in theaters up to that point (the 1973-74 animated series was my first), but that’s where my commitment ended. I felt zero need to explore Star Trek in other media. But here it was at my doorstep. The show was fine, nothing objectionable in it, but nothing to make me change my outlook either. Issue 1 of the comic launched in August and the game was on.

Issues came through the art department for lettering, but they were assigned to others so I wasn’t exposed to them. However, when Malibu got the word that another Star Trek series was in development, to be called Voyager, the editors decided to put another pitch together and see if they could double up. Nobody knew anything but the series title, so when they asked me to do a couple art samples, the order was simply, “whatever you like.”

I mainly like space hardware, so I thought it would be symbolic to do a drawing of a ship named Voyager departing from Deep Space Nine. I didn’t know what it would look like, so I just drew the Enterprise D and put a different name on it. With some dramatic flair, I gave it the number NCC-1492. Later, when this turned out to be completely wrong, I pasted the Enterprise ID over it and turned this into a portfolio piece.

I thought it would be important to put characters in the second drawing, so I cast my own officers, only one of which was a human. From left, that’s Michael Ontkean, Loretta Swit, and Kyle MacLachlan (I was into Twin Peaks and MASH). The guy at far right could have been anyone. Don’t ask me to explain anything else about them, they were simply cobbled together from Trek ref that happened to be on hand. If this inspires anyone to write fanfic, go nuts.

Malibu didn’t end up with the Voyager license, but by the time that series debuted in January 1995, the wheels were coming off the wagon anyway and the company was heading for oblivion. Anyway, let’s roll back to a year earlier.

To my surprise, Editor Mark Paniccia tapped me on the shoulder one day in spring 1994 (as I was preparing to exit my staff position) and offered me the penciling duties on two issues of Deep Space Nine. It was a vote of confidence in my drawing ability. My one previous live-action-based assignment had been a 4-issue Alien Nation miniseries in 1991 (see it here). I was satisfied with it at the time, but it wasn’t as comfortable for me as an anime-based assignment or something of my own. Nevertheless, I’d come a long way in the years since then and was now well-qualified for this one.

My mission brief for the art was simple but significant: Mark told me that Paramount insisted on accurate depictions of the actors. To that end, they supplied a large collection of stills to provide reference. (I’m pretty sure they also supplied set photos, but I don’t remember them now.) Once you’re locked into photo-realistic faces, it sets the tone for the entire project. You have to place them on photo-realistic bodies and position them in photo-realistic sets. You can get stylized with page layouts and storytelling, but the rest of it is straight and narrow.

I took inspiration from one of my favorite comic artists, Al Williamson. He made photo-reference part of his toolbox all the way back in the 50s, and when I started working it into my style for DS9 I recognized a lot of his techniques naturally expressing themselves in the art, mainly the use of light and shadow. It pushed me in new directions and I liked the results.

On the other hand, I didn’t want to become a slave to the photo ref, so I designed my page layouts without it and then found photo angles that got as close as possible to my roughs. If I couldn’t find a good match, I put those poses aside until I’d drawn an actor enough times to zero in on their likeness and then drew them without a photo. If I did it well enough, you won’t be able to tell which ones they were. You’d think the easiest character to draw would be Odo with his waxy features, but they still had their own unique structure that couldn’t be faked.

Incidentally, art of the DS9 station itself was also provided to us by Paramount. I drew it myself most of the time, but whenever you see the whole thing from a distance, it’s pre-fab. Not just in my issues, but throughout the whole series. With something of that nature, it’s not a good use of the penciler’s time to redraw a perfectly useful image of a mechanical object unless the story needs you to do something different with it, like changing the lighting.

“BWS” is a note to the inker: “Black With Stars”

I also lettered both of these issues, but it was applied in different ways. The first issue was lettered on label material that was then applied over the finished art. For the second issue, I plead for sanity and was allowed to letter directly on the penciled pages. This made sure that I didn’t waste time drawing stuff nobody would see. In both cases, my penciled pages were smoothly inked by Bruce McCorkindale (who I never met, unfortunately) and ably colored by Malibu’s in-house team. I wouldn’t have said no to additional assignments, but there were other things cooking. Watch future updates to see what they were.

Malibu’s Deep Space Nine series lasted 32 issues, running from August 1993 to December 1995, overlapping with the first four seasons of the TV series (which continued through June 1999). See all of the issues online here.