Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

I'm cranky.   I just spent the last half hour trying to dig out a splinter from my foot.  It got embedded, my skin grew over it, and then it started hurting.   Thanks, body!   Because I wasn't ambivalent/leaning towards hating you before.   

And yeah, this is important for a couple reasons. I should have had this review written before now, and as crappy as I'm feeling with the throbbing/burning pain in my foot, this graphic novel makes me giddy with joy.   It goes over two classic episodes: Return of the Archons and The Trouble with Tribbles. 

I haven't seen the Archons episode in a while, so I may be off, but I remember it being rather similar to this first story in the graphic novel.   I could be wrong, and regardless, it was an entertaining story arc. 

The second story impressed me more and while this would have been a solid four or four and a half star read without the extra oomph of the Tribbles.   The Tribbles story arc, however, pushed it into the five star rating.  It was true to the original episode in a lot of ways: the Tribbles and how they worked, what part they played, and the Klingon element.   However, the Klingons were on a planet, there was no station there, no grain subplot, and the Tribbles make it to other planets, not thanks to being on the Enterprise so much as transwarp beaming. 

It also takes an element of the first movie that was meant to be a small, throwaway and funny line - and brings it to a conclusion here.   It made me feel that the author was getting more confident, and that he's willing to take more risks, stray from the original scrips a little more while staying true to them at the same time.   It also means that he can incorporate Nu!Trek aspects, as he did here, with more ease.   It feels like a true fusion of the two universes, whereas it seemed more like transplanting Nu!Trek into TOS territory before. 

I'm more eager than I have been before to get to the next volume.    And I have coffee.   And I can't really walk that far, so, y'know, it's not like I have much to do. 

That being said, I'm determined that this weekend is the weekend that I read both Art of Age of Ultron and Art of Civil War.  I'm going to try to get to AoU and maybe some of CW tomorrow and the rest on Monday.   We'll see how this goes...