Christopher Priest, during one of his periodic flurries of blog activity followed by sudden silence, posted last October about a
Trek comic pitch he wrote.
My one Trek idea—of Worf’s bridge commander test being manipulated by Starfleet to prevent his ever becoming captain—was borne, I believe, out of a TNG episode in which Counselor Deanna Troi takes the bridge commander test and learns yawn obvious lessons along the way. I recall thinking the episode would have been a lot more interesting had that been Worf and had Riker, et. al. known that, no matter what Worf did, he would never be promoted. A full commander could be given his own ship. Even a routine act of bravery could promote a full commander to the rank of captain, and that would never happen for Worf, due to either institutionalized racism or to some secret pact forged between the Federation and the Klingon empire.
And yes, Priest is totally upfront about where this idea came from.
I remember sitting at a pub with artist Mark D. Bright, giddy over the blockbuster success of our story, Spider-Man vs. Wolverine, and stupidly thinking that book’s huge numbers would open doors for us. Numbers like those would absolutely have opened doors for anybody else. But our phones never rang. We were never invited back for a sequel, and Marvel passed—twice—on sequel pitches from me. The conventional wisdom attributed the book’s record-breaking numbers to the characters; the talent had nothing to do with it. While, at the same time, we were routinely denied opportunities because our names weren’t big enough—claims that comic sales were predicated upon the names of the talent associated with them. Which one was true? For Mark and I, both; whichever answer justified the “no” we constantly received. At some point, I recall telling Mark that I knew, from that experience, I would never be offered X-Men or any real opportunity to succeed in the business.
[...]
This, for me, was the missed opportunities of Worf, likely because Worf has been traditionally written by people who could not possibly understand what a complete gut punch it is to live under that glass ceiling. To do your best and to, in many areas, out-perform others whose efforts were rewarded and who were given opportunities you never would be. Knowing, for a fact, I’d never be offered Superman or X-Men, that I’d never make Group Editor, let alone EIC.
I love Priest; he remains one of my all-time favorite comics writers, and the industry is poorer without his voice. I've never bought a Trek comic in my life, but if this had been published it would have been the first. (As it stands, odds are pretty good that the Doctor Who crossover will be the first instead.)
Priest's one of those dudes who seems to have a small but surprisingly dedicated fanbase. Any time his name gets mentioned on, say, CBR, I'm disarmed by the number of fans who pop up in the comments. It's a real pity that the guys who sign the checks don't share that enthusiasm. (He said in an interview awhile back that Joe Quesada -- who was the editor on the book, for God's sake -- had nixed plans to reprint his Black Panther run because it conflicts with the Hudlin version and that might "confuse" readers. Priest's response was to the effect that readers aren't stupid; I like to think that he's correct. And at any rate, while I liked Hudlin's first couple of arcs, Priest's run has aged better, inasmuch as it doesn't revolve around caricatures of the Bush Administration.)
I continue to hope that he'll be back and, indeed, that there was a reason the word "Quantum" fell smack-dab in the middle of that stack of books Valiant posted as a teaser. Of course, if that's true then I'm probably responsible for his sudden departure from blogging, since I'm the guy who first pointed it out.
