What was the best Battlestar Galactica comic book story?

[KJ]

Lets see...

There's been several comic companies over the years that have produced Galactica based comic stories in the funny pages on and off for years ranging from Marvel Comics, Maximum Press and Realm Press!

And pretty soon we'll be on to the brand new Dynamic Press Battlestar Galactica comics. Wonder what awaits us eh?

To all the fans out there thats read most of them or every single one? Which ones did you feel were the best stories told so far!


Which Galactica stories from each publisher was the best far as the expanded universe of comic books and your own personal opinion goes! Which ones were the worse told stories?


1. Marvel comic stories told after issue 5 (Lost Planet Of The Gods part 2) to issue 23.

See; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles...8comic_book%29 for further details on the individual Marvel comic books and the rest of the Galactica comics for further background information.

2) Maximum Press' War of Eden #1-4 (collected in trade paperback format)
The Enemy Within #1-3, Starbuck #1-3, Apollo’s Journey 1-3, Journey’s End #1-4

And their Asylum comics featuring Battlestar Galactica. Baptism of Fire Parts 1 to 3, Athena’s Quest Parts 1 to 3, The Rebirth of Cy, Part 1 (unfinished?) and First Date.

3) Relam Press comics; Season 2 The Law of Volahd, Prison of Souls.
Battlestar Galactica Season 3 stories; Search For Sanctuary, No Place Like Home, Hades Hath No Fury, Fire in the Sky.

Their spin off second comic book. Galactica: The New Millennium featuring;
Fear of Flying, Favorite Son, Tales of the Pegasus: Daddy’s Girl.

And stand alones like Eve of Destruction, 1999 Tourbook, Dark Genesis, Centurion Prime and The Gallery Special.


Care to share your thoughts on this topic?


Here's mine

KJ's 5 favorite Galactica stories.

1) War of Eden from Maximum Press 1st BG comic 4 part mini series. Everything a fan could what and more! Mythlogy, action adventure, new characters introduced and heavy revealations made etc. Even when Galactica finds Earth the battle is far from over? Classic story!

2) Berserker. Issue #16 of Marvel's comic series. Captain Apollo battle's an advance Cylon Mark 3" Imperator hell bent on killing him.

3) The Rebirth of Cy. Unfinished but well told short story featuring a Cylon gaining a kinda 'soul' after an ion storm strikes a Cylon Raider. And now questions his role as a Cylon Centurion. He meets LT Starbuck who was captured by the Cylons during the battle!

4) Enemy Within. Aries a lone person found on an ancient Kobollian derlict ship is revived by the colonials of the fleet. He quickly develops a relationship with Colonel Athena of the Galactica and "bests" Starbuck in a game of triad, he soon becomes liked and respected but who is he really and where is he from?

5) Eve Of Destruction Prelude. Parts 1 and 2! A little backstory and
anthology tale more or less put together for Galactica's mythology to expand upon!



KJ

P.S. If anyone wants to discuss their favorite Berkerly and Hatch novels and debate which original story was great or is looking to purchase the hard to find books. Here i thought coming across this link today online might help out all you fellow fans out there, so i'm sharing it with you!

Enjoy.

https://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/se...tar-galactica/

[KamikazeAthena]

I have to agree with The War Of Eden. It was the first thing that I thought of when I read the title of this thread. I remember being totally taken in by it.

[JLHurley]

I don't think I've ever really enjoyed a comic (or comic series) based on BG. They've always fallen really short/flat--IMO of course. I do, however, recall somewhat liking "Berserker" from the Marvel series--and possibly the final issue. If memory serves, the story featured Lucifer, a big BG/Cylon fight, and the return of Starbuck. (I always thought taking Starbuck off center stage was a shot in the leg for that series; at least he made it back for the finale, I guess.)

Hopefully the upcoming Dynamite series will appeal to me more.

But regarding covers to BG comics...BG: Eve of Destruction: Prelude from Realm Press is my hands down fave. Love the base stars, the inclusion of Lucifer, and the lifelike image of Baltar's face smack dab in the middle.

[KJ]

To me the worse story hands down was, 'Journey's End'! Although there are some Galactica fanfics that deal with a return to the 'Colonial Holocaust' storyline. Galactica really shouldn't dabble with time travel stories at all. Even the great and improving art by Hector Gomez (who's art probably would've been better if Rob Liefield obtained the likeness rights to do the Maximum Press BG comic book series) couldn't save this poorly executed story from the get go.

Writers couldn't even get the Battlestars vessels at Cimtar right and confused that issue further for a while afterwards.

Dark Genesis was also another poorly handled story which didn't relate to "Eve of Destruction: Prelude", that well either?

The Asylum story "Baptism of Fire" however was a story i felt was fantastically put together. And was even made a slight hint of in the War Of Eden feature story and mention of by Adama's grandson Cain* (introduced character for the comic book*). The early years in the Cylon/Colonial war for Adama, Tigh and Cain serving onboard the Battlestar Cerberus (taken and adapted from a passage in the War Of The Gods novel) under the command of Commander Odysseus and Colonel Imsu. A spin off featuring a young Adama, Tigh and Cain would've been great, and surely Commander Odysseus of the Cerberus could've had his own tales told in his own series had the Maximum Press stories continued and fleshed him out as another 'Living Legend' perhaps seeing why and how Commander Cain turned out the way he did etc. I figured just like the rumors of another "Battlestar" besides the Pegasus, turning up in season 2 of BG had the series continued (ignoring "G80" of course), that Maximum Press would've logically used the Cerberus and Commander Odysseus featured in this story to tell several flashback tales throughout the Maximum Press run.

Perhaps relating to his namesake Odysseus in the ancient Greek legends, the Odysseus and his crew of Galactica universe was hunted down by the gods (Lords of Kobol, Seraphs or Count Iblis?) after a major battle with the Cylons and couldn't return home to the colonies and became lost in deep space. And round about the time of the "what if we had "..... the second season. The Galactica came across the Battlestar Cerberus and Adama met his mentor and former Commander. And perhaps there would be a particular logical reason why Odysseus and crew didn't age when they met up and all? (A Seraph named 'Circe' perhaps plaguing them ). And like the 'flying dutchman' that the Pegasus and Babylon 4 are like in science fiction, the Cerberus disappears with Odysseus and crew roaming around out there looking to get home etc?

If only...

One of my requests to Dynamic Forces will be if they can do something similar or if its possible to resurrect the concepts of that story done by Robert Napton for dynamtic forces' BG comics to do anew. Or something towards that end.

Going back to listing the great comic book stories of Galactica though, others i've enjoyed from select comic publishing companies are Prison of Souls, Search For Sanctuary and Centurion Prime from Realm Press!

KJ

[Eric Paddon]

I don't like to as a general rule bump threads from two presidencies back, but this one fascinates me because I've had a chance to go through a *lot* of Galactica comic books of late and I can tell you that after getting a look at what Realm Press was trying to do or had ambitions for......boy did we miss out on what could have been the best official Galactica publication ever. Scalf's art was dead-on accurate and above all the characters had the sound of the series, and unlike Dynamite it understood the relationship underpinnings. The one flaw was that the one time we saw Cassiopeia, she was throwing a fit because Starbuck was back to "space Casanova" mode juggling Athena with her again and that didn't ring true.

Alas, because so much of what Realm did ended up being unfinished in terms of not just one but two and three multiple storylines, it's hard ultimately to put them #1 because except for the first several issues nothing gives you a resolution through-line.

So the nod for me remains Max Press first two series "War Of Eden" and "Enemy Within." I also in re-reading the "Starbuck" flashback tale set just after "Experiment In Terra" am a little more positive than I used to be. I thought at the time it was forgetting the element of Apollo *stopping* the war, but looking at it, it's clear that the Alliance people Starbuck clashes with are outpost commanders still fighting their own battle. That said, the continuity wasn't as sharp with EIT as it could have been.

The one solid Dynamite tale remains the 2014 annual with the Baltar origin tale.

[Jayworld]

Originally Posted by Eric Paddon

I don't like to as a general rule bump threads from two presidencies back, but this one fascinates me because I've had a chance to go through a *lot* of Galactica comic books of late and I can tell you that after getting a look at what Realm Press was trying to do or had ambitions for......boy did we miss out on what could have been the best official Galactica publication ever. Scalf's art was dead-on accurate and above all the characters had the sound of the series, and unlike Dynamite it understood the relationship underpinnings. The one flaw was that the one time we saw Cassiopeia, she was throwing a fit because Starbuck was back to "space Casanova" mode juggling Athena with her again and that didn't ring true.

Alas, because so much of what Realm did ended up being unfinished in terms of not just one but two and three multiple storylines, it's hard ultimately to put them #1 because except for the first several issues nothing gives you a resolution through-line.

So the nod for me remains Max Press first two series "War Of Eden" and "Enemy Within." I also in re-reading the "Starbuck" flashback tale set just after "Experiment In Terra" am a little more positive than I used to be. I thought at the time it was forgetting the element of Apollo *stopping* the war, but looking at it, it's clear that the Alliance people Starbuck clashes with are outpost commanders still fighting their own battle. That said, the continuity wasn't as sharp with EIT as it could have been.

The one solid Dynamite tale remains the 2014 annual with the Baltar origin tale.

I have to concur with Eric's analysis. Realm Press was really ahead of the game in the Battlestar comic genre. Maximum Press did a good job, although (being a professional graphic designer/illustrator for many years) I did get kind of tired of the Rob Liefield look to all the comics. Never liked his artwork even back in the days when he worked on X-Men. The best Marvel comic story (when I look back at that series, the artwork was sadly lacking as well, but the stories were very good at times) was the issue in which Boomer encountered the doomed ship with Adama's wife, Ilya.

I also concur that the best thing that Dynamite has issued was the BG Annual featuring the backstory of Baltar. Very, very good story. Some of their worst, though, have been many including the Death of Apollo (including a righthanded(!) Apollo)....

[Eric Paddon]

Originally Posted by Jayworld

The best Marvel comic story was the issue in which Boomer encountered the doomed ship with Adama's wife, Ilya.

Not that I want to plug my own work, but that Marvel story did provide an inspiration for the latest fanfic series I've been doing, part of the "Virtual Second Season" project which hasn't been updated on this board in years (it's had about 20 stories since then). The "Ila in a shuttle launched from the Colonies" always intrigued me as an idea but I've given it a more upbeat slant of Ila being part of a Resistance movement and going out in a one-person shuttle in search of Adama to get him to come back......only she's found instead by the Pegasus. Which leads to a new series of stories of Cain and Ila working together (strictly platonic) as the Pegasus keeps fighting its own battles while the Galactica still moves on.

I could have liked Marvel's work more had they not operated under the handicap of being forbidden to adapt or acknowledge any part of the series past LPOTG. So we never saw Cain, Sheba, Iblis and they never did bring Baltar back from the Kobol wreckage. In fairness, Marvel was operating under similar handicaps when they were also doing a Trek comic book after the first movie where they couldn't reference any of the plots or scenarios from the original series and could only build off the movie.

Liefeld's art on Max Press I admit could get real odd after a bit. It's more the strength of the first two series scripts that keep letting me look past that though it was looking worse by the time of the very poor "Journey's End" series. One legacy of Max that lives on is how the SOL are referred to as "Seraphs" even in one of Dynamite's series.