This is just wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG!!!
I was horrified a while back when I was in a bookstore and saw on the shelf that there was an actual crossover novel between Star Trek: The Next Generation and the X-Men.
UGH!!!
This is the literary equivalent of KFC’s Infamous Stomach-In-A-Bowls!
I have nothing against Next Gen.
I have nothing against X-Men.
But I don’t want them jumbled together like this!
Yes, I know, in fits of unmitigated geeky uncoolness, fans of various series have produced reams and reams of fanfic doing franchise mashups like this.
That’s why God created the Internet.
How else would young teenagers explore the question of whether Worf or Wolverine would win a fight?
(I’m guessing that’s a prominent scene early in the book . . . and I’m guessing that they manage to fight each other to a draw . . . big surprise.)
But to have one of these things escape from the wild and actually make it into print . . . WHAT WERE THE RIGHTS-HOLDERS THINKING???
Particularly the rights holders for the Star Trek franchise. It strikes me that this stands to cheapen their brand more than Marvel Comics’.
Perhaps it was to indulge Michael Jan Friedman, who apparently writes many of the Star Trek novels and may be an X-Men fan on the side.
I don’t mind commercial tie-in literature based on popular media franchises. The stories in these series are usually non-canonical (though not in Babylon 5 or Firefly). People enjoy them, and I respect that.
I don’t mind fanfic. I don’t read it, but I don’t mind that it’s out there. In fact, a lot of the stories told in world history have been the equivalent of fanfic–non-professional storytellers doing their own take on popular stories. I don’t know how many folks sitting around the fire have spun their own tales about Gilgamesh or Ahikar or Odysseus or Jason or Aeneas any of the other heroes of literature. All that’s fine and part of the human experience–a testimony to human creativity.
I don’t even mind crossovers, as long as they’re well done. I would not mind, for example, reading a novel in which Dracula met some other 19th century literary character, like Sherlock Holmes or the Invisible Man. (In fact, Alan Moore did a whole comic book series based on that idea, though I haven’t read it.)
But there has to be a "fit" between the two things you’re crossing over–at least if you’re intending to play the story for something other than laughs. Sure, Bambi meets Godzilla can give you a chuckle, but I really wouldn’t want to read a serious detective story in which Sherlock Holmes solves crimes alongside characters from Beatrix Potter’s universe.
And that’s the problem here.
The X-Men inhabit a comic book universe that plays by comic book rules, where only the slightest gesture is made toward real-world science and physics and character development and Star Trek . . . uh . . . well . . . um . . . nevermind.
I just hope they don’t make a movie out of this thing.
How would you tell Captain Picard and Professor X apart?
