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Inspiration is sometimes a simple thing, sometimes it's a complex recipe that defies analysis. I sat here, a few weeks back, trying to put together something called an "influence map" that I saw on Deviant Art. I gave up, frustrated by trying to narrow it down to a few things or people. But, thinking back, it shouldn't really have been that hard. I'm not a complex person and I can name some of the things that brought me to the point where I am, now...as a man and as an artist and writer. Movies, books, TV shows, they've all had a hand in shaping me, so to speak. Making a short list sometimes helps crystallize things. There are the comics and creators that inspired me, Mike Grell's Legion of Superheroes work, and his Warlord, were among my first artistic influences. John Byrne's Doomsday +1 and his work on Space:1999 gave me access to a different aesthetic. Movies that impacted me as a kid, BATTLEGROUND, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALENCE, PLANET OF THE APES, THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (with Leslie Howard), RED RIVER, THE SEARCHERS, SILENT RUNNING, and STAR WARS. And TV shows, like THE LONE RANGER, BATMAN, SPACE:1999, and, of course, STAR TREK. In seventh grade I read The Making of Star Trek until the cover almost fell off. I was fascinated by the background details, how they pitched the show as "Wagon Train to the stars" and "Horatio Hornblower in space". I loved the sketches showing how they worked their way up to the final design of Enterprise and the close-up photos of props (in another life, I was probably a prop guy, because I freaking love props). I bought the Enterprise deck plans and spent countless hours wandering the halls and Jeffries tubes of the Constitution Class ship. I would spend hours in a local book store, studying the Starfleet Technical Manual. The amount of work that went into building this future world inspired me, later to try it, myself, more than once. Growing up, I was the kid who could be all alone in a crowded room. I was alone, but rarely lonely, because I had my books and comics and ideas filling my head. Star Trek was a big part of that. I've read that many Star Trek fans gravitated to the series because it showed that there was hope for the future, at a time when things looked pretty bleak. I think that's why there's a lot of fan crossover between Trek fans and Legion fans. Getting to see favorite episodes when they aired was like re-reading a favorite comic. Sure, you know what's going to happen, but it's like a visit from a good friend. For me, the best episodes were those that challenged you to think for yourself and not be swept along by the conventional wisdom. Episodes like "Devil in the Dark", which starts as a scary monster in the caves and ends as a first contact story with inter-species cooperation. Or, "Day of the Dove", where they defeat the evil energy creatures attacking them with laughter. But, for every good episode, there were a couple of weak, even bad episodes. William Shatner's dramatic reading of the preamble to the US Constitution on an alien planet that is an exact copy of Earth was particularly ridiculous. The number of times that exact copies of Earth appeared was fairly distressing. And then, something new came out. As with most kids of my generation, Saturday morning was the time for cartoons and suddenly, there was a Star Trek cartoon series. Recently, I found those episodes and watched them, and like the original series, there are good episodes that stand out among the -um- less good episodes. With many of the original series actors returning to voice their characters, it was a welcome addition to the reruns I had already seen. Sadly, the series suffers greatly from the very limited animation, but there were a couple of things that stood out for me. The introduction of Larry Niven's K'zinti to the Star Trek universe was interesting and humorous, partly because of producer Hal Sutherland's color blindness led to the K'zinti and their ship being depicted in bright pink. One other thing the animated series did, it increased the number of non-humans in the bridge crew by introducing two aliens, Lt. Arex and Lt. M'ress. Arex is interesting, because he's one of the most "alien" looking ETs to appear in any version of Star Trek, wearing a Starfleet uniform. M'ress is a big cat. She bridges the fan base between Star Trek and the furverts. Still, they were a nice start. They showed someone was thinking like a sci-fi writer. Sadly, even after the technology existed to do these characters in the movies or the spin-off TV series, mostly what we got was a parade of rubber-forehead aliens.
 I decided to rework the original series costumes, because I like their color coding and all. I redesigned the phasers and communicators, too. I was a fan of the old props, but give me a break, this weapon can vaporize you, safeties, trigger guards, let's use our heads people! The communicators from the original series are something of a joke. The simplest cel-phone on the market has more functionality. Smart phones could bridge the gap between communicator and tricorder. I didn't have time to model the tricorder I have in my head, but I envision it as a sophisticated tablet computer, with sensors and a sub-space link to the main computers on the ship.
 My phaser is inspired by the phase pistols from Enterprise and the assault phasers from one of the movies. I had hoped to see something like this in the 2009 Star Trek film. I was excited by the early teaser trailers, but quickly soured as I saw things change that I don't think needed changing. Having Enterprise built and launched from the ground strains suspension of disbelief. It was established early in the series that Enterprise could never land, it was built in space, in geosynchronous orbit over San Francisco. While the visual of seeing it rise out of a hole in the ground was cool, it was just one of the many things that ultimately disappointed me. The overly bright plastic bridge set was so annoying. The engineering set that looked like a chemical plant in southern California, with comical giant transparent cold water pipe with just enough water flowing through it to have a character washed along it for us to laugh at. Ugh. Sure, Quinto might have been born to play Spock, but the rest of the casting was weak. That skinny thing is Uhura? Come on! I will say, I enjoyed having the Orion girls for eye candy. I just hated the new Enterprise, the bulbous engine nacelles just looked awful. The new phasers looked like toys and work like toys, as well. The little flippy barrel thing? What the hell? And black is so much cooler on a weapon than silver! I know I'm one of the 7 people on Earth who hated that movie, but it just had nothing in it for me. All flash and no substance. And can we call a moratorium on freaking time travel history rewrites? Please? I'm begging you, forget about time travel!
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