As with most geeks, I’m always on the lookout for a bargain. So you can imagine my delight and curiosity when a Star Trek advert appeared on Facebook from online retailer Zavvi. It teased a bundle of no fewer than TEN Star Trek graphic novels for the astonishingly low price of £9.99. Surely this was too good to be true? Read on and find out…
The Deal
As I said, on first glance this offer seemed too good to be true. A typical graphic novel sells for between £15 and £20 these days. So how could Zavvi be offering ten of them for under £10? On closer inspection, the offer starts to become clear. These are not traditional graphic novels as you might expect. Each of the books on offer are from the Star Trek Graphic Novel Collection published by Eaglemoss.
This was produced as a partworks series with each issue retailing for £9.99 and featuring reprints from across the entire era of Star Trek in comics. Each volume collected strips (usually a single story or a theme) covering every publisher to have been involved with Star Trek in print. Ranging from the original comics from Gold Key back in the 60s right up to the modern titles from IDW Publishing. They covered absolutely everything. As well as the standard issues, several premium specials were produced available for those who took out a subscription to the series, at a higher price of £14.99.
The Star Trek Graphic Novels Mystery Bundle
In this mystery bundle you get no fewer than 10 books from this range. It’s clear from the start that Zavvi have struck some bulk purchase deal with Eaglemoss to buy their overstocks of the titles. But this is no bad thing as it provides the customer with a great deal. With it being a random pick, if you’ve already purchased any before there’s no guarantee what you will get (and there’s a risk of duplicates if you order multiple bundles) but for the price it’s worth a gamble.
The only downside with mystery packs of this nature is when there are any two-parters in the series. While you could get lucky and get each volume, that’s not guaranteed. So it really is pot luck as to whether or not all of your books feature self-contained stories.
My Purchase
Some have mentioned that Zavvi’s packaging leaves a lot to be desired. I’ll be honest and say that I would have to agree here. The books shipped in a large outer box with basic air bubble packing. Inside was a smaller box containing the Star Trek graphic novels. There was no padding inside the inner box and there have been complaints about the risk of damage to the contents. Mine arrived in generally good condition with just one small dent in the middle of one, although this didn’t seem to be due to transport or packaging and is more likely a factory-related problem.
Almost all were sealed apart from a couple that would have originally shipped with backing cards at retail. My bundle contained the first issue (which retailed at an introductory price of 99p), two of the premium priced issues, and seven further regular issues. In terms of the stories themselves, there was quite a varied selection – the two specials were the Green Lantern and Planet Of The Apes crossovers. Two volumes of the UK Classic Comic Strips were included (stories from the 70s that I’d never read before), one volume of the rare newspaper strips, and a mix of TNG, Classic Trek and modern movie era books.
Verdict
I did start buying these when these were first released but I’d only managed to buy about a dozen issues before I had to stop collecting them. As such I did end up with a couple of duplicates from this mystery bundle but even so it was still remarkable value for money. Even after taking the small postage cost into consideration, and the two duplicate issues, I still had eight new additions to the collection for less than £1.50 each. Now who can really complain at that?
The bundle is available from Zavvi at https://www.zavvi.com/books/star-trek-mystery-graphic-novel-10-pack-books/13030272.html
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