Star Trek + LOTR + comics = John Byrne

On his website, John Byrne responds to a lengthy Star Trek thread. The post he was responding to: "I miss DeForrest Kelley." Yup, we all do. But what was interesting to me, was Byrne's almost melancholy turn toward the end of his response. Read on:

Me too! It was very sad to watch the otherwise
hilarious "Where No Fan has Gone Before" episode
of "Futurama", which neatly and humorously covered
the absence of James Doohan, but was forced to
have DeForrest Kelley stand mute thru the whole
story.

A reminder, of course, that all the original crew are
getting up in years -- even Walter Koenig, the
"youngest" of the crew, will be 70 in a couple of years
-- and soon others will be joining Kelley. For quite a
few years now I have been watching my childhood
die, with the passing of Jack Kirby, Dick Sprang, Gil
Kane, Ross Andru, Gardner Fox, Wally Wood and
many others. De Kelley was the first to go of the on
screen STAR TREK folk, and I felt it somewhere
deep inside. As I mentioned to Adam Hughes and
his girlfriend Allison at MOC, aside from my British
background, there are three things which can be
said to have "created" John Byrne, and they are
comicbooks, "The Lord of the Rings", and STAR
TREK: TOS.