IIRC, the early Gold Key stuff was done by people overseas who had never even watched the show. They worked from whatever publicity photos were available, and probably had no idea what certain things looked like.

I can only wonder what Gene thought of them.

I actually had that particular comic in what looked like a Super 8 sized filmstrip you ran through a little plastic viewer.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/vintage-Chemtoy-STAR-TREK-MOVIE-VIEWER-with-films-MOC-/191525931275?hash=item2c97d5c90b:g:KwIAAOSwBLlU83s5

Mine inexplicably came with only one strip, leaving the story incomplete, much to my annoyance, so I missed out on all the genocide. Do you suppose that could have been Groot’s home world? 😉

One of the rejected propsals for TAS, (according to the making of TMP book) was the Enterprise crew destroying a whole lot of hostile aliens. The book doesn’t say which animation studio made that pitch.