Writing-wise, it's handwerklich gut. Nothing special, but okay. The kind of thing you can read on a beach or in the train. No purple prose. But you don't have to catch up; I wouldn't say PR is a must. If you want to give it a try, I'd recommend going for the book collections (the silver ones) and read the first three books, which collect the first thirty or so issues but evened out the cliffhanger of the week bits and stuff like that for the book version. They also are very 1960 sci fi, so it's interesting for nostalgic reasons. (Putting an end to the Cold War is big on our hero's agenda once he gets his hands on Alien tech, because he decides he can't just hand that over to his government in the cold war situation, as it would escalate same; women in leading positions are still taken as a sign of an unusual alien culture*g*)