IDW Trek comics plans for '08-'09

[Andrew Harris]

Heya, to answer a few questions:

Star Trek: The Last Generation is a "Myriad Universes" miniseries, but because the words sound so similar I think the Newsarama writer misheard the announcement and identified it as a "Mirror Universe" story by accident. As mentioned, it'll have full "Myriad Universes" trade dress, and will include excerpts from the novels and other cool stuff.

The story involves the collapse of the Khitomer Conference peace talks after the success of the assassination conspiracy, leading to open war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. But, because the Klingons are in a war for their very survival, they fight even more ferociously the before, ending ultimately with their conquest of Earth. Now, seven decades after the events of Star Trek VI--at about the same time as the early TNG seasons--Jean-Luc Picard leads an underground resistance against the Empire, as the Klingons' Terran warlord closes in and the situation for the rebellion grows increasingly more dangerous.

It'll also prominently feature Sulu on the Excelsior (which I love), and while it doesn't directly follow the same timeline as "Yesterday's Enterprise", expect to see characters like Rachel Garrett and other surprises throughout.

I should mention that the folks over at Pocket Books have been absolutely stellar (no pun intended) to work with, and this kind of crossover is something that we were talking about with them since my early days as IDW's Trek editor, so it's great to finally see it come about. Peter David's New Frontier series was sort of testing the waters for that, and it did extremely well, so I believe new Trek editor Andy Schmidt is interested in continuing the trend.

I should also mention: Interior art for The Last Generation will be handled by the inestimable fan-favorite Gordon Purcell, who's been drawing Trek for I don't even know how long, and most recently did the excellent Star Trek: Year Four series from D.C. Fontana. He's also the one who did the art on the original Star Trek VI movie adaptation with Peter David from way back when, so getting him do the art on this new series that spins out from that is just cool for me beyond belief.

For covers, I think some of that is still in the works, but you'll probably see something from Joe Corroney, who's been doing all sorts of fantastic covers for IDW's Trek line, as well as at least one from JK Woodward, the artist on Peter David's Fallen Angel series, who's got one of the covers for the first issue already finished. He took an idea that I suggested to him and absolutely knocked it out of the park, and I'll post it online here when IDW officially releases the artwork.

[ncc71877]

Welcome Mr. Harris, nice of you to drop by our neck of the net. I've really been enjoying the comics, "Mirror Images" had the best first issue. Looking forward to the stuff coming up.

ncc71877

[Saul]

I haven't been about to read the Romulan series yet, will they be collected into one volume later on? since i can't buy them over here.

[Therin of Andor]

saul wrote:

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I haven't been about to read the Romulan series yet, will they be collected into one volume later on? since i can't buy them over here.

All the IDW mini-series have been collected into graphic novel-style omnibuses about two months after the final issue of a title comes out.

[Allyn Gibson]

Christopher wrote:

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^^How do you mask Opera as Firefox?

That one's easy.

Go to a website, like Newsarama, for instance.

Right click. On the context menu, go down to "Edit Site Preferences."

In the window that opens, select the Network tab. You'll see a dropdown with the label "Browser Identification."

You have five options. Identify as Opera, IE, or Firefox, plus Mask as IE or Firefox. (The difference between the two is that "Identify" still leaves "Opera" in the User Agent your browser sends out. "Mask" takes it out." The thing is, some websites still pick out the "Opera," even though the User Agent looks like it's not Opera when you identify as something else. "Mask" is generally safer.)

And you can do this on a site-by-site basis.

And why would websites deliberately deny content to certain browsers?

That's a very good question.

In some cases, it's laziness on the part of web developers; it's easier to make sure your site works with the Big Two -- IE and Firefox -- than with browsers with a much smaller market share, like Safari and Opera. Hell, there's one feature in WordPress (the blogging software I use) that the WordPress software used to do a browser sniff for, and then wouldn't render on screen for Opera users. Fortunately, I never needed that function (it was the "Press It!" bookmarklet), so it never bothered me.

In the specific case of Opera, there were websites that treated Opera differently because it was, until a few years ago, ad-supported shareware. (You could use a free version, but it came with ad banners. If you paid, the ad banners went away. Shareware.) Given the rise in ads on websites over the past few years, there were webmasters who didn't like that their websites had to compete with the browser, and thus there were websites that reacted poorly to Opera. Now, Opera isn't ad-supported, but it has a robust ad blocking feature, and there seem to be websites that react badly to that. Can't win for trying, I suppose.

As for Newsarama browsing sniffing and then serving different pages, it looks like a case of poor coding more than anything. (Newsarama's poor performance with Opera made Newsarama's Wikipedia page recently. Of all the things to add to a Wiki page, that seems like small potatoes, which is probably why it was removed.)

[Christopher]

I masked as Firefox, but I'm still not getting comments on Newsarama. Not that I usually read comments anyway...

[Andrew Harris]

ncc71877 wrote:

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Welcome Mr. Harris, nice of you to drop by our neck of the net. I've really been enjoying the comics, "Mirror Images" had the best first issue. Looking forward to the stuff coming up.

ncc71877

I've actually been around here for quite a while, but recently changed my I.D. when I left IDW's editing throne to freelance full time. Glad you like "Mirror Images"--Los Bros. Tiptons have done a great job on the entire series, and I think David Messina's art has never looked better.

Therin of Andor wrote:

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All the IDW mini-series have been collected into graphic novel-style omnibuses about two months after the final issue of a title comes out.

I think Byrne's Romulans series might be handled slightly differently, since (as I understand the plan) he won't be doing five issues straight, but will be breaking it up after two issues to do a different Star Trek series. After he's done with that, he'll apparently resume the Romulans tale for three more issues (which is a separate, self-contained story that follows the two-issue series); and then, all five Romulan issues will be collected together in one omnibus, probably two or three months after the final issue appears.

[KRAD]

On the one hand, having to wait until early 2009 for Alien Spotlight II is frustrating. OTOH, it'll likely come out around the same time as A Singular Destiny, so it's a big self-promotion feast!

[Omega Particle]

Seeing IDW going strong, expanding the line in some interesting directions and coordinating their efforts more with Pocket Books has encouraged me to sample some of their product. Got my first IDW TBP on order, and I'm looking forward to receiving it!

[JD]

Which one is it?

[Steve Roby]

If it's The Space Between, don't worry, they get better.

[historypeats]

Christopher wrote:

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Schmidt's plans sound very ambitious and intriguing. It's great to see Trek comics going strong once again, and I love the greater ties with Pocket's Trek fiction program.

I'm not an especially strong follower of comics, but I'm a rabid Pocket enthusiast. The series/issues where IDW has tried to link its work to Pocket's (such as the New Frontier mini-series) have been the ones that convinced me to take the plunge every so often, and I'll be buying any comics that legitimately relate to/fit into the same framework as the novels.

Short version: IDW + Pocket = Profit

[historypeats]

Steve Roby wrote:

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If it's The Space Between, don't worry, they get better.

Good, because I tried two issues of The Space Between and stopped buying after that. Any recommendations in particular?

[historypeats]

To Andrew: Thanks for reassuring the crowd at the Comic-Con panel about the forthcoming Trek movie. Personally, I'm excited to see new people playing in the Star Trek sandbox; a similar infusion of new blood into the fiction line roughly a decade ago led to the Golden Age of TrekLit, and I'm optimistic Abrams and Co. will work similar wonders. After all, we've had forty years of Trek; if Abrams decides to change something in ways I don't like, it's not like I don't have an abundance of other Trek material to enjoy.

[foravalon]

historypeats wrote:

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Good, because I tried two issues of The Space Between and stopped buying after that. Any recommendations in particular?

I'm really sorry to say it but anything not written by David Tischman comes highly recommended. I've been blown away by almost everything Trek that IDW has put out to date, but the writing in both The Space Between and the first 6 issues of TOS Year Four was just atrocious.