IDW Trek comics plans for '08-'09

[Christopher]

TrekMovie.com is reporting the latest Comic Con announcements from new IDW Trek editor Andrew Schmidt:

http://trekmovie.com/2008/07/26/comic-con-08-idw-outlines-plans-for-future-of-trek-comics/

In addition to what we already knew about, the John Byrne Romulans: The Hollow Crown and the Alien Spotlight II series including a Klingon tale by KRAD and a Q tale by the Tiptons, the highlights include this:

Star Trek - The Last Generation (November)
Written by Andrew Steven Harris, illustrated by Gordon Purcell
A five issue ‘Myriad Universe’ (not Mirror Universe), story akin to the new Pocket Books Myriad Universe stories. The background ‘what if’ premise is that Kirk did not save the Federation President at the end of Star Trek VI and a war erupted between the Federation and the Klingons with the Klingons eventually conquering Earth. Series takes place seven decades after STVI, or around the same time as the early seasons of TNG. The series will feature alternate timeline versions of Worf, Picard, and Sulu.

Neat. Will it actually use the Myriad Universes heading? (And will article writers ever figure out that "Myriad" takes a plural noun?)

Also:

John Byrne will follow his two-issue Romulan series with another series and a number of different ideas are being discussed, but the veteran hasn’t yet decided which one he wants to do yet. One possibility has the working title of ‘Crew’ which would be a pre-TOS era series set on a shake-down cruise. Another possibility is a follow up to his "Assignment Earth" series from this year.

Other tentative ideas include a movie prequel and adaptation, a Titan series (which I'd love to participate in if it happens), and maybe a Captain Sulu series.

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.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Sounds great! I also love the greater ties with Pocket's work, and I've been crossing my fingers for more stuff like this ever since the New Frontier series was first announced.

A Titan series would be awesome, especially written by you, Christopher. I have to admit that my first thought was Mangels and Martin, as I've read and enjoyed their comics work before, but I'd be just as happy if they did the proposed Sulu/Excelsior series instead. Have you written any comics before?

I would also love to see a Vanguard book. Either a mini or a one-shot would be cool (Of course, I would prefer a mini). Come to think of it, I've read and enjoyed David Mack's comics work before as well...

A Titan or Excelsior series or even Byrnes's propsed "Crew" series would be a good way to see if an on-going series with an evolving storyline would work for them. My favorite Trek comics in the past were the ones with evolving characters and storylines (Starfleet Academy, Early Voyages, DC's first run).

 

[Christopher]

I have no formal comics experience, but I'd like to get some.

 

[DarkHorizon]

Neat. Will it actually use the Myriad Universes heading? (And will article writers ever figure out that "Myriad" takes a plural noun?)

According to Andrew Harris' comments on Newsarama's report, yes.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Cool! The Myriad Universes storyline idea sounds very interesting, especially since The Undiscovered Country is my favorite Star Trek movie.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I would also love to see a Vanguard book.

Pick up Uchu, the third volume of the Star Trek manga. Vanguard Station appears in one of the stories.

 

[Titan Designer]

I myself would love to see the Titan in Comic form, I have been trying to get samples of my work over to IDW, but have heard nothing back from them. A Vangaurd and Sulu comic also cound like a great Idea.

 

[Christopher]

Neat. Will it actually use the Myriad Universes heading? (And will article writers ever figure out that "Myriad" takes a plural noun?)

According to Andrew Harris' comments on Newsarama's report, yes.

Do you mean comments in the sense of blog-type comments in response to an article, or do you mean his statements quoted in the article proper? Because the article proper calls it a Mirror Universe story, and I can't find any comments of the other sort on the article page. Do you have to be registered to see comments or something?

 

[DarkHorizon]

Neat. Will it actually use the Myriad Universes heading? (And will article writers ever figure out that "Myriad" takes a plural noun?)

According to Andrew Harris' comments on Newsarama's report, yes.

Do you mean comments in the sense of blog-type comments in response to an article, or do you mean his statements quoted in the article proper? Because the article proper calls it a Mirror Universe story, and I can't find any comments of the other sort on the article page. Do you have to be registered to see comments or something?

The former. It's at the bottom of the page, about five comments in (registration isn't needed) - he addresses the Mirror/Myriad error, and goes on to state:

It'll have the Myriad Universe trade dress, include excerpts from some of the Pocket Books novels, the works

 

[JD]

Wow, sounds like they are doing some really cool stuff next year. I would love to see an ongoing monthly Titan, Excelsior, or Vanguard series, especially if the Pocket authors were involved. That MyrU story definitely sounds cool, and I'm really happy to see that they are actually using the MyrU title with it.

 

[Christopher]

The former. It's at the bottom of the page, about five comments in (registration isn't needed) - he addresses the Mirror/Myriad error, and goes on to state:

It'll have the Myriad Universe trade dress, include excerpts from some of the Pocket Books novels, the works

Okay, apparently it was a browser issue. The comments don't display in Opera; I had to open the page in Firefox. The Internet is weird.

 

[Julio Angel Ortiz]

The former. It's at the bottom of the page, about five comments in (registration isn't needed) - he addresses the Mirror/Myriad error, and goes on to state:

It'll have the Myriad Universe trade dress, include excerpts from some of the Pocket Books novels, the works

Okay, apparently it was a browser issue. The comments don't display in Opera; I had to open the page in Firefox. The Internet is weird.

Or maybe Opera is just weird. I'm a Firefox user (since the 0.99 days) and 3.0.1 simply rules.

By the way, I finished Greater Than the Sum last night. A review is forthcoming, but I'd like to say: very nice job.

EDITED TO ADD: A Titan series would simply be awesome, as would a Vanguard one. It would tip the scales for me to start buying more of IDW's Trek comics.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Okay, apparently it was a browser issue. The comments don't display in Opera; I had to open the page in Firefox. The Internet is weird.

Or maybe Opera is just weird. I'm a Firefox user (since the 0.99 days) and 3.0.1 simply rules.

Odd, of all the things in the world Christopher and I agree on, we agree on the splendiforousness of Opera.

There are websites that browser sniff and serve Opera incomplete pages. Newsarama appears to be one of them. Masking Opera as Firefox worked, and brought up the comments.

 

[Christopher]

^^How do you mask Opera as Firefox? And why would websites deliberately deny content to certain browsers?

 

[Admiral_Young]

The Last Generation sounds really cool...I wonder if it will be based on the "Yesterday's Enterprise" timeline but I guess not if its branch off point is Kirk saving Chancellor Azetbur?

 

[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]

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]

^^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.)