2018 Releases

[Mage]

Which is clearly what AJ Hawker meant by "under a separate license." They're under Titan's license with CBS rather than Pocket's. There's no such thing as "the license." There's Pocket's license (currently in renegotiation), Titan's license, IDW's license, Modiphius's license, Hallmark's license, etc.

About that.... I'm confused... The Prometheus novels were originally written in German, and published by Cross Cult, who is licensed to publish translated Pocket Books Treklit. But, Titan publishes the English translations. However, I understood that Prometheus does tie in with the established 'TrekLit' universe. Does this mean that Titan could also use other events from those novels in their licensed work somehow?

 

[Greg Cox]

Licenses like this don't really refer to the content of the books: the specific plots, guest-stars, etc. Ultimately, it's all copyrighted by CBS who can do whatever they want with it. Nobody owns the "TrekLit Universe" (which isn't really a legal thing) except CBS, who control all things Trek.

Pocket or any other licencee doesn't own the plots of their books--just the rights to publish them. The content all belongs to CBS. Hope that makes sense.

 

[David Weller]

About that.... I'm confused... The Prometheus novels were originally written in German, and published by Cross Cult, who is licensed to publish translated Pocket Books Treklit. But, Titan publishes the English translations. However, I understood that Prometheus does tie in with the established 'TrekLit' universe. Does this mean that Titan could also use other events from those novels in their licensed work somehow?

AIUI, Pocket passed on the chance to publish the English language versions of the Prometheus trilogy so Titan stepped in.

Cross Cult got a special license from CBS to commission and publish these novels as part of Trek’s 50th anniversary year.

 

[JD]

There were several times where the comics and the novels have crossed over, like Diane Duane's TOS comics for DC, the DS9Relaunch/TNG crossover Divided We Fall from Wildstorm, and the New Frontier comics from Wildstorm and IDW, so there is precdedent for non-Pocket stories using stuff from the Novelverse. Star Trek Online also borrows a few elements from the Novelverse, but I think that stuff was twisted to fit their version of the Trek Universe, while the stuff in the comics was taken pretty much directly from the comics.

 

[Mage]

AIUI, Pocket passed on the chance to publish the English language versions of the Prometheus trilogy so Titan stepped in.

Cross Cult got a special license from CBS to commission and publish these novels as part of Trek’s 50th anniversary year.

Ah, ok. Wasn't aware of that last part.

 

[Christopher]

Different licensors have shared continuity before. The Pocket novels incorporated elements from at least two Wildstorm graphic novels, The Gorn Crisis and Enter the Wolves, as well as IDW's Klingons: Blood Will Tell and some Gary Seven material from DC's '90s TOS comic. In turn, IDW has published a few standalone comics (mainly the ones by Keith R.A. DeCandido) that are set in the novel continuity, though most of IDW's output is not. Peter David's first Pocket TNG novel, Strike Zone, was a sequel to his aborted storyline from DC's '80s TOS comic. Going back a ways, Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath's two Pocket Trek novels from the early '80s were in continuity with their earlier Bantam novels.

 

[Garth Rockett]

My impression at the time was that Wildstorm was trying to be at least novelverse compatible, where they didn't tie in directly. Didn't their DS9 comics fit in with the relaunch continuity? It's been so long since I've read them I can't remember. Also, the Wildstorm comics did end up on VOI timeline, although the other comics didn't IIRC.

And of course, there's also Peter David's New Frontier comics, which also tied in directly to the novelverse (a Wildstorm one-shot and an IDW miniseries).

 

[Christopher]

My impression at the time was that Wildstorm was trying to be at least novelverse compatible, where they didn't tie in directly. Didn't their DS9 comics fit in with the relaunch continuity?

The novelverse was still nascent at the time of Wildstorm's license. You're right, they did two DS9 miniseries that were consistent with the DS9 novels -- N-Vector and Divided We Fall. But in the former case, Marco Palmieri decided to have the novels reference a character introduced in the comic, rather than the comic referencing the novels. Otherwise, though, there wasn't yet much of a "novelverse" for Wildstorm to tie into.

Also, a couple of characters that Andy Mangels & Mike Martin introduced in Marvel's DS9 comic were later added to the novels. Pava from Marvel's Starfleet Academy comic is in the Titan series as well.

 

[tomswift2002]

I’m surprised no one mentioned the weirdest crossover in Trek history—-TOS & TNG with the X-Men that had 2 comics and a TNG novel sequel (Planet X in 1998).

 

[Christopher]

I’m surprised no one mentioned the weirdest crossover in Trek history—-TOS & TNG with the X-Men that had 2 comics and a TNG novel sequel (Planet X in 1998).

I think the weirdest crossover is IDW's Infestation, the 2011 zombie-invasion event indirectly crossing Trek over with Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Ghostbusters as well as a couple of its original series. (None of them directly referred to each other, but they all independently fought a common threat and I think there was an original IDW character featured in all of them.) Although of all the various Trek-comics crossovers, the X-Men one is the only one that fits our discussion of shared continuity between different Trek licensors, since a Marvel comic had a Pocket sequel.

 

[veritech]

I’m surprised no one mentioned the weirdest crossover in Trek history—-TOS & TNG with the X-Men that had 2 comics and a TNG novel sequel (Planet X in 1998).

There were a lot of things in those comics and novel that I never thought I would ever see: Wolverine vs. Spock, Picard falling for Storm . . . insanity!!

 

[Christopher]

I rather liked the TOS/X-Men crossover, which did a good job of paying tribute to the common themes of the two franchises -- the X-Men appreciate the Enterprise crew because they live in the kind of enlightened, inclusive future the X-Men fight for, and the Enterprise crew appreciate the X-Men because they're the kind of people who helped create the enlightened, inclusive future they live in. That thematic bond let me feel that it made sense to cross the two over, that they complemented each other in a meaningful way rather than just being an arbitrary, gratuitous tie-in like some of IDW's Trek crossovers. (Well, maybe that's a bit harsh. I can see a thematic link to Legion of Super Heroes with its optimistic, multispecies future. I guess Green Lantern sort of works as a pseudomilitary space defense corps. And Planet of the Apes shares a common social-allegory approach, though in a much more cynical way.)

The TNG/X-Men comic didn't work as well for me, partly because it seemed to pretend that the X-Men were a part of Star Trek's own past rather than an alternate reality as the first comic made clear. At least, it seemed to be confused on whether it was the one or the other.

 

[Jinn]

Also, this:

 

[indianatrekker26]

I rather liked the TOS/X-Men crossover, which did a good job of paying tribute to the common themes of the two franchises -- the X-Men appreciate the Enterprise crew because they live in the kind of enlightened, inclusive future the X-Men fight for, and the Enterprise crew appreciate the X-Men because they're the kind of people who helped create the enlightened, inclusive future they live in. That thematic bond let me feel that it made sense to cross the two over, that they complemented each other in a meaningful way rather than just being an arbitrary, gratuitous tie-in like some of IDW's Trek crossovers. (Well, maybe that's a bit harsh. I can see a thematic link to Legion of Super Heroes with its optimistic, multispecies future. I guess Green Lantern sort of works as a pseudomilitary space defense corps. And Planet of the Apes shares a common social-allegory approach, though in a much more cynical way.)

The TNG/X-Men comic didn't work as well for me, partly because it seemed to pretend that the X-Men were a part of Star Trek's own past rather than an alternate reality as the first comic made clear. At least, it seemed to be confused on whether it was the one or the other.

speaking of cross overs, my favorite was, by far, the Doctor Who-TNG assimilation squared.

 

[Dayton Ward]

I don’t mind admitting that I seethed with (good-natured) envy when the Trek/Apes comics crossover was announced.

 

[tomswift2002]

With the X-Men/Trek crossovers, its also funny when you think that in the TNG novel Picard and Xavier were thought by Dr.Crusher to be very similar looking, almost as if they had come from the same family---and that was 2 years before Patrick Stewart would play Xavier in the 2000 X-Men film. And then in the First Class films we've seen TOS episodes in quite a few of the films, whether they featured Shatner and crew, or in Apocalypse it was a clip from Who Mourns For Adonais with Palamas and Apollo.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Also, this:

A not-small part of me says that these panels alone were all the justification they needed for the crossover in the first place...

 

[RuthlessNate]

speaking of cross overs, my favorite was, by far, the Doctor Who-TNG assimilation squared.

I enjoyed it too, though it's funny that we know that the Doctor is aware of Star Trek as a TV show.

 

[Christopher]

I enjoyed it too, though it's funny that we know that the Doctor is aware of Star Trek as a TV show.

Yeah, and My Enemy, My Ally has the Enterprise crew aware of Doctor Who as a TV show. (Uhura and Lt. Freeman are converting a Tom Baker episode to holographic format, although the scene depicted in the book is not one that actually exists.) And you can find all sorts of references to Star Trek as a TV show in X-Men comics or Green Lantern comics.

This is part of why I can't see these cross-franchise crossovers as anything but "imaginary stories." Often, the characters from one franchise are aware of the other as fiction, and sometimes it's even reciprocal. So stories in which they're all real people don't really work in the main continuity of either series.

 

[RuthlessNate]

Yeah, and My Enemy, My Ally has the Enterprise crew aware of Doctor Who as a TV show. (Uhura and Lt. Freeman are converting a Tom Baker episode to holographic format, although the scene depicted in the book is not one that actually exists.) And you can find all sorts of references to Star Trek as a TV show in X-Men comics or Green Lantern comics.

This is part of why I can't see these cross-franchise crossovers as anything but "imaginary stories." Often, the characters from one franchise are aware of the other as fiction, and sometimes it's even reciprocal. So stories in which they're all real people don't really work in the main continuity of either series.

Yeah, that's why I always treat crossovers like that as fun little diversions that can be enjoyed and then summarily ignored.