Anyone buying Titan's Star Trek Comic?
- Thread starter EJA
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Well I've got the Countdown comics by IDW, but I bought the new comic just the same, mainly because I think it's nice to see such a good thing being produced for kids and I want it to keep going. And issue 4 will apparantly be running the Spock: Reflections strip, which I do not have.
^Sadly, no. They're just reprinting IDW's comics, and IDW hasn't done any Titan stories yet, though there have been some vague rumblings about the possibility.
Issue #4 was supposed to be out 30th July according to issue #3. The fact that it doesn't seem to have surfaced doesn't bode well. Titan haven't announced anything yet, but I wouldn't be overly shocked if its been cancelled.
Titan's Transformers: Animated comic was cancelled after only 3 issues too.
Or maybe there's just a printing delay, don't mean to be a doom-sayer!!
Titan's Transformers: Animated comic was cancelled after only 3 issues too.
Or maybe there's just a printing delay, don't mean to be a doom-sayer!!
I've been told today by my colleagues in the comics department that the Star Trek comic has indeed been cancelled, as of issue 3. Please don't ask me any further questions, as I don't know any more than that.
Paul
Paul
I'm really sorry to hear that Paul. I was in WH Smith just this lunchtime looking for the latest issue. Instead they had #3 on the shelves. No doubt folding the comic strip into the regular magazine can't be done, as it presents a conflict of interest with IDW. Hopefully they'll be no more casualities among Titan's fine publications. 
I assume the UK comic reprinting issues of IDW comics was also in competition with imported US copies of the IDW omnibuses.
I'm really sorry to hear that Paul. I was in WH Smith just this lunchtime looking for the latest issue. Instead they had #3 on the shelves. No doubt folding the comic strip into the regular magazine can't be done, as it presents a conflict of interest with IDW. Hopefully they'll be no more casualities among Titan's fine publications.
We definitely can't reprint in the magazine - and I'm not sure people would want me to assign heading for 20% of the editorial content space to something easily available elsewhere even if we could.
At the risk of facing some wrath from the Editor of my favourite publication here, Paul... because you explicitly didn't want to discuss this:
Why are fans so opposed to having a comic strip? What evidence is there of this, besides dropping it from Star Trek Monthly all those years ago? 20% of the available space in the magazine sounds a bit much I agree with you.
Back during the great Doctor Who drought of 1990-2004, having ongoing adventures were one of the main reasons why Panini's (ne:Marvel) magazine was an essential buy for that fanbase (me included). Sure, it was serialised into 5-6 pages per issue but those strips added as much in value, as the New Adventures novels and later on, Big Finish audios. They even collected them all into graphic novels years later and cashed in on New Series interest... Those going back to find there was more to the 7th/8th Doctors than what happened on TV.
I suppose the budget simply couldn't stretch to commissioning new stories and artwork, instead of reprinting IDW. Drifting into a fantasy scenario for just a second, how great would a strip featuring the likenesses of the new movie cast be? Personally I'd love to see an ENT-era strip or indeed any incarnation of Star Trek not currently being represented in that medium. There must be talent out there, able to see that gap in the market.
Why are fans so opposed to having a comic strip? What evidence is there of this, besides dropping it from Star Trek Monthly all those years ago? 20% of the available space in the magazine sounds a bit much I agree with you.
Back during the great Doctor Who drought of 1990-2004, having ongoing adventures were one of the main reasons why Panini's (ne:Marvel) magazine was an essential buy for that fanbase (me included). Sure, it was serialised into 5-6 pages per issue but those strips added as much in value, as the New Adventures novels and later on, Big Finish audios. They even collected them all into graphic novels years later and cashed in on New Series interest... Those going back to find there was more to the 7th/8th Doctors than what happened on TV.
I suppose the budget simply couldn't stretch to commissioning new stories and artwork, instead of reprinting IDW. Drifting into a fantasy scenario for just a second, how great would a strip featuring the likenesses of the new movie cast be? Personally I'd love to see an ENT-era strip or indeed any incarnation of Star Trek not currently being represented in that medium. There must be talent out there, able to see that gap in the market.
Paul didn't say people wouldn't want a comic strip, he said they wouldn't want the magazine to sacrifice 20% of its content for a reprint of material that's easily available elsewhere. The problem wouldn't be that it's comics, but that it's redundant content. I don't think his comment was meant to address the feasibility of original comics.
John Freeman may correct me on this, but as I understand it, one of the reasons that the UK magazine dropped the reprints of the comics in the first place was the audience reaction. As a reader then, I enjoyed the comics - but I already had them.
Yes, in a "perfect" world, I'd love to be in a position to commission a new comic strip for each issue - as well as new original fiction - but the realities are that those licences are given to other people, and we cross-promote them with reviews/interviews and, in the case of the novels, extracts.
Paul
I realise that. I don't have full grasp of the business costs involved you all do. But It seems crazy anything devoted to "Star Trek" could just get pulled like that. Maybe if the decision had been delayed until the DVDs were out? The cinema run hasn't had much impact on the younger market, if the circulation sales are any kind of indicator. Whereas of course, reprints of "Battle" continue happily... how many kids are buying comics about WWII? If the branch of WH Smith near me was anything to go by, sellers have been positioning this title incorrectly. It should've been placed with the General Interest section, alongside genre magazines like SFX, near the bottom shelves with Judge Dredd and 2000AD... and not with Ben 10 or whatever the latest popular Cartoon Network thing is.
^ At the end of the day, Star Trek isn't as big in the UK market as other SF product - look at how Doctor Who was everywhere a few months back, yet with the show on its quiet year, there's a heck of a lot less product out there.
All too true, sadly.
Oh for the glory days of the mid-90's, when Star Trek was a weeknight fixture on BBC2 getting 2 million viewers twice a week... TNG, DS9, VOY and TOS reruns. I used to rush home from work, even though I already had bought the episodes on videotape anyway. Peanuts compared to Doctor Who's impact on the British public consciousness now, but it was enough to keep the fanbase in growth and ticking over nicely. When ENT got poached by Channel 4 is where everything went wrong in my opinion.
Sorry I'm way off topic now...
Cheers for the comic while it lasted. IDW aren't available in newsagents everywhere and require either importing, or a trip to a major city to find a specialist comic shop. So I really would've backed this a good idea overall. A month or two back, I was in the queue at Smiths and a kid pointed out the Star Trek comic to her mother. He seemed to interested enough with it, either the new casting of Chris Pine as Kirk caught his eye or the free gift on the front.
Oh for the glory days of the mid-90's, when Star Trek was a weeknight fixture on BBC2 getting 2 million viewers twice a week... TNG, DS9, VOY and TOS reruns. I used to rush home from work, even though I already had bought the episodes on videotape anyway. Peanuts compared to Doctor Who's impact on the British public consciousness now, but it was enough to keep the fanbase in growth and ticking over nicely. When ENT got poached by Channel 4 is where everything went wrong in my opinion.
Sorry I'm way off topic now...
Cheers for the comic while it lasted. IDW aren't available in newsagents everywhere and require either importing, or a trip to a major city to find a specialist comic shop. So I really would've backed this a good idea overall. A month or two back, I was in the queue at Smiths and a kid pointed out the Star Trek comic to her mother. He seemed to interested enough with it, either the new casting of Chris Pine as Kirk caught his eye or the free gift on the front.
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^ I will pass your kind comments onto Andrew, the editor of the comic
P
P
So Titan's comic has gone the way of Enterprise, eh? This is very sad news indeed. Even though they were reprinting already existing IDW material, I enjoyed it immensely. But alas, it was not to be.
I was just thinking, maybe Titan could see its way to publishing a one-off bumper edition collecting a couple of IDW's one-off stories, just to give the comic a decent send-off. Unlikely, I know, but I thought I'd suggest it.
I was just thinking, maybe Titan could see its way to publishing a one-off bumper edition collecting a couple of IDW's one-off stories, just to give the comic a decent send-off. Unlikely, I know, but I thought I'd suggest it.
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