Comics consistent with the Litverse?

[KRAD]

The Blood Will Tell issue that told the Klingon side of "Day of the Dove" established several members of Kang's crew, and I used those characters in my later Alien Spotlight comic as well as in "The Unhappy Ones" in Seven Deadly Sins.

Of all the comics lines, WildStorm's is the one that has the most crossover with the novelverse, mainly because editor Jeff Mariotte (a future Star Trek novelist himself) made an effort to hire some folks from the novel end of things for the comics line.

Probably the most influential is The Gorn Crisis, since pretty much every portrayal of the Gorn in the fiction since that hardcover's publication in 2000 has taken its cue from that graphic novel.

 

[Christopher]

^By the way, I was wondering about that... The comics established the name of Kang's ship at the time of "Day of the Dove" as the Voh'tahk, and that ship was destroyed in the episode. But Seekers has Kang still in command of the Voh'tahk well after "Day of the Dove." Is it the Voh'tahk-A?

 

[JD]

Skywalker, do you know about the comics collection DVD? It collects pretty much all of the pre-IDW comics onto one disc. It isn't in production any more, so the only way to get it on places like Amazon is through the Marketplace, but it might still be cheaper in the long run than trying to track down all of the individual comics you are interested in.

 

[Enterprise1701]

With "New Frontier" there are the two comics: "Double Time" was the first, and takes place in the first part of the series, just before the Gateways story line, and moved the series forward by a year and a half to just after DS9's finale and the end of the Dominion War, and re-introduced Lieutenant M'ress and Arex from the Animated series into the 24th century continuity. Then there was the second comic from a few years ago that was set during the second half of the series. Basically the two New Frontier comics contain plot points that affect the rest of the series, since the series and the comics were written by Peter David and he just continued the storyline through both.

No, M'Ress and Arex were reintroduced in the subsequent novel Gateways: Cold Wars.

And the IDW comic miniseries Turnaround was later overridden by Mirror Universe - Rise Like Lions for the novelverse's prime-mirror universe stories. But later New Frontier novels have only had a weird connection to the other Destiny-era novels. YMMV

IDW comics TNG: Myriad Universes: Star Trek: The Last Generation was a tie in with the Myriad Universes series.

Although, by its very nature, there's not really any continuity among those stories. And TLG isn't like other MyrU-branded tales in that it's the result of time travel rather than a spontaneous alternate history.

But I thought

Spoiler: plot of The Last Generation

The Last Generation depicted a reality where crazy Captain Braxton successfully changed history in his view of protecting the timeline. At the end of the story, the reality depicted is very different from the prime reality because Braxton excises Kirk and the Enterprise-A from history though Picard and his time-traveling crew salvage the Khitomer Conference. Therefore, The Last Generation is a spontaneous alternate timeline: one where Braxton apparently wasn't stopped.

 

[Christopher]

Okay, I just finished re-reading the Starfleet Academy comic. The main point of conflict with the novelverse is the status of Talos IV in the "Telepath War" arc that spans much of the series -- as of 2373 in the comic, Talos is still barren and still banned by Starfleet on pain of death, which isn't consistent with Burning Dreams. Also, when it touches on Andorian reproduction in one issue, its vague assertions don't mesh with the novelverse version (Pava references an Andorian's "fathers, if any"). Although that issue was presented as a flashback account that was admittedly embellished by the teller.

The second issue asserts that the Vulcan kahs-wan ritual is for boys only, which is consistent with "Yesteryear" but not with Unspoken Truth. Another issue portrays Marta Batanides as being married and going by the surname Keith, in the same year that Section 31: Rogue showed her as single and engaged. (Although Memory Beta's article on her just assumes she had a divorce and a whirlwind engagement.)

SA also has a couple of conflicts with later canon, like suggesting that first contact with the Klingons occurred in the era of "Cage"-style Starfleet uniforms. But that's a minor detail. Really, my main issue with it has always been its writing style. The stories are pretty good, but the dialogue style is too much in the overly talky, overly expository and melodramatic mode that comics often tend to employ. It's hard to buy that anyone would actually talk like that.

 

[Skywalker]

Skywalker, do you know about the comics collection DVD? It collects pretty much all of the pre-IDW comics onto one disc. It isn't in production any more, so the only way to get it on places like Amazon is through the Marketplace, but it might still be cheaper in the long run than trying to track down all of the individual comics you are interested in.

I did not. I'll look into it, thanks!

 

[Enterprise1701]

Say, I was wondering. IDW's Spock: Reflections portrays Spock retrieving Kirk's body from Veridian III for burial on Earth in 2372. William Shatner's The Ashes of Eden depicts an alternate version of that in 2371. Does the main novelverse have a work depicting someone retrieving Kirk's body?

 

[Skywalker]

You know, I think the comic adaptation of The Ashes of Eden doesn't include the framing scenes of Spock in 2371. Or, at least, I don't recall seeing it in there. So if nothing else you could possibly still keep the 23rd century events as told in the comic version while using the Reflections version of Spock retrieving Kirk's body and still keep everything consistent, assuming no one else did so in the novelverse.

 

[tomswift2002]

Gateways: Cold Wars[/I].

It's been a while since I read Cold Wars, but I recall that the book opens with M'Ress and Arex already on the ship, and their part of the story was about them wondering whether they are still relevant, while their entrance to the series was in "Double Time".

Also, it wasn't The Ashes of Eden that had Spock retrieving Kirk body, it was The Return, and it was being retrieved by both Spock & Riker.

 

[Skywalker]

Huh. Oh! I'm thinking of the scene with Spock finding Kirk's grave empty, I believe.

 

[Idran]

No, M'Ress and Arex were reintroduced in the subsequent novel Gateways: Cold Wars.

It's been a while since I read Cold Wars, but I recall that the book opens with M'Ress and Arex already on the ship, and their part of the story was about them wondering whether they are still relevant, while their entrance to the series was in "Double Time".

I just started reading Cold Wars, and it starts the two of them with M'Ress running into Arex for an impromptu reunion and them both having a sit-down with someone from DTI about why they can't go back to their own time. With that whole scene where M'Ress runs down the list of cat jokes she's tired of hearing. The scene you're thinking of I think comes in the first NF book after Gateways, because I remember it but I never read Cold Wars until now.

 

[Enterprise1701]

No, M'Ress and Arex were reintroduced in the subsequent novel Gateways: Cold Wars.

It's been a while since I read Cold Wars, but I recall that the book opens with M'Ress and Arex already on the ship, and their part of the story was about them wondering whether they are still relevant, while their entrance to the series was in "Double Time".

I just started reading Cold Wars, and it starts the two of them with M'Ress running into Arex for an impromptu reunion and them both having a sit-down with someone from DTI about why they can't go back to their own time. With that whole scene where M'Ress runs down the list of cat jokes she's tired of hearing. The scene you're thinking of I think comes in the first NF book after Gateways, because I remember it but I never read Cold Wars until now.

Yep. The Excalibur crew's adventures in that time go:
NF - The Captain's Table: Once Burned (present portions) (October 1998)
NF - "Double Time" (November 2000)
Tales of the Dominion War - "Stone Cold Truths" (past portions) (August 2004)
TNG - #55 Double Helix: Double or Nothing (August 1999)
NF - #7 The Quiet Place (except prologue) (November 1999)
NF - #8 Dark Allies (except prologue) (November 1999)
NF - #9 Excalibur: Requiem (September 2000)
NF - #10 Excalibur: Renaissance (September 2000)
NF - #11 Excalibur: Restoration (November 2000)
NF - No Limits - "The Road to Edos" (October 2003)
NF - No Limits - "A Little Getaway" (October 2003)
NF - Gateways: Cold Wars (October 2001)
Gateways: What Lay Beyond - "Death After Life"

 

[Avro Arrow]

The second issue asserts that the Vulcan kahs-wan ritual is for boys only, which is consistent with "Yesteryear" but not with Unspoken Truth.

This is also one of the conflicts with later canon that you mentioned, since T'Pol also took part in the kahs-wan.

 

[Christopher]

Well, maybe Vulcans don't do everything in lockstep all over the planet. Maybe there are some communities that allow girls and others that don't. Call it Orthodox and Reform kahs-wan.

 

[Greg Cox]

Well, maybe Vulcans don't do everything in lockstep all over the planet. Maybe there are some communities that allow girls and others that don't. Call it Orthodox and Reform kahs-wan.

Exactly. I actually think that these little inconsistencies make alien cultures more believable. It's not like everyone on Earth has the same traditions and attitudes and mannerisms, nor have, say, attitudes toward gender roles remained unchanged in America over the last hundred years or so, or don't vary from state to state, county to county, community to community . . ..

 

[Christopher]

Exactly. I actually think that these little inconsistencies make alien cultures more believable. It's not like everyone on Earth has the same traditions and attitudes and mannerisms, not have, say, attitudes toward gender roles remained unchanged in America over the last hundred years or so, or don't vary from state to state, county to county, community to community . . ..

Right. Here and now, today, there's a fierce ongoing debate between two groups who both consider themselves to be defending true American principles, but whose definitions of American principles are so diametrically opposite that it's like they're from alien planets. They don't even agree on the same basic facts. Switch between MSNBC and Fox News and you'd think there was a continuity error somewhere.

There's too much of a tendency in fiction to treat entire alien worlds as if they were less diverse than a single neighborhood in any Earth city. The contradictions between those different monolithic, stereotyped depictions actually helps balance that out -- although we have to gloss over the question of why we never see the different "subcultures" onscreen at the same time.

 

[Greg Cox]

Heck, when I lived in Brooklyn, you could walk three blocks in any direction and find yourself in a different community, with varying cultures and traditions and cuisines.

So why assume that every Vulcan, from the time of Archer to Voyager, has to act and behave exactly like, say, Mark Lenard as Sarek?

 

[JD]

Gateways: Cold Wars[/I].

It's been a while since I read Cold Wars, but I recall that the book opens with M'Ress and Arex already on the ship, and their part of the story was about them wondering whether they are still relevant, while their entrance to the series was in "Double Time".

I just flipped through my copy of Double Time, and unless it was a single panel cameo I missed, they weren't in it anywhere.

 

[dstyer]

Gateways: Cold Wars[/I].

It's been a while since I read Cold Wars, but I recall that the book opens with M'Ress and Arex already on the ship, and their part of the story was about them wondering whether they are still relevant, while their entrance to the series was in "Double Time".

I just flipped through my copy of Double Time, and unless it was a single panel cameo I missed, they weren't in it anywhere.

A quick check of Memory Beta says that Arex's first appearance in the New Frontier books is in the short story compilation No Limits. He appears in the story "Road to Edos."

 

[JD]

I haven't read it yet, but I believe at least Vale appears in the IDW TNG comic Hive. I know there were some pictures of a blonde woman who appeared to be Vale on board Titan posted somewhere not long after the the first issue with Titan came out. I'm not sure if any other identifiable Titan characters appear besides Riker and Troi, and it sounds like the story is completely incompatible with the novelverse.