This got me thinking too. IDW has mentioned they are going to be working w/ Pocket on some storylines. I whole this is part of the current Mirror Universe we have seen on tv and read in the books and comics.
IDW Mirror Image - TNG?
- Thread starter JoeZhang
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um, say that again........ a what?
Yeah, the Myriad Universes series that I'm writing for IDW, Star Trek: The Last Generation, is the first stage of that. (For those wondering, it essentially takes the place of the TNG Mirror Universe story that I was to be writing for IDW; because we didn't want to miss the chance of partnering with Pocket Books on Myriad Universes, and IDW really couldn't have so many alternate-timeline titles running at once.)
New IDW Trek editor Andy Schmidt has said he wants to more actively coordinate the main-timeline storytelling between the two companies, so I'd expect to see more of that in the future.
A Titan Comic would be cool, but as of now I don't think that is on the burner. That is atleast what I was informed. You never know maybe in the future.
Dan Taylor was pretty much the editor for the first year, I was pretty much the editor for the second, and Andy Schmidt is now editor looking forward to Year Three.
I say "pretty much", because when Dan first launched the line, it took a couple of months of heavy prep work ahead of time before the first book even hit the shelves, which readers sometimes don't count--but editors certainly do. There may have been one or two people filling in on an issue here or there during transitions, etc., but they weren't actually the "Trek editor" in the sense that you're talking about.
And yeah, right now it's only TOS and TNG, best as I know, though as Chris Ryall has mentioned before, IDW has the option to pick up DS9 if it decides to.
Now if done right I would love to see a DS9 Series. The characters are fun.
Amazon is showing a DS9 collection as the fourth of IDW's Archives collections, interestingly enough. Would reprint rights to DS9 be separate from negotiations for new comics?
What! An IDW Archive that's not reprinting comics already done by Titan? Fantastic!
No, they're doing something different: reprinting comics already reprinted by Boxtree. However, I don't think the Boxtree editions were generally available in North America, and that was quite a few years back (as opposed to redoing stuff Titan did just a couple years ago). I only have the Boxtree DS9 collections I have through the goodness of Mark Martinez. So, yeah, this could be a good thing.
Why did you guys only pick TOS and TNG, were you just seeing how those went first, or was there a reason that only those two were available? Sorry about all these questions I've been wondering about this stuff for awhile and this is the first time I've remembred to ask.
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^^Well, TOS and TNG are the most popular and well-known Trek series, so they'd logically be the ones most likely to sell well. So it stands to reason that they'd be the first picks.
Yeah, Christopher is exactly right. For reasons that continue to break my heart, DS9 simply doesn't sell as well as TOS or TNG.
You can get away with an out-of-the-box type of series like Assignment: Earth when it's drawn and written by John Byrne or New Frontier when Peter David is at the wheel; but if it's not a Kirk or Picard series, it's not going to sell as well for the company, even though it takes the same amount of effort and money to produce. (More, in fact, since you'd have to pay for the DS9 rights separately, on top of that.)
That's not to say it could never happen; in fact, since I'm the editor who conceived of the Star Trek Archives TPB series that you're now seeing on Amazon, and developed the content for all the books so far, I put together a DS9 volume specifically so that IDW could gage of fan reaction and help it make a decision about whether to move forward on DS9.
If you'd like to support the idea, then by all means, go order the book, or tell your retailer that you want a copy. If sales come in big, that's going to be a solid argument in favor of a DS9 series. Hell, even I'm going to get one, and obviously I've already read all the issues...
You can get away with an out-of-the-box type of series like Assignment: Earth when it's drawn and written by John Byrne or New Frontier when Peter David is at the wheel; but if it's not a Kirk or Picard series, it's not going to sell as well for the company, even though it takes the same amount of effort and money to produce. (More, in fact, since you'd have to pay for the DS9 rights separately, on top of that.)
That's not to say it could never happen; in fact, since I'm the editor who conceived of the Star Trek Archives TPB series that you're now seeing on Amazon, and developed the content for all the books so far, I put together a DS9 volume specifically so that IDW could gage of fan reaction and help it make a decision about whether to move forward on DS9.
If you'd like to support the idea, then by all means, go order the book, or tell your retailer that you want a copy. If sales come in big, that's going to be a solid argument in favor of a DS9 series. Hell, even I'm going to get one, and obviously I've already read all the issues...
^^Not sure that could work, since they'd have to pay for the other series licenses first, and there's no point in paying for three whole licenses just to do one issue of each. I doubt CBS Paramount offers a test-drive option.
oh, i thought IDW had the rights to all the series. my mistake.
Never mind.
L
Lord Garth
Guest
I think another issue with DS9 is how time-sensitive it is.
Would it matter when in S4-S7 a TNG story took place if it were stand-alone? Or, before that, there are only cosmetic differences, whether or not Yar and Wesley are there, or who the doctor is.
With DS9 it's different because it's not just the charaters or the cosmetics, even a half-season could change the entire "landscape". So when do you set DS9? And if set the comic after DS9, then you set in in the Relaunch era which is a possibility, but do are you willing to set the comic in a period that non-novel readers will find unfamiliar? If they are willing, then IDW has also to consider where it might be stepping on Pocket Book's toes and avoid doing so.
These are factors to consider that you don't have to consider with TOS, TNG, or even VOY.
Would it matter when in S4-S7 a TNG story took place if it were stand-alone? Or, before that, there are only cosmetic differences, whether or not Yar and Wesley are there, or who the doctor is.
With DS9 it's different because it's not just the charaters or the cosmetics, even a half-season could change the entire "landscape". So when do you set DS9? And if set the comic after DS9, then you set in in the Relaunch era which is a possibility, but do are you willing to set the comic in a period that non-novel readers will find unfamiliar? If they are willing, then IDW has also to consider where it might be stepping on Pocket Book's toes and avoid doing so.
These are factors to consider that you don't have to consider with TOS, TNG, or even VOY.
I think that problem exists with Voyager as well. Since the crew has already made it home, and most of them scattered to the four winds, what would be the focus of the story? And, if you set it during its time in the Delta Quadrant, then you'd suffer your overall dramatic tension, since again, we all know how and when the crew finally made it back.
And, while, sure, there are all sorts of stories told during the TNG and TOS eras that fit just fine into the overall main series, that misses the point of those series: They were exploration missions, so you can drop in a previously unknown adventure and it fits the open-ended theme of the show just fine. But Voyager was primarily on a mission to return home; so once it actually accomplishes that, the dramatic engine (at least for me) seems to lose a few piston-pumps.
All just IMHO, of course.
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