Stumbled upon Waypoint #4 today and bought it. This is the first Trek comic I've touched since '96 or '97, and I have to say I really loved reading it. Visually the whole thing was gorgeous. I don't even mind that the cover had no relation to either story, it's such an attractive standalone image that it wins a pass. I went straight to the TNG story, which I thought was a great little concept for 10 pages. Intellectually I get that the ENT story is absurd, I don't even particularly like Enterprise and quit watching halfway through, but still... I liked it despite myself. It was just fun to revisit Trek comics, and this short story, prime timeline format is the perfect way to do it for me. Interesting little vignettes that just let you pop in and out quickly without demanding you get on board with a whole series -- ironically, it's this undemanding set-up that would make me much more likely to become a regular reader of Waypoint, if they keep publishing it past the planned six issues (I've already ordered the first three online). (If only the novelverse had something similar... a few times I've thought it could be fun to pick up just one Star Trek novel again, and I poke around a little and it feels like you now have to read 70 books to get one story... pass) Also, anyone know how it's selling? I got the last copy at the comic shop I was in, and then I was surprised to google it just now and see it was only released... yesterday?
According to Comichron, issues #1-3 were all in the 6,500-7,000 issues range. That puts them below the IDW Star Trek ongoing, sort of a mid-range title for IDW. (It's no Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or My Little Pony, but it's outselling X-Files and Ghostbusters and freaking Micronauts.)
Just got Waypoint #3, and found it as charming as the other issue I've read. "The Wildman Maneuver": Voyager is my least favorite series, so I suspected I wouldn't have a strong response to this, and I didn't. But I thought it was cute. I did get a chuckle that even in the comicsverse Samantha Wildman is an absent parent. But "Mother's Walk" I LOVED. Excellent, very touching little DS9 story. Perfect pacing. Great use of the perpetually gossipy station community. I also liked how specifically and subtly it was situated in the timeframe of the series -- we see Jadzia and Worf's wedding photo, and Keiko is living on the station, so it would have to be right at the end of season 6, after "Time's Orphan" and before "Tears Of The Prophets." The concerns Kira is coping with also track well with the fact that this would be the first time this holiday has occurred since getting to know her mom on her trip to the past in "Wrongs Darker Than Death Or Night" (damn, I loved the titles on this show). There were just good instincts evident all around on this one -- they had an excellent sense of how to scale the story so that it would be emotionally impactful even with it's low page count, and a wonderful attention to detail. A+ for this one.
Picked up Waypoint #3 and #4 today. I have to say, I am *really* enjoying this series. It's nice to see all the different series represented, and the stories have mostly all been quirky, fun stories that fit great in the anthology format. I wish that this was going to be ongoing, rather than a six-issue mini. No one else has mentioned it, but... did they accidentally publish a preliminary version of the cover for #4? I have the Enterprise cover, and right across the front of it, it says "need high-rez file"!
How did I miss the fact that issue #6 has a Phase II story? I looked at the cover, thought, "What did Spock do to his hair?" and opened it up to find that it's Xon, not Spock, in the story.
It doesn't say anything about that in the description, but that is pretty cool. So is #6 the final issue? I think initial announcement said it was 6 issues, but none of the solicitations have said anything about a specific number of issues.
Apparently. EDIT: For some reason, I hear this in Mr. Bean's voice. ("Hello, My name is Dr. Bean. Apparently.")
That's a shame. I'll confess, I haven't read any of it yet, but I do like the idea of an anthology series with stories from all over the franchise. There's not many series that will give you a Gold Key style story, a Voyager story written and drawn as if a child made it, and a Phase II story.
I loved getting a Phase II storyline. I only wish it had been longer. I did have one issue with the Deep Space Nine story in issue #5. It takes place in the early days of Deep Space Nine but Bashir and O'Brien are written to be the buddies they were in later season. During the first year or two of the show, O'Brien couldn't stand him and was not chummy with him. If you're going to write in a specific time for Deep Space Nine, then you have to write the characters like they were during that time.
Just from what I've seen my biggest complaint is that it ended up being mostly TOS. I was hoping since most of their other miniseries had been TOS, that we would get a lot more stories from the other series.
Yes, it was just six issues. I remember John Ordover floating the idea of Phase II novels back in the spring of 1998 on the old Simon & Schuster bulletin board. Still waiting, John. Still waiting.
I enjoyed the series. What in-universe year would the Phase II story ("Fear") have taken place in, if history bent that way rather than TMP?
I'm kind of surprised we didn't get a Phase II story in the Myriad Universe books. I know they were mostly new universes, but we did get The Chimes at Midnight, which was set in the movie era of the Yesteryear universe with Thelin instead of Spock, so they weren't totally forbidden from using preexisting universes.
How interesting an alternate would that really have been, though? "What if Decker and Ilia had lived and some guy called Xon was science officer instead of Spock?" It's not a different enough status quo to base a MyrU novel on, not unless you have Spock's absence lead to some really major change (much as in The Chimes of Midnight) -- but in that case, it's not really a Phase II story anymore, since Phase II wouldn't have altered the status quo that radically. Unless you did it as sort of a metatextual alternate -- what would Star Trek look like if Phase II had happened instead of the movies, if we'd never had TWOK and its sequels? But that wouldn't have fit the brief of MyrU, because it wouldn't have been the same as an in-universe alternate history. I can see Waypoint doing that, considering they also did a Gold Key pastiche. It's playing with alternative ways of telling a Star Trek story. But that's not really what MyrU was about.