'Star Trek: Year Five' Coming in April from IDW

[The Wormhole]

I think it's a smart idea to go with an "official" season 5 series. You hook the people who dismiss the books and comics "because they aren't canon" and are still completely free to ignore it when it suits you.

Pocket should have done this 20 years ago.

Considering TOS novels set during the 5YM are the best selling Trek novels, I doubt Pocket has any regrets about how they've done their TOS novels.

I mean I think slapping a worthless "official" label would boost sales. Telling people that the books and comics are canon would bring in a segment of the audience that would otherwise ignore them because "they aren't real." Does it make sense for people to think that way? No. But, they do. Take their money.

That theory falls apart when you look at Star Wars. Since the rebranding of the old EU as Legends and the declaration that the new novels are canon, the old EU with the Legends banner signifying they aren't canon still sell just as well as the new canon novels. In fact, the old Thrawn trilogy actually surpasses the sales of the new canon novels.

 

[Enterprise1701]

FWIW, I took marlboro to mean nothing more than putting Year Five tales under a single banner along the lines of, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight from Dark Horse or Adventure Time Season 11 from BOOM!, a way of saying "these ongoing stories come next, after the end of the televised adventures," rather than a "these stories are 'canonical,'" because, as anyone who labors in the dilithium mines knows, Star Trek fiction isn't.

With IDW doing a Year Five, it would be nice if they brought Year Four back into print.

That's also what I thought marlboro meant as a thought exercise. Slapping the word on the title / branding as a marketing gimmick and somehow making the series the only prominent one of its kind.

 

[Christopher]

But, man, this quote: "We want each title to have the significance of a Star Trek film, so that each series is a seminal comics event." There's hype... and then there's that.

I'd think that, pretty much by definition, only the first series of a certain type could be seminal. If that.

That's also what I thought marlboro meant as a thought exercise. Slapping the word on the title / branding as a marketing gimmick and somehow making the series the only prominent one of its kind.

Well, that would be grossly unfair to the other tie-ins. Honestly, why do some fans want to have only one option? What is so horrible about having multiple choices?

Besides, as others have mentioned, "end of the 5-year mission" has been done many times by now. There are at least 7 different versions of it in novels and comics, one of them mine. So making yet another version and pretending it somehow counts more than all the rest would be pretty disingenuous.

 

[Daddy Todd]

I wonder if IDW is going to ignore it’s own “Mission’s End” miniseries from 2009? That one gave us an ending to the 5YM.

Not a very good ending, IMHO, but an ending.

 

[Christopher]

I wonder if IDW is going to ignore it’s own “Mission’s End” miniseries from 2009? That one gave us an ending to the 5YM.

Yeah, that's one of the seven. Let's see, not necessarily in order: The Lost Years by J.M. Dillard; DC Vol. 1 Annual 2 "The Final Voyage" by Mike W. Barr et al.; my version alluded to in Ex Machina and depicted in Forgotten History; "Empty" by David DeLee in SNW10; "A Bright Particular Star" by Howard Weinstein et al. in DC Vol. 2; the version in David R. George III's Crucible trilogy; and Mission's End by Ty Templeton et al. Although some only show the last mission itself while others delve into what came afterward.

And I wouldn't be surprised if IDW did a different version. They've never had a single unified continuity, and they've done miniseries that conflicted with each other before. And DC had two different versions, though they were in different volumes with Richard Arnold's "no tie-in continuity" mandate in between.

 

[Indysolo]

I'm happy IDW is doing a new series featuring the original crew that will be illustrated. Byrne's series was fun, but felt gimmicky using screen grabs. Instead of being pulled into the story I kept trying to ID the episodes characters were lifted from.

I would love the return of a regular, monthly Star Trek comic featuring the original crew. Throw in some movie era (TMP included!) stories, too. I hope Year Five is successful and maybe lead into this. I can hope, right?

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I would love the return of a regular, monthly Star Trek comic featuring the original crew. Throw in some movie era (TMP included!) stories, too. I hope Year Five is successful and maybe lead into this. I can hope, right?

My understanding is that Year Five is intended as an ongoing series, albeit one with a planned ending.

 

[JD]

I am a bit disappointed this isn't set in the movie era, that is a lot less explored. But this does sound like it should be interesting, so far most of the stories we've gotten in this era have been one of novels and shorter miniseris, it'll be cool to keep a longer deeper series covering the end of the 5YM.

 

[Christopher]

I am a bit disappointed this isn't set in the movie era, that is a lot less explored.

It's kind of weird... while the movies were still coming out, the comics -- both from Marvel and DC -- defaulted to telling "up-to-date" stories current with the movie era, even while the novels tended to do mainly 5-year mission stories with only occasional movie-era tales. But ever since about 1995, every publisher's comics have defaulted to 5YM stories with very rare visits to the movie era, whereas the novels' ratio of the two stayed about the same and maybe even has slightly increased its percentage of movie-era stuff. Not only that, but the comics published during the movie era hardly ever did TV-era stories -- DC Vol. 1 did only two that weren't flashbacks or time travel stories, and Vol. 2 did only one in its first 57 issues -- whereas post-1995 comics have hardly ever done stories about the movie-era Enterprise, only side stories about other movie-era captains or the Klingons or Khan or McCoy before TMP or whatever (the exceptions being Marvel's Untold Voyages and a couple of stories in a Wildstorm anthology).

I guess I can kind of see that comics, as a monthly medium telling ongoing, serialized stories, would tend to feel more "up-to-date" in a way and would thus have tended to stay current with the movies while they were coming out. Or maybe it's just that Marvel & DC both got their licenses specifically as movie tie-ins, so that made them the exception to the normal tendency to favor 5YM. Still, it's odd that the comics in both phases have been so all-or-nothing about it while the novels have always had a fairly consistent mix of both (while favoring the TV era).

 

[Ronald Held]

So there has not been announced how many total issues there will be?

 

[Enterprise1701]

Well, that would be grossly unfair to the other tie-ins. Honestly, why do some fans want to have only one option? What is so horrible about having multiple choices?

Well that didn't stop Disney from completely de-canonizing Star Wars Legends in favor of a new expanded universe built around sequel trilogy material.

Though to be fair, I hear plenty of fans loathed the latter years of novels. *cough Fate of the Jedi cough*

 

[Christopher]

Well that didn't stop Disney from completely de-canonizing Star Wars Legends in favor of a new expanded universe built around sequel trilogy material.

The tie-ins were never canonical despite the claims; the prequel films and The Clone Wars freely ignored them whenever they wanted to do something different. Which is exactly the same way canonical Star Trek has always treated its tie-ins, except Trek has never pretended they were anything they weren't. The only difference is that all the SW tie-ins had to try to stay consistent with each other, which has never been a requirement for Trek tie-ins.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Or maybe it's just that Marvel & DC both got their licenses specifically as movie tie-ins, so that made them the exception to the normal tendency to favor 5YM.

For what it's worth, Marvel's license in 1979 covered only Star Trek: The Motion Picture. DC's license in 1983 covered the series and films, and why Mike W. Barr chose to continue from the end of Star Trek II rather than tell Five Year Mission stories I wouldn't know. Maybe because it was new and different and what people had just seen in theaters?

Post-1995, supporting the TOS movie franchise was no longer important, since there was no movie franchise to support, so going back to the "iconic" Five Year Mission period probably made a lot of sense.

 

[plynch]

I know so little about so much. Can you read the John Byrne photonovels via some online way? I don't want to buy paper things that collect dust anymore, less I have to. (Though I do prefer paper, via the library. It's just an accumulation thing.)

 

[Christopher]

For what it's worth, Marvel's license in 1979 covered only Star Trek: The Motion Picture. DC's license in 1983 covered the series and films, and why Mike W. Barr chose to continue from the end of Star Trek II rather than tell Five Year Mission stories I wouldn't know. Maybe because it was new and different and what people had just seen in theaters?

As I said, I assume it's because the intent -- and I'm speaking from a promotional and marketing standpoint, not a content standpoint -- was to publish the comic as a tie-in to the movie series. After all, the movies made TOS a current, ongoing thing rather than just a nostalgic exercise, so it made sense to want to stay current with it. If anything, it's surprising the novels didn't do more of that.

Post-1995, supporting the TOS movie franchise was no longer important, since there was no movie franchise to support, so going back to the "iconic" Five Year Mission period probably made a lot of sense.

To an extent, sure, but I don't understand why there's such an extreme avoidance of the movie era in post-1995 comics. It's not like the movie era is a bad thing. Good grief, in many ways it's been more influential than the TV series. It laid the foundations for the way Trek-universe ship, alien, and FX designs have looked ever since, its version of Khan is more "iconic" than the "Space Seed" version, it created the public perception of Kirk as a maverick, etc. And some of the most widely repeated Trek memes are from the movies, like "KHAAAAAN!!" and "Dammit, Jim" (a line that '60s censors never would've allowed). So it's weird that the movie era has come to be treated as a footnote to TOS, particularly in comics.

After all, comics are a visual medium, so you'd think it would be good to take advantage of the visual variety of working in both the TV era and the movie era. And it's such an unexplored, wide-open era that it would naturally lend itself to an ongoing monthly series.

 

[ryan123450]

I know so little about so much. Can you read the John Byrne photonovels via some online way? I don't want to buy paper things that collect dust anymore, less I have to. (Though I do prefer paper, via the library. It's just an accumulation thing.)

Plynch you can get them digitally from Amazon, Itunes, etc. Then read them on your phone, iPad, Kindle, or whatever you have.

 

[Stevil2001]

After all, comics are a visual medium, so you'd think it would be good to take advantage of the visual variety of working in both the TV era and the movie era. And it's such an unexplored, wide-open era that it would naturally lend itself to an ongoing monthly series.

I dunno, I think the visuals of the original show are more comics-friendly. Bold colors, less fussy designs, simple shapes. I can see why that would be one's inclination, art-wise.

 

[Christopher]

I dunno, I think the visuals of the original show are more comics-friendly. Bold colors, less fussy designs, simple shapes. I can see why that would be one's inclination, art-wise.

I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying there's room for variety. I'm not talking about any single work, I'm talking in the aggregate. It's good to have variations from the norm, to have a mix of approaches over time rather than just always doing the same thing. That doesn't mean the normal thing is wrong or bad, it just means other things can be good too from time to time. I'm just puzzled by the profound and decades-long lack of interest in movie-era comics about the Enterprise crew, given how popular the movies were in their day and how important they were to the evolution of the franchise.

Besides, comics art these days is far from simple. It tends to be pretty intricately detailed and subtly colored, due to digital techniques and a desire to look more cinematic.

 

[Leto_II]

A couple of theories of mine (which might be slightly interconnected, to a certain extent):

1. The 5YM represents the iconic characters in their physical prime. Possibly there's more interest today than 15-20 years ago in revisiting the original Enterprise crew during what some folks undoubtedly some creators (and fans) consider their "peak," undertaking the Great, Historic Five-Year Mission™. Perhaps wanting to write the slightly-younger incarnations of Kirk's crew (as opposed to the more-mature-and-introspective older versions from the movie era) is more appealing, here, to certain creative cohorts. And probably the Kelvin Timeline films have helped these sentiments significantly as well, with a whole new generation of fans having the 5YM era as their introduction to Star Trek thanks to those movies.

2. Lots of writers have their "pet" 5YM story (or stories) that they've always wanted to tell and "get out of their system" (so to speak), and so they naturally gravitate to that particular era, as opposed to the movie era. It could certainly partially explain why we've gotten so freaking many 5YM tales in the past 10-15 years, and so relatively few movie-era stories, especially in the comics, but even in the novels too, where authors have tons of freedom to pitch CBS on stories and preferred casts and eras.

Take both of these notions with a grain of salt -- I don't claim to have any special particular insights into this phenomenon, but speaking strictly as an interested outsider, these appear to be at least circumstantial enough to be worth considering, maybe.

 

[Christopher]

1. The 5YM represents the iconic characters in their physical prime. Possibly there's more interest today than 15-20 years ago in revisiting the original Enterprise crew during what some folks undoubtedly some creators (and fans) consider their "peak," undertaking the Great, Historic Five-Year Mission™. Perhaps wanting to write the slightly-younger incarnations of Kirk's crew (as opposed to the more-mature-and-introspective older versions from the movie era) is more appealing, here, to certain creative cohorts.

Again, that explains the rule, but not the surprising lack of exceptions. (Ditto for your second point.) As I've mentioned, the novels have always leaned primarily toward the TV era, but there has still been a higher percentage of movie-era stories in the prose than there has been in the post-1995 comics. I can name a fair number of movie-era prose tales published in the last quarter-century -- Ex Machina, Forgotten History, Unspoken Truth, Foul Deeds Will Rise, In the Name of Honor, much of Mere Anarchy, parts of Crucible, Shadow of the Machine, The More Things Change, the New Earth miniseries, assorted Strange New Worlds stories, etc. They've always been in the minority, but they've been there, enough to be in the double digits. But the only movie-era Enterprise-based comics I can think of from the past quarter-century are the 5-issue Untold Voyages and two short stories in a Wildstorm anthology. And the non-Enterprise movie-era comics are pretty scarce too.

And probably the Kelvin Timeline films have helped these sentiments significantly as well, with a whole new generation of fans having the 5YM era as their introduction to Star Trek thanks to those movies.

Which doesn't explain a trend that started in 1995.