Tuesday 29 January 2008
Assignment Earth covers
For the other two see the original post, here.
New Frontier covers
According to a post by the artist Stephen Thompson on the TrekBBS, the characters pictured are: Elizabeth Shelby, Mackenzie Calhoun, Zak Kebron, Burgoyne 172, Si Cwan, Robin Lefler, Xy and Edward Jellico.
RyallTime also posted the Captain Peter David cover:
Go to the original post, here, for more info on these covers.
Monday 28 January 2008
Year Four, and Five
Although we've made no definitive plans about this, it seems likely that Year Four will be composed of several different miniseries--probably four total, with issues numbering six/five/six/five. That would make 22 issues total, just like 22 episodes of what would have been Year Four of the TV series.
When we've reached 22 issues total of Year Four, we will almost certainly want to transition into Year Five, and may very well likely follow the same miniseries format as Year Four. So, barring unforeseen circumstances, TOS will have a mainstream "anchor" title for quite some time, though there will likely be short breaks between the different miniseries so that the writers & artists can regroup.
Wouldn't it be nice if that pattern then continued through The Lost Years period, The Motion Picture and beyond...
See the original post, here at the TrekBBS.
Playmates returns
TrekMovie has reported that the toy company Playmates will be returning to Star Trek, as it has obtained the license for making toys for the new movie. Diamond Select Toys will continue to hold the license for the rest of the Star Trek franchise.
TrekMovie are spinning it as great for bringing Trek back to the mass market, which is true, DST are quite a specialist (and comparatively small) company targeting older collectors. Personally I receive this news cautiously, as Playmates’ previous massive range of Trek toys was numerous but rather poor in terms of detailing and quality. Here's hoping they've upped their game in the years between then and now.
Sunday 27 January 2008
Star Trek phone
It's out at the end of the month, find out all the glorious details of this wonderful new product, here at Forbidden Planet.
Corgi and Master Replicas news
Some new products coming from Master Replicas this year will be two new props; A Star Trek V: The Final Frontier phaser, and a Star Trek: First Contact tricorder. Both will be out in July and feature various lights and sounds:
More details can be found on Forbidden Planet's listings here: Tricorder, Phaser.
Additionally Corgi will be continuing it's die cast ships range, with the second wave (which was originally to be out last year) of the USS Defiant, USS Voyager and Romulan warbird, out in a few months time (maybe).
Amok Time Two-pack
You can find them on Forbidden Planet’s online store, here.
Friday 25 January 2008
Year Four cover preview
See the original report, and the rest of Mr Ryall’s new blog (with various other IDW previews), here.
Tuesday 22 January 2008
New Frontier comic preview
See some more pages at Trekweb, here.
New Movie site and trailer
The website for the new movie has been up about a week or so, and the trailer bouncing about the net in wibbly-wobbly pirated versions for a few days, but now they come together, for the official website now has something on it, the trailer. Go forth and see it, here.
Sunday 20 January 2008
IDW April issues
Year Four: The Enterprise Experiment #1
A sequel to the classic episode "The Enterprise Incident"—originally written by [D.C. Fontana] herself—where Kirk and Spock found themselves trapped on an Enterprise out of phase with space itself and facing a plot of revenge from Romulans!
New Frontier #2
In part two of “Slingshot,” Admiral Jellico steals a prototype time ship...or does he? Not everything is what it seems.
Note: Slingshot is the former name for the entire New Frontier miniseries, the title it will now be released under is Turnaround.
Intelligence Gathering #4
When the Enterprise is the target of a mysterious futile attack, Captain Picard and crew find themselves in a mind-control mystery! Will Deanna Troi's empathic abilities prove to be an asset—or a deadly liability?
Friday 18 January 2008
Titan model
UPDATE: You can now see the Titan in action, along with Wesley and Tuvok doing their thing:
Thursday 17 January 2008
New movie Enterprise revealed!
This design looks delightfully faithful, there's something funny going on with the nacelles, just behind the presumably unfinished nacelle caps, but otherwise she's a beaut.
A year of IDW Star Trek
Well a couple of months into The Space Between IDW launched their second miniseries, and have kept up two simultaneous series since. Which gives their first year a grand total of four miniseries (two of which aren’t quite finished yet).
For all the criticism it got for odd plot holes and the abysmally inconclusive final issue of the series, The Space Between was actually a pretty strong start for IDW. Each stand alone issue was an interesting tale, the second and forth issues remain two of the best they've produced so far. The artwork throughout the series was consistently interesting, and very attractive. Unfortunately the final issue, which promised to tie all the issues together, really dragged the series down as it utterly failed in giving any kind of satisfying conclusion. But if you ignore the ending, the individual stories told in The Space Between were enjoyable and well worth reading.
IDW's second series, Klingons: Blood Will Tell was a significantly stronger entry than The Space Between. The series was joined up by a continuing story arc from the start, and suffered none of the editorial errors or odd jumping to conclusions of the TSB series. Each of the first four issues creatively retold a TOS Klingon episode from the Klingons’ point a view. A delightful concept enjoyably executed. The strongest issues in this series were the second and third, which focused on a single character from the episodes and really told his story. The first and forth suffered somewhat in being tied to events of the episodes but were still thoroughly enjoyable. The final issued brought the series to a magnificent and glorious conclusion. Klingons: Blood Will Tell set the standard for IDW's Trek comics, so far some have come close, but nothing has surpassed this wonderful series.
Next up was Year Four, endeavouring to present lost episodes from the forth season of The Original Series that never was. The concept of the series is sound, and the ideas behind each issue are very good, really taking the TOS theme for exploring present day issues, touching on genetic engineering, oil and the Iraq war and reality TV and doing some very TOS-like sound-based aliens. Unfortunately the strong ideas for this series is about as good as it gets. Some issues are better than others, the forth issue, on reality TV is enjoyable, well illustrated and the story is well held together. But other issues suffer terribly from rushed an thin story telling, which isn't helped by a strict panel layout through the series which restricts pages to four wide panels (trying to emulate a widescreen TV apparently) - the result is pages were very little happens as a full quarter page panel is used for the most pointless things, and other pages were far to much of the same happens, as each panel is near identical to the previous in a long scene, this coupled with the rather flat and unexciting artwork in many of the issues crippled a series which could have been so much better. Year Four isn't all bad, there is much to enjoy, but it is easily the weakest entry into IDW's Star Trek range so far.
So what’s next? Well just within the anniversary (yesterday) the first issue of the next series was released. Intelligence Gathering, by the same team behind Klingons: Blood Will Tell. The first issue is off to a promising start with an engaging story and wonderful artwork, this looks sure to be another hit for IDW.
IDW first year of Star Trek had it’s bumps and hiccups, but overall they’ve done a smashing job, bringing a diverse range of stories by a diverse range of creators with plenty of talent. In the year ahead IDW will be doubling their output of Trek comics with an issue out almost every week, I have great faith that they will continue to deliver enjoyable, engaging and attractive new additions to the Star Trek universe. If they keep up the current, and ever improving, quality of Star Trek comics, then us fans have nothing but goodness ahead.
Wednesday 16 January 2008
IDW on DS9, Voyager, Enterprise and "Quadcovers"
Andrew Steven Harris has made a rather informative post on the TrekBBS about the considerations IDW has for expanding their license outside of TOS and TNG. In short, something with at least a bit of DS9 could be upon us by the end of the year, Voyager is unlikely but might happen someday and Enterprise is very unlikely indeed thanks to some likeness approval issues. And in full, have yourself a full length quote!:
I'd really, really like to see what we could do with a Deep Space Nine license; and we might, might be testing the waters soon. Don't get too excited just yet, it won't be anything devastatingly major, and it won't be until later in 2008 at the earliest; but, it could definitely lead to something.
The Voyager license is a bit trickier--the ship made it back from the DQ, and many of the crew have since spread themselves across various corners of the Trek universe. And, once the ship made it back home, stories set in the DQ lose a certain amount of their dramatic tension; you'd end up with an entire license that feels like a flashback. Still, I'd be open to possibilities, if a couple of really good ideas came across our desk, but to be honest it's probably more realistic to expect that we won't be doing Voyager soon.
A license for Enterprise, however, is for certain extremely unlikely--largely because of actor likeness approval issues. Though I won't go into any specifics, when you'd need an actor's approval for every single panel on every single page that a particular character would appear in, the logistics of producing a monthly comic book series become exceptionally difficult, and probably not worth the care-and-feeding that all of it would require. Besides, though Enterprise definitely deserved more viewers than it got (particularly near the end), it's probably the license least likely to attract readers, so it'd probably be a better use of our time to focus our attention on a more popular license like DS9.
In the same thread Mr Harris also explained exactly what the quadcover format, being launched with the first issue of the New Frontier series, is:
Quad Covers(TM) are really simple. It's four different covers bound onto the same issue. Ever see a misprint double-cover, in which two covers accidentally got stapled onto a single book?
This is exactly the same thing. Except it's four covers. And it's deliberate. And all four covers are different.
Why? Because we wanted to give people four different covers without the impression that we were trying to force them into buying four different issues. So, instead, all four covers on the same issue.
With the Quad Cover, though, we can get a lot more creative than simply having four covers stapled on top of each other. For example, the covers could be like four sequential full-page splash panels, depicting not just a moment from inside the book, but an entire sequence-- all as the "cover". For our Transformers books, we could show one of the 'bots transforming from one mode to another across four different "covers". And so on.
And why not join in the discussion yourself, at the original post, here.
Another Romulan Alien Spotlight
You can see the rest (which are all rather tiny), here. The issue itself will be out next month.
Tuesday 15 January 2008
A Myriad of titles
The authors of the Myriad Universes stories have been divulging their titles, in addition to Keith R.A. DeCandido's "A Gutted World" the other five will be:
"The Chimes at
"Places of Exile", by Christopher L. Bennett, which will be about what wouldhave happened if one person had made a different choice of words at a key memont.
"Seeds of Dissent", by James Swallow
"A Less Perfect Union", by William Leisner
And "Brave New World", by Chris Robberson
These are mostly coming from this TrekBBS thread, with the exception of Mr Robberson who posted the title on his blog.
Titles and tit-bits
A little cluster of newslets for thee:
-TrekMovie.com reports Perpetual Entertainment has halted development of Star Trek Online and are looking to have the game transferred to another developer.
-In a post on the TrekBBS Andrew Steven Harris (IDW editor) has stated "that Titan and DS9 are the two far-and-away front-runners" (gooooo Titan)
-Also at the TrekBBS, Kieth R.A. DeCandido has revealed the title of his Myriad Universes story: "A Gutted World", which will feature elements from several of the 24th century era series.
Friday 11 January 2008
More in the line from IDW
TrekWeb have posted an interview with IDW's Star Trek editor Andrew Steven Harris, in which he revealed a couple of new projects in the works, name dropped some more people contributing to the Second Stage titles and dreamed of future projects. Here's a list of new information:
-An issue of the Assignment Earth series will also be tying into the episode "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (presumably this will be the issue Kirk and gang pop up in)
-In addition to Gordon Purcell's pencilling talents, Terry Pallot will be inking Year Four: The Enterprise Experiment.
-In addition to the Mirror Images series Captain Pike will be appearing in at least one more project currently in the works (fingers crossed for an Early Voyages miniseries)
-Keith R.A. DeCandido will be providing a story in a second Alien Spotlight series, Harris didn’t specify the species but suggested those familiar with the holy KRAD will be able to guess, so that's probably Klingons.
-IDW have been in contact with Pocket Books and are currently bouncing around ideas for collaborative projects. And of course the New Frontier miniseries will be in line with the existing prose series, and IDW’s second mirror universe, a TNG one, is apparently largely built off of what Pocket have established.
-IDW and Harris would like to do Deep Space Nine, but it's still some time off happening yet.
-They are developing an idea for a post-Nemesis TNG series, involving an unspecified someone who has worked on Star Trek before with Marvel and DC, it's not likely to see light until at least earl-2009.
-IDW think four issues a month is probably about the limit before they would consider themselves flooding the market, so we're not likely to get more than that.
You can read the full interview, here.
Pocket Summer catalogue reveals
Enterprise: Kobayashi Maru, by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin
The exciting follow-up to Star Trek:
The fragile Collation of Planets is convinced that in order to hold the fledgling alliance together something must be done to stop the random destruction of civilian shipping. Under orders from Starfleet, Captain Jonathan Archer and Captain Erica Hernandez, commanders of two of the most powerful starships, have een reduced to convey duty, no more than glorified babysitting. Both captains know that there is something behind all of this systemic destruction. Captain Archer believes he knows who-the Romulans. But will anyone listen to him before it is too late?
Believing that the destruction of the Borg controlled ship Einstein will wipe out the Borg forever, Starfleet Command sends out the Enterprise-only to discover how very wrong that decision is....
One lone ship, the former science vessel Einstein, has been taken over by the Borg. Cut off from the rest of the Collective, if the ship can be found and destroyed, the Federation could rest easy. The discovery of a system-wide slipstream that could enable the Einstein to reach the Collective, or worse, give the Borg the ability of instantaneous transportation, convinces Starfleet to send the
Most Star Trek fans are well-schooled in Trek trivia, either through many hours spent watching the series on television or by poring over the myriad references and companion guides devoted to the Star Trek universe. But for the casual viewer, reading through several hundreds of pages of Deep Space 9 can be overwhelming, to say the least.
The catalogue also included these covers for the Myriad Universes Anthologies (interestingly both featuring TNG characters). And made note that Pocket will be doing cross promotion with IDW for many of their Star Trek books.
You can find the whole catalogue, here.
Prose excerpts
-Klingon Empire: A Burning House, by Keither R.A DeCandido
Wednesday 9 January 2008
Intelligence Gathering cover art
See the original report with some comments by editor Andrew Steven Harris on David Messina's development of these covers, here.
Tuesday 8 January 2008
Intelligence Gathering sneak peak
David Messina has posted a little sneak peak of one of the panels from the second issue of TNG: Intelligence Gathering on his blog, which you find, here.
The first issue will be out towards the end of the month.
Sunday 6 January 2008
Alien Spotlight: Orions review
Set on
The story, by the ever-talented Tipton brothers, is interesting and fills the book. Getting to see Pike at this stage of life (or any really) is a rare treat. The story is engaging and enjoyable and has a lot more going on with it compared to the Tipton's earlier Gorn Alien Spotlight, which was rather more straight forward.
The art work, by Elena Casagrande (who had previously provided "art assit" on the Tiptons' earlier comics illustrated by David Messina) with colours by Mirco Pierfederici is rich and detailed throughout. The exotic location and aliens visitors to
All in all it's hard to fault this issue, the story is big - in that it has a lot going on, and still manages to fit in the 22 pages neatly. The art is similarly near perfect throughout - I especially liked how Pike's hair had greyed in exactly the same way the older Pike from an alternative future was shown to have aged in the Early Voyages comics, whether that was intension or not it was a nice bit of visual continuity.
Friday 4 January 2008
John Byrne newsoids
The biggest item of note is perhaps that Kirk and the gang will be making some sort of appearance in the Assignment Earth miniseries. Byrne also revealed he plans to have one of the later issues feature Nixon's visit to
On his sooner to come Romulan Alien Spotlight issue, he notes that
The full interview can be found here.