Another Romulan Alien Spotlight

TrekWeb have themselves yet another preview of the forthcoming Alien Spotlight on the Romulans by John Byrne. The new preview continues on from previously release black and white and colour versions of the first five pages with the next six pages in black and white again. Here's one, showing a Bird-of-Prey's shuttlebay:

You can see the rest (which are all rather tiny), here. The issue itself will be out next month.

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 Midnight", by Geoff Trowbridge, which will be set in an already established alternate timeline in the TOS movie era.

"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.

-David Messina has posted another little art preview from Intelligence Gathering. This one featuring a rather funky rendering of the Enterprise-D, you can see it on his blog.

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

The Pocket Books summer catalogue has been released which includes some various bits on novels coming over the next few months. As ever the blurbs and covers from this are unlikely to be the final ones on the books:

Enterprise: Kobayashi Maru, by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin

The exciting follow-up to Star Trek: Enterprise-The Good That Men Do describes the incident that sparked the start of the Romulan War: the destruction of the merchant ship Kobayashi Maru.

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?

TNG: Greater Than the Sum, by Christopher L. Bennett

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 Enterprise to stop the Einstein once and for all. Although it's only one ship, the Borg have evolved and are more determined than ever to make Earth, and the Federation, theirs.

Star Trek 101, by Terry J. Erdmann & Paula M. Block

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.

Star Trek 101 is a snappy, entertaining, and handy primer that defines the key components of the legendry sci-fi phenomenon. And now that the episodes are available for download on iTunes, this interesting and informative guide is especially useful, expanding upon the general television descriptions and quickly bringing the viewer up to speed on who’s who and what’s what in the world of Star Trek.

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

Pocket Books has posted a couple of excerpts from this months new releases, which you can find links to below:

-Klingon Empire: A Burning House, by Keither R.A DeCandido

-TNG: Slings and Arrows – That Sleep of Death, by Terri Osborne

Intelligence Gathering cover art

IDW were kind enough to furnish TrekWeb.com with the following pentaptych artwork for the Intelligence Gathering miniseries, which includes the first looks at the covers for issues four and five:

See the original report with some comments by editor Andrew Steven Harris on David Messina's development of these covers, here.

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.

Alien Spotlight: Orions review

It's been out a couple of weeks now, but here are my thoughts on the latest Alien Spotlight issue, on the Orions.

Set on Babel, the story sees the recently promoted, and slightly bored, Fleet Captain Pike find an adventure in unravelling the illegal activities of Tellarite bounty hunter, who is also the target of the vengeful Leata, the comic's girl in the spotlight.

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 Babel are brought to life in a beautifully stylised form that maintains all the details, very similar to David Messina's art.

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.

Once again I call for more from the Tiptons, and extend that to request more from Casagrande too. If IDW did nothing but Tipton comics by this artist or David Messina then I'd be happy, and IDW’s Star Trek line would be vastly improved!

John Byrne newsoids

Newsarama has posted an interview with John Byrne in which he gives away a couple of tiny facts about his forthcoming Star Trek projects for IDW:

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 China in 1972.

On his sooner to come Romulan Alien Spotlight issue, he notes that Paramount had him "truncate" the story as it "didn't fit with their version of the lore".

The full interview can be found here.