By GustavoLeao / 12:40, 11 January 2008 / Trek Books

TrekWeb talks to IDW Editor Andrew Steven Harris about the present and future of the Star Trek comic book license, including the upcoming Second Stage line of books,

1. What is the genesis of the Second Stage of IDW's Star Trek line of comics?

Like many awesome things that appear to be so well planned out, Second Stage came together almost by accident. My editor-in-chief, Chris Ryall, had been talking to John Byrne about doing a Star Trek series. At the same time, I had independently been trying to convince Peter David to do a New Frontier series, since I work with Peter on his Fallen Angel creator-owned title and the company had been interested in recruiting him to write Star Trek for a while.

 

And then, entirely separate from either of those things, Dorothy Fontana, on her own initiative, contacted us with a pitch to do a five-issue run on our Star Trek Year Four book. Chris and I looked at all three of these projects as they started to come together, and we suddenly realized, "Whoah, we really have something here." 

 

Ever since IDW hired me to take over its Star Trek line of books, I had wanted to "up our game", to take things to the next level, so that these weren't just a line of licensed comics, but were a real significant contribution to both comic book storytelling and Star Trek fiction. This isn't to say that IDW wasn't doing a good job before I got here-it was doing a stellar job, no pun intended, and it spent its first year launching a line of outstanding books and testing out the market to see what type of Star Trek storytelling people were interested in. And it's exactly the quality of that storytelling that attracted such high-profile creators to these titles.

 

So, we realized that we wanted to do something special with this new group of books, and that they'd all be coming out at about the same time, and also that it was about the one-year anniversary of when IDW launched its Trek line of books. The first year, all the hooplah was about the launch of the comics; and next year, all the hooplah will be about the new J.J. Abrams film. But we wanted something special for this year, something that marked the transition into the company's second season of doing Star Trek. So that's when I came up with the concept and name for Second Stage-as if we're off the launch pad now, and really punching through the stratosphere this year. 

 

2. How did you guys convince superstar John Byrne to work on a Star Trek mini-series?

John has been a Star Trek fan for decades-really, since the TOS days-but as an artist he's not crazy about doing likenesses, which quite obviously are essential for most ordinary Star Trek comic books. He is certainly talented enough to do them, he just doesn't like dealing with all of the hassles that can go along with it, such as temperamental actors, studio executives ordering frivolous changes, whatever. But, as good fortune would have it, we had an idea for a Trek series called Alien Spotlight, which would focus on Trek's aliens, rather than its actors. That seemed like the perfect opportunity for John to finally do an issue of Star Trek for the first time in his entire career.

That issue, the Romulans Spotlight (coming out in February) was such a positive experience for him that Chris Ryall finally convinced him to take the plunge and do a full-fledged Trek series, again the first one of his career. The result is Assignment Earth, which I have to say is the most original idea for a Star Trek comic book in as long as I can remember. The "Assignment Earth" TV episode was the Season Two finale of TOS, and had been intended by Gene Roddenberry as a back-door pilot for a potential spin-off TV series. The spin-off never came to pass, so now John has decided to bring it to life 40 years later.

Like the episode, the series also features Gary Seven, who over time has developed something of a legendary status in Trek fiction, this interstellar agent attempting to preserve history and protect the future. He's surfaced in Trek comics, Trek novels, fanfic-all sorts of lore. So it's intensely cool to see John Byrne doing him. John has also set up this very clever storytelling device, where the series skips forward a year with every issue, beginning in 1968, which is when the spin-off series would have debuted. It's going to be one of the coolest comic books you've read in a long, long time.

3. Will we see Kirk and Spock appearances in Assignment Earth?

I don't want to give too much away; but, I will say that at least one of the Assignment Earth issues will intersect with the TOS episode "Tomorrow is Yesterday"-which was coincidentally written by D.C. Fontana, who also has a Second Stage series coming out, so there's an interesting bit of behind-the-scenes crossover there.

 

Dorothy's miniseries, meanwhile, is a sequel to the TOS episode "The Enterprise Incident", in which Kirk steals a Romulan cloaking device; and John's Romulans spotlight is a prequel to our introduction to the Romulans and their cloaking device, so there's a some Second Stage bookend storytelling there as well. Again, all by sheer coincidence, but with the appearance of having been oh-so-carefully planned.

 

4. Will there be a lot of references to The Animated Series in D.C. Fontana's Year Four mini-series, since she was story editor on TAS?

Oh, for certain. Just for the record, I should mention that I think of The Animated Series as canon even though CBS/Paramount does not (yet, anyway); and from conversation with Dorothy, I know that she feels the same way. It all fits together quite nicely, since The Animated Series is already regarded as something of a "Year Four" by the fans, so it seems only appropriate that Dorothy is now working on a series called Star Trek Year Four and is incorporating all sorts of elements from The Animated Series into it. Since we were already doing a Year Four series before Dorothy joined up, we had already included certain TAS elements into it, such as Arex and M'Ress. But, you'll see from the very first issue of the new series, Arex now is actually quite central to the storyline.

 

One of the things that I like most about working on this particular title is that, more than any other Trek comic book that we publish, this is the one that has the true feeling of being actual episodes of the TV series. Even when we get our notes back from CBS/Paramount on these scripts, that's exactly what they say: "Feels just like an episode". You can't get any higher compliment from Paramount than that.

And Dorothy has teamed up with a longtime Trek writer named Derek Chester, who apart from his celebrity writing partner is really a top-notch creator in his own right. When you put the two of them together, the work they produce is really outstanding. Then we've got Gordon Purcell penciling the book and Terry Pallot on inks, both of whom have Trek credentials that stretch way, way back. So we've really got a superstar team of creators on this book.

 

5.  Is expanding your slate of titles to four issues a month a risky business?

Well, we'll see, but I don't really think so. Star Trek: Second Stage is probably the most dramatic, ambitious line of Trek comics ever launched, and I don't say that out of pride or ego, but rather because we really, really believe in them. There have been a lot of great Star Trek stories told by other companies in the past; but as those series got a bit long in the tooth, the stories occasionally started to have the feeling of "just-another-issue" or "just-another-episode". And that's a very, very difficult trend to escape from. But since IDW only publishes Star Trek mini-series rather than ongoing series, the idea I had was that we would expand our line to four titles a month, so that it would have the feeling of "appointment viewing" for our readers, just like a weekly episode of the TV show.

At the same time, however, each miniseries itself would have the feeling of a major event, like a Star Trek film, in which the story overall contributed in a significant or memorable way to the body of Trek fiction. I want each of our miniseries to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with major Trek novels, to be the kind of titles that people remember and talk about even as they're talking about their favorite Trek TV episode or film.

6. That leads nicely into our next question about Peter David's New Frontier mini-series. Will it have stand-alone stories, or is it a major arc? And are you guys doing New Frontier due to fan request?

Oh, it'll definitely be a major arc. It's the official continuation of the book series; as I was just saying, fans should look at it with the same stature as one of the novels themselves. At the same time, though the comics series begins after the last book, Peter has been quite clever in how he introduces the characters and concepts from the series for new readers, many of whom will be comics fans and who might not have read all dozen or so novels before. He's really a remarkable writer, in structural ways that people who simply enjoy his skill at witty dialogue or his other trademarks might not immediately recognize.

As for how the series came to life: when I first got here at IDW, one of the first things I did when introducing myself to the readers was ask our fans on the IDW message boards what they wanted to see in their Trek titles. A couple of things kept surfacing, over and over again: stories about Captain Pike, recruiting certain creators like Keith R.A. DeCandido or Peter David, and in particular a comic book series for New Frontier. As it just so happened, New Frontier was hitting its 10th anniversary, so it seemed the perfect time to do it, and though it had received a one-shot adaptation while Wildstorm held the Star Trek license back in 2000, it had never had its own full-fledged comic book mini-series before.

And, in actuality, IDW had wanted to do a New Frontier series for a while, even before I arrived here, but could never seem to get all the details worked out-Peter is about as busy as a writer can ever get, and he has an exclusive contract with Marvel on top of that. But the fans really wanted it, and I really wanted it, so I set about to hassle Peter as much as humanly possible without getting fired from my new job. Probably just to shut me up, he went and worked out all the details with Marvel to give him an exception to his exclusive deal, since he was the primary creator of the New Frontier line of novels, and there would be no way we would ever have published the comic books without his direct involvement. And, let me say, Marvel has been extremely gracious in allowing him to do the work for us.

And, I should also point out, this wasn't the only fan request that we've been listening to-we've already had Pike in two issues so far, and have plans for him to appear in at least two more, such as in the fourth Star Trek: Second Stage title called Mirror Images, which is of course about the Mirror Universe.

And, while I'm answering questions about fan requests, I might as well also say that it looks like we'll be doing something with Keith DeCandido, for a second Alien Spotlight series, which I suppose I'm announcing here as well. Keith has a great pitch in to us-I won't say for which aliens, but you can probably guess if you know his work-and I'd really love to do even more work with him as well.

So, the long answer to your short question is: Yes. We are really listening to fan requests. Another common request is that we coordinate some stories or projects with Pocket Books, and though I was initially skeptical at the logistical prospects of it all, I've been in touch with Marco Palmieri over there and am greatly encouraged that it could be a positive thing for both the companies and for the fans. We've already got some ideas kicking around-very tentative, nothing to announce yet, but very encouraging. So we're keeping an open mind with what the fans want, even for things that seem unlikely at first.

Deep Space Nine is another request like that-easily the most requested series, though right now it doesn't seem likely that it would fit into the 2008 schedule even if we went ahead with it. With Second Stage and the upcoming movie, we're pretty booked up as it is. I will say, however, that it's is my all-time favorite Trek series, and I would give up a year of watching baseball if it meant we could do new stories for DS9. But, as they say, you never know, so keep your eyes peeled.

7. How was writing a pre-Nemesis TNG adventure in Alien Spotlight: Borg? Do you have any plans for a post-Nemesis TNG adventure?

  

Writing the Borg book was a blast. I got the assignment only shortly after starting here at IDW, when the writer who had been assigned to the book had to pull out because of professional commitments. So, I had a very, very narrow window to develop an idea and get it approved by CBS/Paramount, and it all came together in an extremely short amount of time. I'm exceptionally pleased with how it turned out, and you can check it out for yourself when it hits the bookshelves-I think its release date is Jan. 23.

 

I've seen advanced copies, and one of the reasons that the issue rocks so awesomely is because of the artwork of Sean Murphy and Len O'Grady. I posted some of Sean's black-and-white art on the IDW message boards when it first came in, because I wanted people to see how outstanding it was on its own, even without being colored. But Len O'Grady is really a colorist extraordinare, he gets requested by people like John Byrne all the time, and he did an absolute bang-up job on this book. Plus, both of Sean and Len put up with a writer who was also the editor, so they get special credit for just making it through to the end without blasting my head apart with a phaser. But, really, I think it's a cracking good story, and I think fans arer really going to like it.

 

As for post-Nemesis stories-that's another one that we get a lot of fan requests about, and something that I was initially reluctant to pursue, but over time I think I've been really won over by the idea. Right now, it's just a question of finding the right story and the right moment in our schedule. I was just on the phone earlier today with a quite well-known writer who has worked in Star Trek before, has been an editor over at Marvel and DC, and we were working on an idea for a post-Nemesis pitch. But, with our currently packed schedule, it looks like it might not even be able to appear until early 2009.

 

We certainly could do it before then, but we don't want to start publishing five, six, seven titles every month, since overall I don't think the market could bear that and every single one of our books would suffer. So even though we get all sorts of great Star Trek pitches from all sorts of great creators, the fact is that there's only so much room on the schedule, and for some of these great ideas, the fans and readers are just going to have to wait.

 

8. Will the Mirror Universe mini-series have elements of Pocket Books upcoming Mirror Universe novels series?

  

That's a bit of a tough question to answer at the moment, since as I mentioned, we're only just now starting to think about coordinating our storytelling. I for one would certainly like there to be some feeling of integration, though we'd want to stop short of doing an actual "crossover"-we don't want our comics fans to feel like we're forcing them to buy the novels to be able to follow the story. That said, there's all sorts of potential for insider references, Easter Eggs and so on, for the fans who pick up and read them both.

There are actually two Mirror Universe miniseries planned-the first will focus on the TOS-era Enterprise, chronicling Kirk's rise to power as he looks to unseat Capt. Christopher Pike, as well as showcasing some of the Enterprise crew who were not directly a part of the original "Mirror, Mirror" storytelling. The second will focus on the TNG crew, and since I'm co-authoring that one (with screenwriter George Strayton, who recently wrote the Dragonlance movie), I can tell you that we're working directly from the Pocket Book novels to craft certain key elements in our story.

I've said before that when we do our stories here at IDW, we never go out of our way to try to contradict something that's been in the novels, and our policy is to coordinate when possible, but contradict when necessary. I think that's a pretty reasonable approach; but as good fortune and good storytelling would have it, we can pretty much follow the Pocket Books quite closely for our TNG series without running into too much trouble.

9. What is IDW goal with Second Stage?

  

Really, though it might seem obvious, the truth is that we're just out to tell great stories. We're also looking to attract attention to those stories, so that they get as much attention as possible both among comics fans and Star Trek fans. Because the secret truth of it is that some comics fans still regard Star Trek fandom as an alien creature, and some Trek fans still look at comics like a ghetto form of storytelling.

 

There's absolutely no reason for either of those points of view. What I really want to do is punch through those preconceptions with top-notch stories that "novel snobs" might begrudgingly recognize as solid storytelling, and that comics-only fans would be attracted to as high-octane space adventure tales.

 

And, of course, even without considering such factors, we're concentrating on simply telling the best stories that we can, giving our fans the best run for their money while expanding the perimeter of readers who might ordinarily pick up our books. If we can even just partly accomplish that, we can help establish comics as a permanent venue for ongoing major new Star Trek adventures.

Thank you for the interview and kudos to IDW for producing quality Star Trek comics, Andrew.

	More Top Stories	Comments
Feb 09	Zachary Quinto Says Star Trek XII is Bigger and Bolder, Says the Actors were Brought to the Process of Working the Script	3
Feb 09	Chris Pine on the Casting of Rising Star Benedict Cumberbatch as the Chief Villain in Star Trek XII	0
Feb 09	Evangelion Director Anno to Design Yamato 2199 Anime Opening	0
Feb 08	In Search of, 70s TV Series Hosted by Leonard Nimoy, Coming to DVD	5
Feb 08	Read a 7-Page Preview of Star Trek Legion of Super Heroes 5	2
	Story Archives...Browse:   AllBits - Miscellany Deep Space NineEnterpriseGamingGeneral Genre/SciFiGeneral Star Trek PeopleStar Trek: NemesisTodays TribbletsTrek BooksVoyagerFeatures