In March the new ongoing Star Trek comic book series set in the new movie universe will diverge from doing new spins on original series episodes with a new two-issue storyline all about the Vulcans. IDW has now released the cover and info for the April issue of this new series, check that out below.
STAR TREK COMIC FOR APRIL
Star Trek #8
[32 pages • $3.99]
written by Mike Johnson, art by Joe Phillips, cover by Tim Bradstreet (plus variant sketch cover and photo cover)
Synopsis:
Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise race against time to stop a renegade Vulcan plot to destroy Romulus! Spock’s father Sarek guest-stars in this original story overseen by STAR TREK writer/producer Roberto Orci that takes place between the events of the 2009 blockbuster film and the upcoming sequel!
Cover:
For more:
Star Trek Ongoing comics available now
The latest issue of the ongoing comics arrived in comic book stores today, Wednesday January 18th.
Star Trek comics can be ordered and pre-ordered from TFAW.com, and all are discounted. (Note: Issues 1 & 2 no longer available).
| Star Trek Ongoing #3 |
Star Trek Ongoing #4 |
Star Trek Ongoing #5 |
 $3.99 |
 $3.99 |
 $3.99 |
| November | December | January |
| Star Trek Ongoing #6 |
Star Trek Ongoing #7 |
Star Trek Ongoing #8 |
 $3.19 |
 $3.19 |
Not yet available for pre-order |
| February | March | April |
If you can wait, the first volume compiling the first individual issues will be released on March 13th. You can pre-order it at Amazon.
GOOD, an original story and not a rehash.
Kaplah!
Oh no! A plot to destroy Romulus!!!!
Oh wait…….we’ve seen this one already! Is this a prequel to the doom that’s already happened in the last movie? Do we need to bone up on this one to follow the next movie to understand the whole story like last time?
Could the renegade Vulcan be….SYBOK?!?!?!?
I’ve always thought it would interesting to see the new universe take on poorly written characters from TOS or the movies.
People are going to destroy me in the comments that follow, but screw it, Sybok is one of the poorly conceived characters and I’m willing to take the heat!
Will Sarek be inexplicably Brittish in the comics, too?
Agree with you Joel: Sybok was not what was wrong with ST5. The idea of Spock having an older brother from Sarek’s previous Vulcan betrothal made sense: otherwise, why didn’t Sarek succumb to death from no pon farr??? The Vulcan ‘princess’ that was Sybok’s mother probably was like T’Pring, and chose another and rejected Sarek even though she had his child out of the pon farr.
.
ST5 needed another half year of development: they should have waited until ILM had time to do the sfx, but instead they went with Momma’s Basement, New Jersey. Well…. anyway, the script problems in ST5 sure weren’t Sybok, so I will be glad if Bob Orci and the Comic District Court comes up with a new approach to Sybok.
Right there with you Daoud! When films are rushed you tend to get crap and a lot of times it’s tough to see the light in the darkness.
The junky episodes and even characters from films certainly give interesting outlets for the Comic and Supreme Courts to come up with interesting twists on characters we’ve otherwise written off as useless.
The comics especially have an opportunity to refashion existing characters. Redoing Sybok in the new movie might not work, but in a 2-issue story for comics? Why not??
Loving the ‘Ongoing’ series and glad to see original stories are coming.
@4. Sybok isn’t ill concieved, he’s poorly executed; the concept of Spock’s fully Vulcan brother being an illogical zealot, exploring spiritualty & emotion against the will of their father & the Vulcan people is clever.
It even explains some of Spock’s extreme devotion to logic, as though he has to compensate for Sybok in the eyes of their father.
The problem is the actor who played him, the script for the film he’s in & the Shatty directing job of Final Frontier stripped away everything cool about the character.
I really hope Sybok died on Vulcan, same with T’pau & T’pring. No more Vulcans for a while, please,
Let’s just let Spock be the one we focus on.
Kind of like attacking Iraq for 9/11? Or interning all Japanese Americans and Canadians for the actions of a foreign government? A handful of Romulans (from the future, even) destroyed Vulcan, not all those on Romulus or the Romulan government. Should civilians be held responsible for the actions of their governments? Interesting.
A renegade Vulcan plot to destroy Romulus. Payback? A logic-based decision to protect the Federation? Or to protect the remaining Vulcans? Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? Is the Federation the many and Romulus is the few? Or are the Vulcans the few and the Romulans are the many? Maybe they’re outraged that a Romulan-Federation friendship centre is being built in Romulan space within view of the Eridani system? Is destroying an entire world, an entire civilization, various cultures, countless other species and billions of people ever logical or justified, even when arguments can be made? Does logic really only go so far? No, but such reactions are definitely human nature. Very intriguing.
Does revenge beget revenge, ad infinitum? Unfortunately, it tends to. Do the persecuted go on to persecute others, even those with no responsibility for the original persecution? Yep.
Hmmm. Interesting. Okay, I’m curious how this goes. This isn’t a case of merely referencing current events, like that Vietnam/Mugatu episode, it could be, if done well, this could be really neat. War, what it is good for? indeed.
Should Nero have been tried for his crimes (Spock: “Captain, what are you doing?” “…No, not really. Not this time….” — played for laughs) or killed by the military while resisting arrest (and yes, it was also to prevent him from possibily going back in time again and screwing something else up)? Did Kirk execute Nero and his crew?
The moral relativism of TNG was interesting — Worf’s murder of whichever Klingon was unpunished because it was allowed in his culture. When does it become illegal/wrong — when one party isn’t of the same culture and holds different beliefs?
Neat, scary stuff.
4. Oh yeah. Clever. Although Sybok was a self-declared pacifist (or, sort of) who used the threat of violence… and general brainwashing to achieve his goals… Would Sybok (who we really know nothing of, you’re right) change enough to want to destroy billions? After a genocide? To do to others what had been done to his people? Maybe.
Or, would that even be changing? Did his selfish quest for knowledge/self-fulfillment kind of constitute similar behavior?
Interesting.
Good points, Jack. Those are exactly the kind of moral questions Trek should be asking. Hopefully, these comics (and the next movie) will do so.
@4, 5, 6: Largely agree. Didn’t care for Sybok, as drawn, but I thought the idea had good potential.
I hope the new Trek franchise will flesh out the Vulcan race and better mine the material therein. Enough of the over-worn stereotype of condescending Vulcan incapable of genuinely embracing IDIC.
I think audience interest in the Vulcan race is too often over-looked. After all, Spock’s the most loved of TOS (if not all franchise) characters. “Spock’s World” hit the NYT Best Seller list. I thought it was a terrible book. Any fan hoping to get more Spock would probably have been disappointed. I suspect it was merely the title that got the book to registers. Fans were fascinated by all things Vulcan (hence, also, Amok Time being one of the most popular episodes).
So, I’m utterly thrilled that Ongoing is doing a two-part, original story based on Vulcans. I can’t imagine a non-collective/hive race achieving nearly absolute conformity to one belief system. Authenticate Vulcan with some diversification!
On a slightly different note, was I the only one disappointed with Sarek’s performance in ST:09? He seemed very…muted…even for a Vulcan.
@9 and 10: Like your thinking, Jack, though I gotta ask the (rhetorical) question; Have you been smokin’ weed, or can the mere thought of an upcoming comic book release really inspire such frenetic contemplation?
Yes, indeed, revising a character like Sybok could give us LOTS to chew on!:)
Maybe add to your list of possibilities consideration that Sybok was nuts (what drove him nuts?) and that the attack on Vulcan could have sent a young, deranged Sybok (or similarly construed Vulcan) off on just about any course.
@13: I liked Mark Lenard’s Sarek best. This Sarek seemed much changed by the timeline. I never got the impression that he’d be on the outs with Spock, even given Spock’s choice to withdraw his VSA application.
I’m gonna guess it involves Red Matter somehow since the cover image is sort of a sideways, extreme close-up of the Red Matter being withdrawn. Question is, if it is Red Matter, how did the Vulcans get any?
Also I’m liking the idea of throwing Sybock into this plot. He probably wouldn’t have imploded on Vulcan because, at this point, he was out searching for Sha-Ka-Ree, I think.
Instead in this universe he found… Sean Connery!
George Murdock is God…
I like the sound of this new vulcan story. Sounds original and sounds interesting !
14. It was that obvious, huh? I just do it so I can eat more chips.
@21: Chips!? Not brownies?! Unfathomable.
Let’s see…….this is the first original story in the new universe, and what we get is…………….
REVENGE! How many times have we seen that?
Seems “STAR TREK” is fast becoming “STAR VENGEANCE”!
I always fell so sorry for Lawrence Luckenbill being the central figure in the biggest Star Trek failure. Hopefully there will be none worse. It surely wasn’t his fault but it seemed to have just about ended his film career. He’s a talented actor.
Looks great! I’ll definately going to buy it, I love the series so far!
Hooray, a new story written by Mike Johnson and overseen by Bob Orci. My favorite scenes in Star Trek 2009 were the Vulcan ones. Got to figure out if it’s going to be at a comic book store or the regular book store. I don’t like to order by mail..
Although many people say they are sick of stories about revenge, it still seems that a lot of people have also proposed story lines which have some Vulcans wanting to exact revenge etc. Why should anyone be surprised or upset? Most people want to see punishment meted out to those they see as wrong doers and reasons for this can vary. Often it can have little to do with genuine justice being served.
What is the point of a cover preview when they are all lame Photoshop hatchet jobs? These are comic books. How about DRAWING up a cool cover IDW?
I think that if I were Nero that I would have come back in time and instead of destroying Vulcan out of revenge, I would have went to Romulus with my future evidence of it’s destruction. Then I would have helped them build a superior fleet with future tech. I would have then soaked up the hero stuff and tried to live a comfortable life knowing that one day, Romulus would have already figured out how to save itself and that this timeline would eventually cease to exist. Maybe. The whole “Ahab” thing has been done to death. “Romulan War 2” would have been an interesting story.
Nero should have slingshot around the sun to a time when earth was vulnerable and without defenses and then destroy it. But, oh my – scifi stories never make any sense, especially in Star Trek…
Khan Was Framed:
Sarek is not ‘inexplicably’ British/English. It depends where he learned the language. Having lived many years in Russia, I found most English-speakers there were taught British English while several chose the North American variant. Happens on Vulcan, too.
Perfectly explicable.
@29, I don’t think he chose to go back in time, the black hole/wormhole did that for him. Remember, he showed up at about the same time Spock shot the red matter into that supernova and created the wormhole in the first place. Narada may have been a powerful ship, but it couldn’t stop itself from being sucked down the vortex.
I’m sure if Nero had chosen to go back in time, he’d probably have gone back to Vulcan’s pre-warp days instead of 25 years in the past. He’d have still been batty, but nobody could have stood in his way. Then he could have taken out Earth, Tellar, Andor, and the other Federation planets with ease.
The thing is, we’ve already seen five movies, and a number of episodes dealing with mad men out for revenge. That theme has been done to death a thousand times!
#29.
What you forget is Nero went berserk after Romulus was destroyed, so his anger got the best of him and he believed that the Federation, who up to only a short time prior, was an enemy of the Romulan Star Empire, as was Vulcan. His madness stemmed from his belief that the Federation diliberately allowed the Hobus star to explode and destroy his home planet, despite the fact that in reality, Spock intended to stop the supernova but was merely too late. At that point, Earth and Vulcan were on his lists of targets for retribution. The Romulus in the past was irrelevant to him, as his home was the Romulus of the late twenty-fourth century, which is now gone.
32. I’m sure if Nero had chosen to go back in time, he’d probably have gone back to Vulcan’s pre-warp days instead of 25 years in the past
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I thought that Next Gen takes place almost a century after Kirk’s time? 25 years is how long he had to wait for Spock to come through the rift.
Agreed 33, but I was just wondering what it would have been like if he’d have stopped and counted to 10.
@5
like a british accent for a star trek alien should even matter when SO many aliens speak with an inexplicable western north american accent…
Star Trek 5 was the movie Paramount should have sprung for the extra couple of million during filming. The movie was as servicable as any of the others except when it came time for the climax.
Spending the money on the predecessor of Robot Chicken to do the SFX was a huge mistake, then running out of FX money to finish the film was the second mistake.
Paramount made money on the project, make no mistake. Even Nemesis made money for Paramount after tape and DVD sales are added to the take…
To not give Shat a few bucks to finish the film properly in a ‘director’s cut’ instead of replacing Kirk fleeimg from a flash on a darkened set and a horrible double exposure with some digital fx was a missed opportunity.
@36
I always felt that Trek V needed the treatment that TMP got. Go back in with Shatner and add CGI effects. It could be like what was done for The Original Series Remastered even. It just seems needed, badly. I remember the first shot of the Enterprise against the moon and it was just a bit of a letdown. Trek5 and Insurrection had the worst effects of the entire film franchise. (and weakest stories in my oppinion)
Good. An all new story. Sounds more like it. I’ll probably pick this one up when they go into a single edition softback. I don’t like to buy individual issues. Kind of flimsy and a bit of a nuisance to wait for each one when you can get them all at once. ;-)
#37 PEB
I agree STV would probably benefit from a 2001 ST-TMP style facelift, but you’d have to reshoot some of the live-action material (the entire ending, for example) for it to really be a substantially better movie. And 23 years after the fact (and with two of the TOS cast members passing on) I don’t see that happening.
It’d be an interesting experiment, though….