IDW continues to expand their universe of Star Trek comics with the announcement of a new ongoing series titled Star Trek: Defiant, a spinoff of the upcoming ongoing Star Trek series launching later this month. Set to debut in March 2023, the new Defiant series will see Worf put together a unique crew for a series described as “The Dirty Dozen meets Star Trek.”
Worf assembles his crew
The simply-titled Star Trek that kicks off later this month will feature a pre-Nemesis story with Benjamin Sisko returning from the Bajoran wormhole on a mission to save the gods. And this new Defiant comic will be part of that same continuity. Here is the official synopsis:
In Defiant, someone is killing the gods…but while Benjamin Sisko and the U.S.S. Theseus have been facing the threats in the higher cosmos, very real casualties are growing on lower ground. The true enemy is a man, not a god, and Worf of House Martok has put together his own crew aboard the U.S.S. Defiant in the hopes of defeating the dangerous messiah behind a genocidal cult.
IDW is describing the series as “dark” and “edgy,” and it will be pulling from “all eras of Star Trek canon.” This is evidenced by Worf’s crew which includes Spock, B’Elanna Torres, Lore, and more as they set off on “a mission with very little guarantee of success!” Ro Laren can also be seen on the cover of issue one.
Defiant #1 cover A by Angel Unzueta
Defiant is helmed by two well-known comic veterans. It is being written by Chris Cantwell (Iron Man, Star Wars: Obi-Wan) with art by Ángel Unzueta (Star Wars: Poe Dameron, The Flash).
“Ever since I made my dad take me to my first Star Trek convention when I was ten, I have been waiting for this moment,” says Cantwell in a statement. “When Heather Antos, Jackson Lanzing, and Collin Kelly reached out to me about writing the first book to spin out of their flagship Star Trek title, I wanted the quality to match my massive wells of enthusiasm; I knew this book needed to be undeniably Star Trek first and foremost, but also something new and complex that would have readers leaning forward as they engaged with a more unexpected journey to the stars. Whereas the new Star Trek book carries forward the grand tradition of Starfleet’s saga of discovery and exploration, Defiant immediately sets out to break the rules of the Federation and go on a fugitive run from Starfleet with a cast of Trek’s best iconoclastic heroes and ne’er-do-wells, each of them straddling worlds in their identities and calibrations in their moral compasses as they embark on a high-stakes galactic manhunt…the Prime Directive be damned.”
“To be part of this amazing new Star Trek universe is a big challenge, and I love big challenges,” says Unzueta. “It will be very exciting to show how far our crew can go to save the universe, how many rules they can break just to make things right, how ‘badass’ these guys can be when compared to the more clean-cut crew of the Theseus from the ongoing series. Also, I’m working with a great writer, friend, and partner from our Iron Man days, and with my favorite editor, who is pushing me to the stars once again. I am so excited and ready to make this book a new experience for the Trek audience!”
Defiant #1 Cover B by Malachi Ward
IDW’s growing Star Trek line up
With the announcement of this title, by early 2023 IDW will have two concurrent ongoing Star Trek comic series, which will be a first for the publisher since taking on the franchise over a decade ago.
“Just when you thought Star Trek comics couldn’t get any bigger, we’re continuing to boldly explore new frontiers,” says Senior Editor Heather Antos in a statement. “Between the flagship title and Defiant, it’s safe to say that we have comics’ biggest Trek fans—Lanzing, Kelly, Cantwell, Rosanas, and Unzueta themselves—crafting what is going to be Star Trek’s biggest and boldest interconnected comics story ever. And this is only just the beginning!”
In addition to Star Trek and Defiant, IDW recently launched two new Star Trek Universe tie-in mini-series: Star Trek: Picard – Stargazer and Star Trek: Lower Decks. They also recently announced Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – The Illyrian Enigma. And they are set to release a prequel mini-series tied to the upcoming game Star Trek: Resurgence.
Star Trek #1 cover A by Ramon Rosanas
Keep up with all the Star Trek comics news, previews and reviews in TrekMovie’s comics category.
The folks writing this haven’t noticed that “dark” and “edgy” Star Trek hasn’t been all that popular recently?
Maybe its not popular in some circles- but it’s certainly been successful since Discovery is currently in production of its fifth season and Picard is gearing up for its third. It’s obviously resonating with people outside of the members of this particularly community.
The classic mistake of every greedy franchise owner: ditching the old fans and pleasing the new fans, no matter the cost, up to the point of making a franchise an antithesis of what it used to be. The end result is always the same: the “new fans” grow bored, find something “new and kewl” to spend their money on and when the greedy franchise owner suddenly runs out of cash brought in by the initial “new fans'” cash influx, it turns to the old fans, asking them to return. The old fans’ reply is always the same: “Oh, NOW you need us?! Where was this mindset of yours when we were telling you that you’re doing it WRONG?!” And this is what will happen to “dark and edgy” Star Trek.
I wonder, why is it that Star Trek cannot be its own POSITIVE thing and always has to emulate things which are in direct contradiction to its ethos? Why cannot Star Trek “win” in this contest and make OTHER shows try to emulate it? A little more than a decade ago everyone and their cat wanted Star Trek to become “battleSTAR TREKactica” just because Ronald D. Moore’s remake show was on TV. Today we are still dealing with the fallout of the last decade during which execs required everything, even toilet paper commercials, to emulate the “Game of Thrones,” even if there was no logical incentive to do so.
Perhaps, at one point, average people looking for entertainment had so much “light” in their lives that it made them embrace “darkness” out of spite. Maybe once they finally understand that having “darkness” for breakfast, lunch and dinner isn’t what entertainment is all about, they will welcome the “light” when it reappears. The good thing is that, sooner or later, this day will come. The bad thing is that, the way things are now, this “light” will NOT be Star Trek (or whatever remains of it) but its successor.
It’s just a comic book. It’ll be okay.
You could do worse. You could please not the new fans or the old. Like Disney Star Wars. They literally pissed off everyone. OT fans, prequel fans and sequel fans with the Rise of Skywalker. Even the new Trek’s at their worst haven’t managed that. At best they’ve been extremely poor written. With good effects and actors.
Oh man, I’m digging the cover by Malachi Ward! Worf as pop art.
Agree 100%
I did some looking around and found that Ward did one in the same style featuring Data.
http://malachiward.blogspot.com/
[STAR TREK PICARD SPOILER WARNING!!!!]
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Lore is in Worfs crew? Do the comics have the same new rule like the novels that they are canon until contradicted by onscreen media? If so…might this that Lore is NOT a villian in Season Three??
I would hope so. I am a bit tired of seeing Brent Spiner as villain again and again :-P
I don’t know, this may actually be genius. Spiner recently courted Paramount+ for his own series. I can see the concept coming together…
Somewhere…out there in the darkness…on Planet Spiner arises a new threat. An ancient madman, possessed by an obsession: to infiltrate and destroy the Federation. Brent of the Planet Spiner (shortened to Brent Spiner or sometimes B.S.) spends centuries cloning himself and developing sentient androids to infiltrate Starfleet and the Federation.
Before long…he’ll be everywhere.
Brent Spiner: Star Trek Villain
It’s going to be huge.
The comics and novels are not canon and never have been. The shows and movies have always been free to contradict them.
It doesn’t seem THAT far fetched that Lore could actually be reprogrammed to do good instead of evil.
So Something is Killing … “The gods”
*Sigh*
It sounds like you were planning to make a comment of some sort here.
Numerous noncorporeal beings in TOS and TNG and the entirety of DS9 should show you exactly how this is not a contradiction of terms. “gods” in Star Trek just means all-powerful being, which is attainable within the fictional rules of the universe. It’s a very sci-fi idea to explore what that word means, and this is coming from an atheist.
I get the *sigh* – the killing the gods thing was literally just done in Thor 4, and Q & the wormhole aliens was already a faily decent comic a few years ago. Might still give it a shot but I get the gut reaction of _ugh_
no… the Q for example are not referred as gods
I think he refers to himself that way a time or two
Allpowerfull beings may are depicted by Star Trek species as gods but in the end they are always not gods. They may be non-linear, they may be very powerfull, but in the end they are no gods.
So when a comic speaks of some beings in the Trek Universe as “The Gods” this is just a missunderstanding of how beings in Trek are being depicted.
The Bajorans may view the wormhole entitys as gods. however, no one else does! And certainly the Q are not depicted as gods.
So no… there is nothing like “the gods” in star trek. This is not marvel…
This seems to be a lead-in to PICARD season three, as it centers around Lore and Worf. Something will happen that result in Worf embracing pacifism and Lore ending up in prison. And the “gods” being killed include the Q, thus explaining that dangling question from season two. If I’m right, that has interesting implications for season three. Are B’Elanna, Ro, and Spock in it? They have two viable Spock actors now to replace Nimoy.
There is already a lead in comic to Picard Season 3 focusing on Seven and Picard on the Stargazer post season 2. This looks like something entirely different.
There can be more than one tie-in.
In any case, this comic is about someone killing gods. The monthly comic it’s spinning off from is about the wormhole entities being killed. Picard season two is about Q dying. And Picard season three features Lore, who is in this series.
It has to be related.
Its not being marketed as related and this seems like just an attempt to play in multiple parts of the Trek sandbox at once. Star Trek Countdown while initially considered canon, got contradicted on screen (eg. Captain Data)
These comics always have an extreme case of small universe syndrome. But the fans need their fanwankery in order to buy comics I guess.
Lore is really giving me some Tom Hiddleston vibes, there.
if they ever needed to do a parallel / de-aged thing Tom could totally do a great version of a Soongian-android
“post-Nemesis”? Nope, it’s pre-Nemesis…set in that gap between the end of “Voyager” and pre-Nemesis…