On Wednesday as IDW wraps up one mini-series they launch a brand new series, jumping into mid 24th century to tell the story of a young Jean-Luc Picard. According to the publisher, the new series will “unveil the past of one of Starfleet’s most celebrated officers: Captain Jean-Luc Picard!” The new series is written by New York Times best-selling author Sam Maggs (Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars and Marvel Action: Captain Marvel). Art for the new series is being done by Ornella Greco with colors by Charlie Kirchoff. We have a preview of the first issue and according to his report card, young Picard had some big names assessing his progress.
Star Trek: Picard’s Academy #1
Synopsis:
Before becoming the Federation’s finest, Jean-Luc was an ordinary student at Starfleet Academy with sights on the stars. His path forward was charted: blow his classmates out of the water on the infamous Evasive Maneuvers exam and graduate early. But there’s a detail Cadet Picard hadn’t factored into his plan: the exam was a group project and he’d need to make friends with, ugh, people if he stood a chance at passing. Federation starships aren’t run by a party of one, after all.
Covers:
Cover A by Sweeney Boo
Cover B by Matt Taylor
RI Cover by Megan Levens
RI Cover by Paulina Ganucheau
Online exclusive cover
Setup/credits:
Five-page preview:
Picard’s Academy begins on Wednesday
Star Trek: Picard’s Academy #1 arrives on September 13. You can order issue 1 and upcoming issues at TFAW or pick up individual digital editions at Amazon/comiXology.
Keep up with all the Star Trek comics news, previews and reviews in TrekMovie’s comics category
Oh, dear. That was not good. Not good at all. I’ve loved a lot of IDWs recent work but that is childishly written and badly drawn, like something out of a 1990s cartoon. A shame as I had high hopes for this one.
Their pattern indicates two dimensional thinking.
E. Vargas for political science? Is that a reference to an old ABC news reporter?
I do not understand how this book got all the way through all the approvals needed while repeating the old 90s Encyclopedia mistake of labeling the NCO uniforms from the TOS movies as the cadet uniforms. Officer cadets (midshipmen) wear the standard monster maroon with a red collar. Enlisted trainees wear the NCO uniform with a red collar. Black collars as seen here means enlisted crewmen.
Thanks. That’s a pet peeve of mine as well.
How it happened is pretty obvious- in the original pitch Roddenberry wrote (probably thinking of NASA astronauts of the time) that the whole crew were officers. That was never true- there were many enlisted people in both pilots, throughout TOS, and in TMP- but it stuck in people’s minds. (It didn’t help that in TOS, enlisted personnel and ensigns both wore no insignia, so people thought of them all as “ensigns.” I wonder if the four ensigns (until last week) of Lower Decks is based on that.)
So when Kirk talks about the Enterprise being full of cadets in WOK and people saw these new uniforms, they assumed they were all cadets. Obviously not: Saavik is a cadet in a regular uniform (although, in what was probably a mistake, she wears lieutenant insignia), Preston wears an engineering suit so we don’t see his regular uniform, and Spock and Scotty talk about the “trainees”, but again, that’s what people thought.
(In TUC, the enlisted crewmen are explicitly referred to as such.)