Ever since the film, my interest in Star Trek has been warped into over-drive. I've bought several books that I go back & forth reading. I'm thinking I want to try some comics. So far, the only comics I have are the first Star Trek/X-Men crossover, which I bought when it came out (never could find the TNG/X-Men book), & I've got a Star Trek Annual that shows when Kirk first became Captain of the Enterprise, which was pretty good. I also bought a tradepaperback which collected Borg stories, but it was really week. It was a story arc where the TNG crew get sent to a parallel reality where Picard remained Locutus & helped the Borg takeover Earth, and they had to help the survivors of the parallel TNG crew stop him. Blah artwork in story. Though it also had a one-shot told from the POV of a female Romulan Captain who's ship gets assimilated, and that was pretty nice. Oh, yeah, I've also got the Countdown tpb, which is the prequel to the latest film. Loved that. I hear IDW is planning another series, which shows what Nero was doing during the 25 years he was waiting for Spock to show up.

Anyone got any recommendations of stuff I should track down? I almost hesistate to ask, but, are any of the Byrne books worth reading?

I've enjoyed the Byrne books, but not everyone has. The Romulans issues were good, and crew has been decent.

I really enjoyed the Peter David series DC published in the late 80s/early 90s.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1845761545/?tag=imwan-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1845763157/?tag=imwan-20

Whatever you do, don't pick up the IDW reprinting of the Marvel series. I paged through it last week and it's not that good of job on the printing.

"Debt of Honor" -- Graphic Novel by Chris Claremont and Adam Hughes, set just after Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

Always liked PAD. I know he's written some Trek novels, too.

I know about Byrne's one-shots, but I'm not familiar with the concept of The Crew. Is it a completely brand-new series, or is it connected to the original group in some way?

Crew is a story focusing on adventures throughout the career of Number One, the female first officer of Christopher Pike in the original pilot, "The Cage".

The Mirror Universe Saga from DC's first run of Star Trek was pretty good too. Crew revolves around Majel Barrett-Roddenbery's character from the first Star Trek Pilot and the different ships she served on, with two of the first 4 issues taking place on the Enterprise.

If you don't mind stories with a Silver Age (i.e., kind of wacky) feel, try Checker's "Key Collection" reprints of the 1960s and 1970s Gold Key Trek comics. The good old-fashioned originals! They have great art.

I must admit, Crew does sound interesting. I'll have to check that out when it's in trade.

I'll second this. Beautiful art and excellent story.

I'd also recommend the third Annual from DC's Trek series in the 80s. It's a great Scotty tale



Plus, this is an excellent Spock/Sarek story set in the early 24th century, between the TOS and TNG eras.

I recently got back into Trek novels just for the Hell of it. Finished 'Resistance' and am halfway through 'Before Dishonor' (a PAD novel) ... these are TNG novels and a brand new Borg story. The latter book got some of the worst reviews I've ever seen a PAD Trek book get, but so far, I'm digging it. We'll see if it ends well.

I might wind up ordering that prequel series (what was it called, again?) to the new film when it comes out in TPK.

COUNTDOWN

'Countdown' ... that's it. Thanx Kevin.

Oh, and it's already out in a trade. Only $12.23 at AmazWAN.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1600104207/?tag=imwan-20

That definitely looks interesting.



For whatever reason, even though I always like Star Trek, I had never bothered with any books or comics. A couple of years ago I bought a book called Sword of Damocoles, which is set on the Titan under Captain Ryker's command. But that was just because the author, Geoffrey Thorne, is one of my online friends, so I bought a copy as a show of support for him. But I never got around to reading it. But after the movie, I went & bought the official novelization, and I loved it. It's not absolutely necessary to enjoying the film, but it does add some extra background to various characters, and lengthens some scenes & dialog and stuff like that.

So then I wanted some more Star Trek. Right now I'm almost finished Star Trek Academy Collision Course, by William Shatner (& Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens), which is his version of how 17 year old Kirk & 19 year old Spock first meet & end up joining Starfleet together (against their will). I've also got Shatner's books The Return & The Avenger, which pick up after the movie Generations left off, where Kirk gets resurrected & ends up having a series of adventures in the 24th century with (& against) the TNG crew. And I've got Enterprise: The First Adventure, by Vonda N McIntyre, supposed to be about Kirk's first mission as Captain, and a little pocket book called Cadet Kirk, by Diane Carey, about Kirk, Spock, & McCoy, all in Starfleet Academy together.
As you can see, it's the early adventures of Kirk & Co. that I'm most interested in @ the moment.

And I know what my next books will be. While talking with Geoffrey Thorne a little while ago about The Borg, and how I thought the concept got watered-down & lost it's edge after Generations, with the introduction of the Borg Queen, who represented everything that Q said they weren't, when he first showed them to the Enterprise. He told me about the most recent crossover in the ST books. It's called DESTINY, and it's 3 books, that have characters from TNG, DS9, & Voyager all in it. It takes place a few years after Nemesis, and the premise is that The Borg make their final full assault on the Federation, sending over 7000 Cubes into Federations space to just wipe out everybody. I read a spoilerific review of the series, and it sounds awesome. Lots of destruction & action, including some long-time characters getting killed, and we learn the secret origin of The Borg (although in some ways I preferred the hypothesis that the Borg were basically descendants of "V'ger" from ST: TMP"

I wish they could have made that into a big TV miniseries, to sort of officially close the chapter on the original timeline, before the new film came out.

You should definitely check out the "Debt of Honor" graphic novel, then. It is set after Star Trek IV, but it contains some entertaining extended flashback sequences to three other eras, specifically: 1.) Kirk as a young officer, 2.) the original crew just after the events of "Doomsday Machine", and 3.) just after "The Motion Picture."

It's all quite cleverly woven together, and there are also some fun little surprise cameos from various characters from the original series.

I shall put that my list.

Wow! Is that a JR LeMar post?!? Great to see your name again, man.

Debt of Honor is one of the best Trek comics I've read. The Gold Key ones are nice by virtue of being set in the TOS era, but terrible stories obviously written by people who had no inkling of the show's concept or technology.

Yeah! Thassi'm talkin' bout!

I really want them to start publishing some books and comics based on the new timeline. But I'm guessing they don't want to rush those, since it's still so new, and you don't want to publish something that ends up getting contradicted in future films. Like, the movie novel features Kirk's older brother George (he's the boy Kirk waves to when he's driving the car), but the movie cut that out, so you can't have a book/comic give details of Kirk's childhood, since it's unclear if they'll eventually acknowledge the brother or not.

But I would like it if they could do some earlier stories on, say, Captain Pike's adventures on the Enterprise. Or even better...