The Trek Collective: Khan #1 preview

Out this week is the first issue in the new Khan prequel series. Continue down for a seven-page preview of the issue. But first, the writer, Mike Johnson, recently spoke to SFX about the series. Here are some highlights of what he had to say. His take on the character of Khan:

Trying to capture what Montalban brought to the character which is kind of a charm, like he’s very sort of manipulative and charming in the original episode. But then in Into Darkness especially, he’s so angry, he’s like a bullet firing from a gun in that movie. And you’re gonna see why he is like that, because the scope of the mini-series will be the Eugenics wars, up and through the opening of Into Darkness. We’re going to see him get woken up. We’re going to see Admiral Marcus, and we’re going to see how John Harrison came to be. And a lot of that has to do with, not only why he looks different, but why he’s so angry.

I kind of like evil for evil’s sake, like some people are just bad dudes. And I think Khan, you know, you can sympathise with the fact that in Into Darkness at least he was woken up and his 72 brothers and sisters were being held hostage. In Wrath Of Khan, you can sympathise because he was left on the planet to die and he felt betrayed by Kirk. So you can sort of sympathise, but at the end of the day, he’s a megalomaniac who wants to take over the world. Or the galaxy. And I love that sort of straight, simple, direct some guys are just bad.

My favourite two words in the movie are “Cold corpses”. And the way he enunciates it – that’s Khan. “I’m going to walk over your cold corpses.” And you believe him. There’s no posturing there. He’s going to enjoy asphyxiating the entire ship and walking over your corpses. So I definitely – and you’ll see in the mini-series even from when he was very young, even when he was a child, that inclination was there. Just a certain mercilessness was there. And that as much as he was made to become what he is, he was born that way too.

He also explained who and what else will feature in the series:

Kirk and Spock show up. There will be an explanation for something that we saw on Qo’noS, that I can’t really explain or reveal. The first half of it is the past before the Botany Bay [Khan's 20th century ship], and the second half is really all the scenes that were happening alongside what we saw in the movie. So, leading up to him going to the hospital and telling the guy that he can save his daughter. So we’re going to show all those things, we’re going to see more of the inner workings of Section 31, we’re going to see the Botany Bay, we’re going to see how they found it, we’re going to see why he was woken up, and why they decided to give him the name John Harrison. It’s gonna fill in some nice… I don’t want to call them holes. It’s just you only have so much you can do in two hours. And just for fans of the movie, it’ll give them more, hopefully.

The series kicks of with the trial of Khan, but quickly goes into flashback mode to show us Khan's childhood, as he explains to the trial why he doesn't look like classic-Khan. Having read through the first issue, I found it one of the most satisfying nuTrek comics to date - Khan is menacing even as a child! I really look forward to seeing how the rest of the tale unfolds, with the Eugenics Wars and Section 31 stuff to look forward to. The preview continues after the jump: