New Visions: 1971/4860.2 preview

Out this week is issue seven in John Byrne's New Visions photo-comic series, and appropriately the guest star for this story is Gary Seven, a character who Byrne has made use of several times in his Star Trek comics, including my personal favourite, the Assignment Earth series.

This issue has a rather unusual title, 1971/4860.2, which inside the comic is split into two separate chapters telling the story from different points of view. The five-page preview this time starts at page 2, the title page for the 1971 section of the story. Continue below to read the rest of the preview, and for more news from the New Visions series:

You can continue reading this story by picking up a copy at your local comic book shop, or from online retails like these: Amazon.com, Things From Another World, Forbidden Planet, iTunes.

Meanwhile over on John Byrne's forums, the artist and writer provides a running commentary of the development of this series (indeed if you go back to page one of the forum thread you can see how it formed from the very first experiment). Some of the recent highlights include previews of covers for future releases, including the third omnibus book in the series, which will include issues six to eight. Byrne has found a very creative way to bring those stories together in one image for the cover:

Another cover previewed by Byrne is for his adaptation of The Cage. There are some issues with likeness rights if this is to go ahead, but Byrne is hoping the straight adaptation of the pilot episode might get a release in the fiftieth anniversary year (next year). His most recent update certainly sounds like this might be coming:

On the actual News front, the "Cage" adaptation has taken several giant steps closer to being real. More to follow!

One more highlight: Byrne has increasingly been using CGI sets in this series to give him clean backgrounds and more flexibility in setting the scene. Most recently he has been working on the bridge, which is looking pretty good:

In an earlier image he posted of this model, he also played with the idea of a more modern twist. I like it!

Modern production values! Just a couple of random screens I found online, no special significance. Makes me think, tho. When I've got all the panel displays done, I may convert this to these kinds of "floating" images, just to see how it looks.

You can see how Byrne has gradually refined the bridge set, and more previews and behind the scenes insights from the series, by reading back through the original forum thread.