Comic bits: Starfleet Academy, Green Lantern, New Visions, and more!

Got lots of little updates from all IDW's various Star Trek comic titles today, starting with a few hints at what we're going to see in the forthcoming nuTrek Starfleet Academy series. Talking to Flickering Myth, writer, Mike Johnson, summarised the series:

These are all-new adventures featuring the iconic crew at the Academy during the 2009 movie, between their arrival as cadets and their departure on the Enterprise after the destruction of Vulcan. We are also introducing a new cast of cadets at the Academy in the “present” time after the events of INTO DARKNESS, while the iconic crew (now a few years older) is away on their Five Year Mission. The two storylines will intercut and ultimately tie together in a cool way that I can’t spoil yet.

A few more specifics were revealed in a panel at the San Diego Comic Con, as Bleeding Cool reported, the new characters featured in the series will be:

• An Asian human with prosthetic legs.
• T’Laan, a Vulcan who joined Starfleet Academy the day Vulcan was destroyed.
• Lucia Dominguez, a Latina human.
• Shev, a male Andorian.
• Vel K’Bentayr, a member of the same species as the alien from the USS Kelvin bridge crew.

You can see all five on the cover for issue one pictured, this version showing the Derek Cham artwork without the titles was shared by Chris Ryall on his Tumblr. The series is due to start around the end of the year.

Further in his discussion with Flickering Myth, Johnson also confirmed work is underway on a comic-book set up to the next movie:

We’re in the early stages of figuring out how the comics will tie into the next movie, but the plan is definitely to set up the film in a way similar to what we did with the previous two.

How long before "Countdown to Beyond" is announced I wonder...

Meanwhile in another corner of the nuTrek world, the recently begun Green Lantern crossover miniseries, The Spectrum War, has been sufficiently popular to demand a second printing of the first issue. The IDW Twitter revealed the cover, which will be a part coloured version of the Gabriel Rodriguez A cover. This brings the total number of cover variants for this issue up to twenty-seven!

One of the covers for issue four of the series will be by J.K. Woodward, who has posted in in-depth look at his process for creating it. You can see every step of how he took it from initial concepts, through pencils, inks, and colour, all the way to the final piece. Here are some of the sketch designs that weren't used:

Tony Shasteen has also been sharing his process for his artwork for the wraparound cover to be featured on issue fifty of the nuTrek ongoing series. On his Facebook page you can see how he went from this layout image to the photo-realistic final form:

Finally we shift back to the prime universe for the latest updates from John Byrne. Amazon have recently added a listing for Star Trek: The John Byrne Collection, an omnibus of all his drawn Star Trek comics (as opposed to his current run of photo-comics). Coming in December, this is a paperback re-issue of the previous hardcover edition of the same omnibus released a couple of years ago. Amazon have posted a low res version of the cover, which is very similar to the previous release, with slightly different colouring.

Comics legend John Byrne brings new form to the Star Trek universe in this collection of tales from the final frontier. Includes Alien Spotlight: Romulans, Assignment: Earth, Romulans: Balance of Terror, Romulans: The Hollow Crown, Crew, Romulans: Schism, and Leonard McCoy, Frontier Doctor.

Meanwhile Byrne is hard at work on new issue of the New Visions photo-comic series, including innovating some previously unseen technology on the Enterprise. Here is the latest iteration of a concept for a holographic display in engineering, in this case Scotty has tilted it to examine a particular area of the ship:

Byrne posted this on his own forums, where he regularly shares previews and behind-the-scenes snippets of what he is working on. If you read back a few pages you'll find many different iterations of this hologram concept, as he has refined the idea. Some of his other recent updates include refinements of his Klingon bridge virtual set, and work on his Enterprise bridge, including a Pike-era version:

Check out Byrne's forums to see much more work in progress, right back to first experiments that led to the series if you find your way back to page one.

To keep track of all the latest Star Trek comic releases, hit the comics button on my 2015 schedule page.