New Star Trek anthology comic series: Waypoint

IDW have announced the launch of a new Star Trek anthology comic series, Waypoint, that promises to deliver short stories from the entire Star Trek universe, from a variety of creative teams.

The first issue, due out in September, will feature two stories: A TNG tale starring Data and Geordi, by Donny Cates, with art by Mack Chater. And then a TOS Uhura story, titled Daylily, which will be written and illustrated by Sandra Lanz. Continue below for more details - Starting with the covers, by Marc Laming, and blurb:

A blockbuster bi-monthly anthology to celebrate 50 years of STAR TREK, featuring short stories across all Treks, by the top talent of today and yesterday!

First, a NEXT GENERATION story by Donny Cates and Mack Chater. Unable to decipher a mysterious ship’s coded messages, Starfleet has enlisted its two greatest scientific minds, Captain Geordi La Forge and his best friend Data, to investigate. What they discover will alter the course of scientific human history as we know it!

Then, an ORIGINAL SERIES story by Sandra Lanz, where a crewmember, stranded on a strange planet, encounters a bizarre alien creature. They must learn how to interact, but how?

The series has initially been announced for six issues, which running bimonthly will mean it spans then entire 50th anniversary year. IDW editor Sarah Gaydos has already indicated she would like to continue though, tweeting:

really, really want this series to be evergreen, so we can keep telling new short stories in the Trek-verse

Excitingly, that tweet came in reply to Star Trek author John Jackson Miller enquiring about writing for the series!

Even more excitingly is the promise this series will span the Trekverse: Could we finally get an Enterprise era comic (we've had cameos, and some time travel antics recently in the Starfleet Academy series, but never visited the NX-01 herself on the comic page before). DS9 or Voyager are also a rarity (IDW have never done a Voyager comic either), and even TNG is a bit of a treat, the last comic from that series was three years ago! And then of course there are more exotic possibilities; Titan, a visit to the Enterprise-E under Captain Data, DTI, Gary Seven, and so many more. Such an open ended series is very exciting!

IDW is following in the footsteps of other publishers. When Marvel was doing Star Trek in the 90s they had the Unlimited series, which delivered a variety of TOS and TNG stories, and then Wildstorm's Star Trek Special in 2001 used a similar format to deliver an impressively diverse assortment of stories and styles. Hopefully this new series will be as varied and interesting in what it brings us.

Announcing the news, io9 has posted interviews with the creators, including this tease from writer Donny Cates at the TNG story:

When I thought about this story I asked myself “If this is the first and last Trek story you ever write, what would it be?” and the answer was obviously Geordi and Data being awesome science bros solving space-science mysteries with ethics and math together across the universe. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Meanwhile Sandra Lanz pulled on a TNG classic for her TOS story:

“Darmok” is one of those episodes that really stuck with me after I first saw it; it was definitely in my thoughts when I came up with my story for Waypoint. It made me think a lot about the origins of speech, evolution, and the process of learning to speak, which are the ideas I built my short around.

io9 also posted a couple of preview pages of Lanz' (not yet coloured) art for that story:

And on her own website Lanz has posted some character studies:

For full listings of all the upcoming Star Trek comic releases, and links to my previous coverage, hit the comics button on my 2016 schedule page. You can also find further comics series reading lists on Trek Collective Lists.