Stardate 64333.4: A threat to Romulus is detected by a mining ship commanded by a Romulan named Nero. A supernova with unique properties is consuming everything in its path. Ambassador Spock, now the Federation’s formal ambassador to Romulus, urges the Romulan Senate to treat this threat with the utmost severity, but his pleas fall on deaf ears – at least at the highest levels. Spock’s proposal of a means to stop the all-consuming supernova captures Nero’s imagination, and Nero is willing to pledge the resources of his mining ship to gather the decalithium Spock’s plan requires. This also means leaving his wife – about to give birth to a son – on Romulus, but Nero is swayed by Spock’s promise of help. Despite interference from Reman pirates – a situation which is resolved in Nero’s favor by the timely arrival of the U.S.S. Enterprise and Captain Data – Nero’s crew gathers the material necessary and heads for Vulcan. But both Nero and Spock are unwelcome on Vulcan: the Romulan is considered a security risk, and Spock is considered a traitor, until Ambassador Jean-Luc Picard steps in to clear the obstacles in their path. But even Picard’s influence cannot sway the Vulcan Science Council: they give the supernova threat no more credence than the Romulan Senate. Nero races back to Romulus to evacuate his family, only to see the planet destroyed before his eyes. Enraged, Nero decides that the trip to Vulcan was a Vulcan/Federation plot to delay his mission to save Romulus, and when Nero’s ship, the Narada, recovers surviving members of the Senate, Nero kills them, feeling that they too betrayed the Romulan people with their indecision. Using information acquired from the Senators, Nero takes the Narada to a top-secret Romulan facility called the Vault, where he acquires adaptive technology for the Narada and sets forth on a mission of vengeance. Ambassadors Spock and Picard, Captain Data, retired Commander Geordi La Forge and Klingon General Worf combine forces to try to stop Nero’s unquenchable thirst for revenge, as well as the spreading supernova threat. Only one of these goals can be met – and though Spock succeeds in preventing the supernova from spreading further, he finds that the resulting cosmic energies unleashed may have given Nero a way to take his quest for revenge into the past. Spock pursues the Romulan into the past, knowing that it can only be a one-way trip.

Review: Considered the “official prequel” to J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek film, “Countdown” sets up Nero and Spock as we see them in the movie, and gives us a taste of the future from which they hail. The story also shows us where the TNG characters are in relation to all of this, and helps to tie the movie’s story in to the existing franchise. As is typical of material in the “expanded” Star Trek universe, there’s no indication that IDW was under any pressure to pay any attention to what’s going on in the increasingly cataclysmic post-Star Trek: Nemesis novels by Pocket Books, and some readers may be just fine with that. The comic even ties off some of the developments introduced in Nemesis itself, and in some cases it minimizes their impact or erases it altogether – again, perhaps not something that anyone will mourn. (more…)

Story: What happens when a would-be world conqueror actually succeeds? An armored military genius named Golgoth is about to find out, as only a small corner of the globe sits outside of his empire. That empire is far from peaceful; not only is a rebellion brewing, but Golgoth’s own inner circle is far from trustworthy. Golgoth keeps their ambitions in check through his control of Eucharist, a highly addictive drug. The source of Eucharist is a closely guarded secret, but Golgoth has surrounded himself with men and women who will go to any length to achieve their ends . . . how long can the secrets last?

Review: “Empire” was originally meant to be an ongoing series from the late and lamented Gorilla Comics imprint. Gorilla shut down after only two issues were printed – and if you can ever get Mark Waid to tell you that story at a convention, go for it – but DC stepped in to finish off the first arc as a miniseries. This book definitely concludes with the feeling that there is more to the story, and sadly Waid and Kitson have not gotten around to telling it yet. (more…)

Story: Rocketed from a doomed planet as a child, Clark Kent grows up to find that he is endowed with super-human abilities. He takes a job as a reporter at a great metropolitan newspaper and fights for the good of all under the name of…Superman!

Review: When DC Comics decided to start producing a series of high-quality, hardcover reprints of their classic comics, they naturally began with Superman. But instead of beginning with Action Comics #1, they began, instead, with the first four issues of Superman’s eponymous title. This was natural enough, as Superman shared Action with several other series, while Superman was for the Man of Steel alone. Since the early issues of Superman mainly reprinted (and sometimes expanded) the stories from Action anyway, the decision makes even more sense. (more…)

Story: Covering not just the DS9 space station, the Technical Manual also spreads out to delve into the Defiant, runabouts, phasers and tricorders, Cardassian and other alien ships, and more. The text is written from the Starfleet perspective as of DS9’s seventh season, locked into a bloody war with the Dominion, making it an interesting departure from the cheery “enjoy all the great features of your new Oldsmobile” owner’s manual approach of the TNG Technical Manual.

Review: This book is long overdue; even the introduction by producer Ira Steven Behr asks the question “Why the hell did this take six years?” of the book’s own publishers, and even notes that the long-promised “Deep Space Nine Companion” (which, at the time, had been a tentative ghost on the Pocket Books schedule since 1995 or so) is even more overdue. (With respect to Mr. Behr, considering DS9’s probable lack of a big-screen future, it made a bit of sense to wait for the end of the series to come, since it would be silly to publish a DS9 companion volume in 1998 and then wait a couple of years to release an updated version with only one additional season’s worth of information.) (more…)

Story: Los Angeles Police Lieutenant David Grey tries to arrest a suspect in a pair of drug-related murders, but instead finds himself at the wrong end of a beating by otherworldly creatures called Walkers. Rather than kill him, the Walkers’ leader takes David’s soul and sends him to The Place In-Between – the world of the homeless, the out-of-work, the out-of-date, and the out-of-luck, where people and things fade to after they are forgotten or abandoned. David soon meets Laurel, an emissary from the Walkers’ opponent in an ongoing metaphysical conflict, and the two set off on a cross-country walk to New York to confront the Walkers’ leader and reclaim David’s soul before he becomes trapped In-Between forever.

Review: In some ways, I consider “Midnight Nation” to be Straczynski’s most successful work. Babylon 5 was certainly a more ambitious and more admirable undertaking, and probably his greatest accomplishment, but the realities of TV meant that sometimes things didn’t quite click right. With Midnight Nation, Straczynski revisits many of B5’s themes, but in a more personal story that is still cosmic in scope and works tremendously well in this collected format. (more…)

Story: The computer-generated, hand-painted and photographed images that have graced the numerous Star Trek: Ships Of The Line calendars through the years are collected in a single, large-format volume, each piece accompanied by a descriptive text placing the artwork in the context of the larger Star Trek universe.

Review: As much as I try to avoid reviewing what are essentially “picture books” here, this one was interesting enough to grab my attention. The artwork is impeccable. Featured here are the first full printed rendering of the far-future Enterprise NCC 1701-J, though the prize among the recent works may go to 3-D artist Gabriel Koerner’s impressive redesign of the original 1701, which stretches design elements of past (NX-01) and future (24th century) Enterprises together over the same basic silhouette of the original. Andrew Probert, designer of NCC-1701-D, gives us our first good look at the oft-mentioned but never-seen 1701-D Captain’s Yacht. And there’s a curious picture which ties the fate of the Columbia (NX-02, sister ship of Jonathan Archer’s Enterprise) to the era of the Dominion War (!). Each picture’s accompanying slice of text hints at a bigger story yet untold; few of the pictures attempt to visually “retell” existing stories. I like that – we have the HD remastered episodes of the original TV series for that. Most of the works in this book tell their own stories. (more…)

Story: Once upon a time, Starfleet Headquarters was a vast space station floating in the space between two of the galaxy’s spiral arms. Starfleet tug ships hauled enormous cylindrical spaceliners, loaded with passengers, from destination to destination. Dozens of Constitution-class starships roamed the final frontier, while the next big design on Starfleet’s drawing boards was a triple-warp-engine dreadnought designed to better protect Federation interests from the Klingons – just in case the Organians blinked. Oh, and tricorders were full of big honkin’ transistors and capacitors, too – so long as you happened to be looking at the declassified 23rd century documents that wound up in the hands of a 20th century publisher after a mysterious time-travel mishap.

Review: The first professional publication of its kind (and certainly of its scope), Franz Joseph’s “Star Trek Starfleet Technical Manual” extrapolated the future of Kirk and Spock based on the information available at the time. Which, in 1975, was 79 hours of television, and a couple dozen animated stories. Though Paramount Pictures and Gene Roddenberry were quietly ramping up their efforts to bring Star Trek to the big screen that year, it would be a long and torturous process – and nothing that the public would hear about for at least another two years. (more…)

Story: On behalf of the 23rd century’s own Miracle Worker, the author guides us through external and internal schematics of the movie-era U.S.S. Enterprise, with a travelogue of the more interesting destinations on every deck of the ship, set photos where they exist, and illustrated guides to uniforms, weapons, landing party equipment, and secondary spacecraft such as the Enterprise’s shuttles and work pods. An appendix brings the book up to date with Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

Review: An interesting hybrid of text and blueprint, “Mr. Scott’s Guide To The Enterprise” is a throwback to a different day and age in Star Trek publishing. At the time, the only new adventures on the horizon were the movies, which appeared every two to three years, and a two-hour action-adventure flick every couple of years or so seemed unlikely to delve into the workings of the ship, so why not fill in the gaps a bit? (more…)

Story: As Luke struggles to recover from his momentary encounter with the mind of Darth Vader, Leia, Han, Chewie and the droids try to fight and maneuver their way off the Wheel. Their escape from the gambling station is not the end of their troubles – Han still has matters to settle with Jabba, Leia tries to expand the Rebellion to other worlds, and the cyborg bounty hunter Valance is still on Luke’s trail. Throughout the adventures, the Rebel heroes often run up against the agenda of the Tagge family, led by a ruthless baron whose desire for the Emperor’s favor, and for vengeance against Vader, drive him to enact more and more elaborate schemes to crush the Rebellion once and for all. But the Dark Lord is no stranger to scheming, and he has plans for both the Tagge family and young Skywalker.

Review: Dave: Unlike the first volume, I do have some first hand memories of the stories in this collection – at one point in my youth, I had two or three of the issues that dealt with Tagge’s storm corridor through the Yavin gas giant. I remember liking them quite a bit as a kid, and they still hold up pretty well. Now that I read them as part of the bigger tapestry of the ongoing Tagge feud, I’m even more impressed.

One thing I do wish is that that unfolding saga could have led into the events of The Empire Strikes Back a little better. Now, I don’t really know how much lead time Goodwin had to work with, or how much he knew about the overall storyline of the film when he was writing these issues. So I’m not assigning blame here – it’s just something I find a little disappointing. The characters and settings all seem frozen about five minutes after the end of the first movie – Luke’s still wearing his farm boy outfit, the Rebels are still on Yavin, and so on. Outside of a tacked on epilogue that undoes Goodwin’s earlier resolution of the Jabba bounty issue, there’s not much here bringing us to the next stage of the story. And having Luke and Vader face off face to face right before the movie adaptation is supposed to start just strikes me as a bad idea all around. (more…)

Story: The first 20 issues of Marvel’s Star Wars series are reprinted in this full color collection. From the adaptation of the film itself, which saw print before the movie’s release, to Luke’s terrifying brush against the mind of Darth Vader, the original Expanded Universe begins here. Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie and the droids encounter space pirates, frontier outlaws, floating cities of saboteurs, and a droid-hating cyborg bounty hunter named Valance while trying to help the Rebels find a new base and stay one step ahead of a Sith Lord searching for the identity of the pilot who blew up the Death Star.

Review: Dave: With the exception of the movie adaptation, I had never read any of the issues in this volume – the handful of Marvel Star Wars comics I was able to get my hands on were all from later in the run. Reading it now, there’s certainly a degree of 70s cheese, especially in the early issues written by Roy Thomas. But what a collection of talent worked on this series! Thomas, who pushed for Marvel to take up the license, is a former editor-in-chief at Marvel well known for his encyclopedic knowledge of comics’ Golden Age. When he got past the adaptation, he didn’t quite feel comfortable with the universe, and it kind of shows – his next story was more of a Magnificent Seven-esque western than a big space opera. So Archie Goodwin, then editor-in-chief and a legend in his own right, took the reins, and things started to take off. Goodwin created new villains, set subplots in motion, and brought a sense of scale and danger to the stories. And when Goodwin needed an assist, there was Chris Claremont, longtime X-Men writer.

On the artistic side, Howard Chaykin was the first penciller, and while he was still a bit rough around the edges, but you can already get a sense of the dynamism that would serve him well later in his career. (Although he was certainly greatly assisted by his inkers in those days – more on that later.) And when Chaykin left, his replacement, Carmine Infantino, was no slouch. Infantino, a former art director and publisher at DC, was well known for his Silver Age work on Batman, Flash, and a host of other heroes. While his facial renderings are sometimes a bit crude, he could definitely pack a lot of energy into his panels, and he and his inkers did fine work on all the technology of the galaxy far, far away. There’s a lot of fun stuff packed into these comics. I can only imagine what it was like to pick up each new installment in ‘77 and ‘78. (more…)