Star Trek: EXCELSIOR!

In my post a few days ago about DS9 comics, I hinted at another upcoming Star Trek miniseries planned by IDW–one featuring Captain Sulu, in command of the Excelsior. A number of people have asked me for details, so here’s just a bit more on what I think will be one of the best Trek titles of the year.

First, let me say that I’ve always thought Sulu was the coolest cat in space. Yes, yes, I know–Kirk’s a maverick, Kirk’s a badass, Kirk nails all the green chicks, blah blah blah. It’s easy to act tough and get the girl when you sit in the big chair. But Sulu can whup your ass with a fencing sword. Sulu can fly attack choppers.  Sulu’s the Lando Calrissian of the Enterprise.

Sulu and the Excelsior, from Star Trek: The Last Generation.

So it should come as no surprise to the people who know me that I made Sulu a major character in The Last Generation, inspired by his awesome but all-too-brief appearance in the Star Trek VI film. There had been initial talks shortly after that movie (official? unofficial? who knows) of bringing TOS back to the small screen with a Sulu-Excelsior series, but alas those plans never came to pass. I think Takei would have rocked ass as a TV show captain.

So, like the Star Trek Archives and a number of other projects (Alien Spotlight II, The Wrath of Khan adaptation, etc.), a Sulu-Excelsior series had been one that I kept waiting in the wings at IDW, but could never quite manage to get onto the schedule. Credit current Trek editor Scott Dunbier for finally green-lighting the project and giving Sulu his moment in the spotlight.

It’s also a fairly elegant way for IDW to solve the problem of sustaining  the TOS brand at the same time that it exploits the nuTrek timeline popularized by the hit movie; it would likely have simply been too confusing to have Chris Pine running around as Kirk in one title and Shatner doing his Shatner in another, both at the same time. Publishing a TOS-era story with a major character commanding a familiar ship, and one the fans have been beating the drum to see, deftly sidesteps the Kirk question without appearing to shuffle the character off to the sidelines.

Rich Johnston.

Moreover, the Sulu storyline was one of the most popular facets of Last Generation–sales for the last three issues each went up from one issue to the next, which almost never happens for a miniseries–so I think it’s a project that’s going to chart particularly well.

On the creative side, Scott has hired the exceptionally talented Rich Johnston to write the series. Rich has probably been best known as the Matt Drudge of the comics biz, through his controversial and popular industry news and rumor column “Lying in the Gutters”, and was even immortalized by IDW a few years back in a CSI miniseries by making him the victim of a murder set at a comic book convention. (OK, so, maybe “immortalized” is the wrong turn of phrase, but you get the idea.)

Rich has since transformed his weekly column–at the time the longest-running of its kind on the Internets–into a full daily website of comics biz info, BleedingCool.com, and most recently authored the wicked satire Watchmensch, parodying both the recent film and the comics industry in general. (Ironically, IDW also published its own Watchmen parody at the same time. Rich’s, I have to acknowledge, was better.) Rich has also already written a new Dr. Who book for IDW, Room With A Deja View, on stands this month–so check it out if you’d like to see a sample of his SF-TV license writing.

One of the Excelsior novels from Pocket Books, by M & M.

For Last Generation, I populated the Excelsior with a fairly exotic mix of characters, including Tuvok from Voyager, Rachel Garrett from the Enterprise-C and even Sulu’s grandson Hiromi, whose sole Star Trek existence until then had been a reference in the Voyager novel Pathways. Expect to see a different cast with faces more familiar in the new Excelsior series, such as Janice Rand, who served on Excelsior as communications officer by the time of her appearance in Trek VI and the Sulu-Voyager episode Flashback. (The old DC comics series placed Rand in the slot of Sulu’s first officer, but that likely won’t be the case with the IDW series.)

It remains an open question whether the new series will make use of other characters like Chekov and Chapel–key characters in the Excelsior novels published by Pocket Books and written by Mike Martin and Andy Mangels–or whether the comics series intends to follow that continuity at all. As I mentioned previously in the DS9 post, IDW (quite correctly) looks first and foremost to follow its own creative path, so I wouldn’t be surprised if readers encounter a different take on the storyline.

There’s no promotional artwork released yet for the new series, so let me leave you with perhaps the most ass-kicking Excelsior panel ever to be published in comics, from my Last Gen cohorts Gordon Purcell on pencils, inker Bob Almond and colors by Mario Boon. If this doesn’t get you excited for a Sulu-Excelsior title, then you need to reroute auxillary power to life support.

---

Related posts:

• Star Trek: DEEP SPACE NINE comics!
• Star Trek: A sequel to COUNTDOWN…
• Star Trek: TNG GHOSTS, CAPTAIN’S LOG, and more!

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• STAR TREK: The Last Generation #1 solicitation hits
• STAR TREK: THE LAST GENERATION collection out now!
• STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE Comics!

5 Comments

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI