IDW Publishing's Post-Series Star Trek Continuity Has Officially Failed And Is Coming To An End With A Line-Wide Reboot
Another sign of desperation is coming at IDW Publishing as Star Trek is announced they’ll be rebooting and resetting their line of comics under Heather Antos to all new #1 first issues.
Comic book sales rarely last into later issues at this point in the industry, and now Star Trek is making another desperate attempt to get sales increased by resetting their line with #1 issues to try to get people on board.
In 2022, Heather Antos came on as the line-wide editor for Star Trek. Her first offerings showed she knew little about the Star Trek universe with glaring continuity errors and mischaracterizations of the Star Trek characters, and soon she brought in her cronies to reboot the Star Trek comics line with fan-fiction-esque books taking place after the end of Deep Space 9.
Her first book, simply titled Star Trek, had Benjamin Sisko as captain of a new ship, along with Beverly Crusher as the doctor, Data on board, as well as Scotty as an engineer, in a non-sensical crew setting written by infamous Jackson Lansing and Collin Kelley, who proceeded to lecture readers about gender with a Vulcan they/them character they created.
The second, Defiant, had Worf captaining the Defiant with Spock on board, in another ridiculous hodgepodge of characters from the series.
While Antos continually self-promoted with the work, often going to signing as an editor and referring to herself as a “creator,” in a bizarre move that doesn’t usually get done in editorial, she managed to get nominations for the Eisner Awards for the books for multiple years to try to make it look like the books were a success.
The books were originally hailed as an ongoing series, but now they’re coming to an end. Despite having Star Trek have “events” and “crossovers,” trying to make it a universe like Marvel or DC Comics to follow, it seems sales weren’t enough to keep it going.
In June, it’s been announced there will be a special Star Trek: Omega followed by a line-wide reset, which will tie the books into Star Trek: Nemesis to conclude the post-series continuity and reset again with the same creative teams.
The solicitations even brag about the awards, like many aspiring authors tend to do who try to fake it until they make it, saying, “Two and a half years of comics spanning 60 years of Star Trek history, a fair few awards, and more than a few universe detonations, and it's all been coming to this…”
The Star Trek Universe is then going back to mini-series, which might be an indicator that these lines were not profitable like they hoped. Three new series are launching, including a Star Trek: Voyager: Homecoming (which is not an adaptation of the novel by the same name, but apparently a different story), a new Star Trek: Strange New Worlds miniseries to tie into the new season release, and a Star Trek: Redshirts, bringing back Christopher Cantwell to write another new ship with new characters.
Instead of just doing a regular reset to an ongoing series, it’s clear the Antos-Trek has failed, and IDW Publishing and Paramount are looking to get back to a mini-series formula that more directly ties to shows in the hopes of restoring some of the sales of the brand.
What do you think of Heather Antos relaunching the IDW Star Trek line? Leave a comment and let us know.
Do you love sci-fi and comics? Support an alternative to mainstream publishing. Sign up for the Jon Del Arroz newsletter and get THREE FREE BOOKS and stay up to date on deals and new releases from an author doing the good work.
As long as Santos or any other feminist is in charge it will keep failing.
These people running Star Trek are insane!