This September, the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos will make the jump from the small screen to the page with a new miniseries from IDW Publishing. The publisher has confirmed that Star Trek: Lower Decks will debut as a comic book for the first time with IDW’s three-issue monthly miniseries by New York Times best-selling and Eisner Award–winning writer Ryan North (Unbeatable Squirrel Girl) and superstar artist Chris Fenoglio (Goosebumps, Star Wars Adventures).
Captain Carol Freeman leads the U.S.S. Cerritos crew on an expedition aimed to build bridges and advance Federation technology, but she and the away team quickly suspect that the planet and its people are not what they seem! Meanwhile, the crew in the lower decks take to the holodeck for some much-needed recreational time—until a bloodthirsty visitor decides to join in on their games. Can Boimler, Mariner, Tendi, and Rutherford save the ship from the likes of Dracula?
“When I got the chance to write this Lower Decks comic, I was overjoyed to discover that all my time watching Star Trek was not hours of me goofing off and watching spaceships but was instead actually months and months of me doing incredibly in-depth research,” says North. “So please enjoy this comic that I have spent over 650 hours researching across four decades. I hope that I will do a good job or else, WOW, that was a lot of work for very little benefit.”
“Believe me when I say that Star Trek is extremely important to me. I was obsessed with Trek when I was a kid, teenager, and now. Considering that my work is usually pretty cartoony, though, I never thought that I would get a chance to actually draw any kind of Trekanything…until Lower Decks, that is,” says Fenoglio. “After watching the show, I burst into the IDW offices and insisted that if they ever did a Lower Decks book, I would get to try out! (Okay, I actually sent a very politely worded email…but it was a very excited email, and now I’m actually drawing it!) I’m putting everything I have into this series and really, really hope y’all dig it.”
“Ryan North and Chris Fenoglio have somehow managed to capture the zany spirit of Lower Decksfrom our TV screens and put it on the comic page,” says editor Heather Antos. “From Tendi and Rutherford’s ever-constant, positive thirst for knowledge to Mariner and Boimler’s sibling-like constant bickering, this story feels exactly like a ‘lost episode’ of the fan-favorite hit animated series. Don’t miss it!”
The debut issue of Star Trek: Lower Decks will be available with three variant covers: Cover A by series artist Fenoglio, Cover B by Jay Fosgitt, and a retailer incentive edition by Philip Murphy. Check out all three covers in the gallery below:
It was recently confirmed that Star Trek: Lower Decks will return to Paramount+ in the US on August 25, 2022. UK airdates have yet to be confirmed.
