Writer Scott Tipton and Artist David Messina on Working on Star Trek Comic Books

CG: When you did Star Trek: Countdown, the prequel to the new movie, there was probably a lot of pressure on you because of all the hype the film was surrounded by.

ST: There was no pressure on me because I wasn't allowed to write it. (laughs)

DM: It was written by Tim Jones and Mike Johnson.

CG: Were they on the film's production team?

DM: Yes, they work for Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who wrote the script for the new Star Trek movie. The script for Countdown was based on a plot by Orci and Kurtzman. Working on it was a lot of pressure for me because everything was absolutely secret when I started. I saw the movie three months after I had done the last issue. It wasn't a problem to draw the good guys in Countdown because they were characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation plus Spock, but the bad guy, Nero, was a new character from the movie. So I didn't know how the actor [Eric Bana] would appear in the movie and how his ship, the Narada, was shown. I had some pictures of the Narada and some stuff about the environment, but I never saw how the ship appeared on screen. When I saw the movie the first time I was surprised because I had never imagined that the Narada would seem so alive.

CG: But are you nevertheless satisfied with the finished comic book? From what I've read so far the fans' reactions were pretty positive.

ST: The reactions have been great. It was the first time in years I got to enjoy David's work strictly as a reader. I thought it was great, and the writers did a great job with it. Sales in the US were really good, and the readers' reactions were almost unanimously positive.

CG: The two of you collaborated on Star Trek: Mirror Images and there is another book that is supposed to come out in Germany soon: Intelligence Gathering [German release in December 2009 as Tor zur Apokalypse].

ST: Intelligence Gathering - that's a Next Generation series. We've also done a Klingon series, Blood Will Tell, and that is also slated for a German release. And we did Spock: Reflections, which is kind of a pre-prequel to the movie. There we find out what Spock has been doing between the last movies with the old crew and Countdown.

CG: How much freedom do you have when writing stories for Star Trek comics?

ST: Pretty much. Overall, they are pretty good to me. I have to make a first pitch about what I want to do, and once it got approved they pretty much trust me.

CG: I imagined there must be strict rules if you wrote for a franchise like Star Trek.

ST: It's strict, but not if you are doing it as long as we do [Scott's brother David acts a as co-writer on the Star Trek comics]. We crossed every team, we researched everything ... Once we make our pitch to CBS everything is good to go.

http://trekweb.com/articles/2009/12/02/Writer-Scott-Tipton-and-Artist-David-Messina-on-Working-on-Star-Trek-Comic-Books.shtml