Summary

• IDW's Star Trek comics have earned two Eisner noms for storytelling, a first for the franchise, raising the bar for future comics.
• Shaxs' Best Day, a comic featuring the character fighting Klingons, appealed to fans and expanded the franchise's diversity.
• Ryan North and Derek Charm's future Lower Decks project, a graphic novel with branching narratives, promises a unique and complex storytelling experience for fans.

In 2022, IDW retooled their line of earned them two Eisner nominations. This was a historic moment not only for IDW, but for the franchise as a whole. While Star Trek has earned numerous awards for special effects and make-up, it has never been recognized for its stories.

The 2024 Eisner winners will be announced at this year's San Diego Comic-Con

Now, two years later, IDW’s Star Trek comics have been nominated for two Eisners. The first is for colorist Lee Loughridge, whose vibrant coloring work has helped the art jump off the page. The second is for the one-shot Star Trek: Day of Blood: Shaxs’ Best Day. This special, which featured the titular character fighting hordes of Klingons, was written by Ryan North and drawn by Derek Charm. ScreenRant recently sat down with North, Charm and Star Trek Senior Editor Heather Antos to talk about Shaxs’ Best Day and what fans can expect moving forward.

Star Trek is Once Again Boldly Going to the Eisners

The Eisners Have Raised the Bar For Future Star Trek Comics

First off, congratulations to you all on your Eisner nomination for Star Trek: Day of Blood: Shaxs Best Day! This is the third Eisner nomination for the Star Trek line since issue 400 two years ago. Obviously, those who do the nominating liked it, but what kind of reception did the one-shot get from fans?

HEATHER ANTOS: Thank you so much! After the extremely high stakes and serious storyline of DAY OF BLOOD, I think Star Trek comics fans were (pleasantly) surprised to have a tongue-in-cheek cartoon-violence tie-in. I mean, who wouldn't love a comic about a Bajoran punching a bunch of fascists?!

RYAN NORTH: I only see what people post online and tag me in, and I gotta say: THOSE people loved it! It was really gratifying to get to go hog wild in the Star Trek universe - I love Star Trek, I love Lower Decks, and I love Shaxs.

DEREK CHARM: I haven't heard a ton of , but my own experience on this book was so much fun. The script was Ryan North unleashed on a 40 page fight scene that just kept escalating as it went from one insane situation to the next. It left a lot of opportunities to go crazy on the art and temporarily stray from the Lower Decks style in places for impact.

Scoring the line’s third Eisner nomination is a great achievement, and raises the bar for the franchise even higher. Star Trek does not tend to do well at award shows, mostly winning technical ones–there has never been one for acting or directing. With this in mind, the line’s Eisner nominations become even more impressive. But have the nominations created any new challenges for the line?

When IDW scored the first TWO ever nominations for the Eisners last year for Star Trek, it was an incredibly flattering and humbling moment to be recognized for all the behind-the-scenes efforts being put into changing how comic fans view Star Trek as a to-be-taken-seriously comic line

HA: It's true that, historically, all licensed comics tend to struggle with being taken seriously for their artistic value during awards season -- much like IP films or TV shows in Hollywood for acting or directing awards outside of VFX or costumes or make-up. When IDW scored the first TWO ever nominations for the Eisners last year for Star Trek, it was an incredibly flattering and humbling moment to be recognized for all the behind-the-scenes efforts being put into changing how comic fans view Star Trek as a to-be-taken-seriously comic line. I thought to myself, "Well, that was lovely, but surely will never happen again!" So to be told that once again we scored the nom for BEST SINGLE ISSUE (as well as a nod to Lee Loughridge's work on the main title for BEST COLORING) is incredibly motivating to keep doing what we're doing -- going boldy, and pushing the brand in strange new directions!

Shaxs' Involvement In Day of Blood Almost Did Not Happen

Shaxs' Involvement Began as a Simple Joke

Including Shaxs in the buildup to, and during, was a great shout-out to Star Trek: Lower Decks. His incorporation into the storyline also underscored just how vast and diverse the franchise is. But what led to the creation of Shaxs Best Day specifically?

Shaxs is a great character, a pure fascist-hating icon, and it was really fun to have him in the Ultimate Star Trek Fight Scene.

HA: In all seriousness, this book started off as a single one-off joke in the DAY OF BLOOD writers' room with Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, and Chris Cantwell. This was summer of 2022 and at that time we weren't sure yet if we would be given Mike McMahan's blessing to use Shaxs as a character in the second arc of Star Trek. So while we were intricately planning each member of the Theseus and Defiant crews' parts in the crossover event, we had to be careful to make sure our plans for Shaxs wouldn't cause the whole event to crumble should we not be able to have him. Thus, written across the bottom of the white board were the words HAVING HIS BEST DAY next to Shaxs' name.

RN: My understanding, and Heather can tell me if this is true or just half-ed fantasy, is that during the whole DAY OF BLOOD planning, the team came up with the joke of "SHAXS' BEST DAY" and eventually it stopped being a joke and became a "oh my gosh, what if this really happened?" sort of thing. And they came to me and asked if I would be willing to write something along those lines and I said UM YES PLEASE and then just went for it. Shaxs is a great character, a pure fascist-hating icon, and it was really fun to have him in the Ultimate Star Trek Fight Scene.

was dark and violent, but Shaxs Best Day was played for laughs. Tonally, the books could not be more different. Were there ever any concerns about the content that went into Shaxs’ Best Day? Were there any restrictions from Paramount?

HA: I mean, considering they let us have a cover with a decapitated Klingon on DAY OF BLOOD #1, I was optimistically cautious going into this we'd be able to get away with as much cartoon violence (within reason, of course) as we wanted in SBD. The folks at Paramount are incredible partners, and they've been extremely ive of everything we're trying to do with the comics!

RN: Honestly, it's a ton of fun dealing with everyone at Paramount. Mike McMahan is a true comics fan and is fully into all that we're doing, and plus - and it feels crazy to even say this - there are people there who know more about Star Trek than even me. Getting to spend time talking about what every little greeble on the Defiant does is my idea of an EXCELLENT email chain, and it's the sort of thing only unlocked through doing a comic like Shaxs' Best Day.

DC: There's multiple decapitations in this, people's arms getting beamed off, a bat'leth boomerang... I think the style goes a long way to making the over-the-top violence play. Besides, this is the kind of stuff Klingons are always bragging about!

Ryan North and Derek Charm's Future Lower Decks Project Will Stretch the Boundaries of Star Trek Comics

Will They Catch Lightning In a Bottle the Second Time?

Looking ahead, there’s the Star Trek: Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way graphic novel. From the advanced information IDW has shared, it is patterned after the Choose Your Own Adventure-style books. What challenges did you all have putting such a book together? What can fans expect from it?

HA: If I told you it took me over 9 hours to put together the bookmap for this (chaotic but fun) graphic novel would you believe me? *eye twitches* CHAOS! FUN! LOWER DECKS!

RN: What challenges come from doing a 200-page branching-narrative comic? ALL THE CHALLENGES. This is a script that is WILD in its complexity, and has required things that aren't normally required when laying out a book, like inventing new mathematical formulas at the last second. It's a ton of fun though, and I know the whole team is SUPER proud of it - we were just doing finishing touches on it when the Eisner nominations came out! - so it's definitely something to look forward to. I've got a ton of experience in non-linear narratives from my TO BE OR NOT TO BE and ROMEO AND/OR JULIET interactive novels, and it was cool to bring everything I've learned doing those into a visual medium.