Tribbles

So Andy Schmidt, newly-minted editor of the IDW Star Trek line, was sitting in my "office" at Comicon San Diego* and said, "They want me to do more Alien Spotlights. They want a Tribbles Special, for God's sake!"

So I said, "I want to pitch you the Tribbles Special."

Tribbles are hard to spotlight because they don't do much except trill, breed, purr, and die just in time to fall all over Captain Kirk. But they mean well, and as soon as I came up with the idea of a whole planet full of the things, the story clicked into place.

Andy (pictured above) liked the idea, and so did Paramount. It was a tricky script to write because there are basically three groups of characters, all with their own character arcs, packed into 22 pages. There's a human freighter crew that really doesn't look for trouble the way Starfleet does; a Klingon crew that's a bit more rundown than the unstoppable Imperial fighting forces we're used to seeing; and, of course, the tribbles -- billions of them. I like the way it came out, and Mike Hawthorne (THE UN-MEN) is doing a great job on the art...not too cartoony, not too straight. I'll post some soon.

STAR TREK ALIEN SPOTLIGHT: TRIBBLES -- or, as I call it, "The Trouble with Humanoids" -- comes out in March. I hope you'll give it a try.

Photo nicked from here.

*Not on your life. Buy me a drink next year.