Image credit: IDW.
IDW’s Star Trek: Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way is a unique interactive graphic novel featuring the crew of our favorite Starfleet ship, the USS Cerritos. Written by Ryan North, art by Chris Fenoglio, colors by Charlie Kirchoff, lettering by Jeff Eckleberry, and editing by Heather Antos, this OGN is a must-read for Lower Decks fans.
To learn more about Warp Your Own Way, The Beat spoke to North, Fenoglio, and Antos via email. We asked them all about the origins of interactive OGN, the challenges that came with creating such a unique comic, and the creative team’s favorite Easter eggs.
Please note: This interview contains mild spoilers for Warp Your Own Way throughout, plus two more spoiler-y (but clearly marked) questions near the end. It is. To enjoy a spoiler-free review of The Beat, click the link in the first paragraph above.
Avery Kaplan: Heather, what are the origins of Warp Your Own Way? Was there any backlash against such an unconventional Star Trek graphic novel?
Heather Antos: To be honest, the origins were very simple. I always wanted to do a “choose your own path” graphic novel. When I became the lead editor for the Star Trek series, Lower Decks seemed like a natural choice for the format, and Ryan and Chris seemed like an obvious creative team. I was lucky that all the other reps agreed!
I’m no stranger to meta-narratives and unconventional formats throughout my history in comics. From the panel manipulation and fourth wall breaking of The Unbelievable Gwenpool to the dice-rolling adventures of You Are Deadpool and the iambic pentameter of The Mercenary of Venice with Shakespeare. Expert Ian Doescher…I love challenging creators to push the medium, and Lower Decks is no exception.
Kaplan: Ryan, I noticed that your signature “bottom of the page” notes aren’t present in Warp Your Own Way. Considering how complex OGN is already, this decision isn’t all that surprising to me. But can we expect to see them return in the ongoing Lower Decks series, which debuts next month?
Ryan North: Well, it didn’t make a lot of sense to include them in this graphic novel, given the format and physical dimensions of the book. But yes, they will be appearing in a work in progress debuting next month! And I always have fun with them.
Kaplan: Chris, you previously portrayed the Lower Decks crew in an excellent three-issue miniseries in 2022. How did that work compare to your work on Warp Your Own Way?
Chris Fenoglio: I’m really glad I got to go through a three-issue miniseries before jumping into something as ambitious as Warp Your Own Way. From the time I started working on Lower Decks, I always wanted to emulate the look and feel of the show. These first three issues gave me a chance to iron out some kinks and improve some things before embarking on Warp Your Own Way. For example, I recreated the Cerritos model and actually used a screencap image of the model instead of painting on the ship model like in the first series. This is something we couldn’t do on a technical level in the first series. They simply didn’t have the skills to do it.
The first series was also colored by me, but this time it was colored by the amazingly talented Kirchhoff. It fit him like a glove. His work is great and he was able to intuitively understand what I wanted almost naturally. Seriously, 90% of what makes this book great is his coloring.
Kaplan: Heather, do you have to have seen every episode of Star Trek to enjoy Warp Your Own Way?
Antos: Let me just say that you don’t need to have seen a single episode of Star Trek to enjoy Warp Your Own Way.
Kaplan: What unexpected challenges did you encounter while writing, working on the art, and editing this interactive graphic novel?
Fenoglio: Yeah, the whole book is like that. Honestly, when I read a script, my first instinct is always, “How on earth is this going to be depicted?” I usually manage to finish it by the deadline, but I always have that initial fear of, “There’s no way I can do that, everyone will know I’m a fraud and I’ll never be able to work again!”
In Warp Your Own Way in particular, I struggled with a lot of the environments and backgrounds. Sometimes it’s only visible for a moment in the show, or from one or two angles, so you have to look for references or make up what a certain area looks like. Eventually, we were able to build 3D models of many of these areas and “photograph” them from different angles not seen on the show.
Also, as you know, I work in a very different style than I normally draw. So it can be difficult to create characters that haven’t appeared on the show, especially legacy characters. I want them to feel like they can be a direct part of the show (honestly, my wildest dream is for Lower Decks to just use my model) ), but then again, I’m pretty far from the people who actually make comics. So there’s a lot of guesswork involved, and I’m thinking, “I hope they like this…”
Antos: We can’t necessarily talk about “unforeseen” challenges. I think the challenges we faced were quite expected. 200 pages is a lot for any comic, let alone planning an interactive bookmap and choosing a unique passbook that works. It took me 16 hours a day just to put together and test the order of the pages (PAPERCUT!!! OH PAPERCUT!!!!). My theory that “this will be a future Heather problem” quickly became a “current Heather problem.”
Also, fun fact: it takes exactly one full inkjet cartridge to print one Warp Your Own Way in black and white. Who knew?
North: I don’t know if unexpected is the right word, but there were always a lot of expected challenges that you had to deal with when writing an interactive book like this. The main thing is to make sure everything fits together, but you also want to make sure your readers have a great experience.
One thing I’ve learned from other interactive books like To Be Or Not To Be and Romeo and Juliet is that when most people pick up a book for the first time, they think, It means you can predict what it will do most of the time. this. They tend to choose the most interesting or the most sensible option. And knowing that, you can be sure that this book seems to cater to them in some kind of creepy and fun way.
I’ve already seen some people online talking about how they felt this book related to them, depending on their own choices, and it’s really fun.
Kaplan: Chris, am I correct in finding cameos from the creative team on Warp Your Own Way (including all three subjects of this interview)?
Fenoglio: Maybe…
My wife might have sneaked it in somewhere, too.
Kaplan: Heather, they are not included in this interview, but I would like to spotlight their work, so any thoughts on the contributions of colorist Charlie Kirchhoff and letterer Jeff Eckleberry? mosquito?
Antos: Well, just because they’re the best?! Colorists and letterers are often kept out of the spotlight in reviews, but I like to highlight their work. Charlie has been working on Star Trek comics for a long time and is not only adept at his craft, but also a master at capturing the tone of each show, era, and character with razor-sharp precision. Understanding the color language of animated shows is not easy. Chris and Charlie work together to make each panel look like a screen capture. Really very impressive!
And even if Warp Your Own Way’s visuals and narrative didn’t have enough development, Jeff did a great job with multiple threads, different balloon styles, cramped pages of stacked corpses, and dozens of choices. , would make any adult swoon. But that’s what I love about the creative team at Warp Your Own Way. No one is afraid of a challenge. And even when creating sound effects for warp core explosions and Dionysus’ wrath, Jeff impressed with every turn of the page.
Kaplan: Ryan, in both the 2022 three-issue miniseries and Warp Your Own Way, the holodeck features prominently, but in very different roles. Is it safe to say this is one of your favorite Star Trek tropes? What makes it so endlessly appealing?
Kita: Actually, I’ve never had that kind of connection before. But you’re right in that it’s endlessly interesting to think about. I’ve heard it described as something like “mankind’s last invention.” Because once we have a fully simulated reality, what does the real thing require? But the answer we’re currently discovering is that reality has nothing to recommend itself. I think that means it still exists.
Anyway, the holodeck plays a big role in this book, but to say any more would be a spoiler.
Kaplan: I’ve asked both Heather and Ryan this question before, but Chris, what would you personally order from a food replicator?
Fenoglio: The real question is, what not to order from a food replicator?
Spoiler zone!
Kaplan: Ryan, when did you realize that this wasn’t an interactive graphic novel in the traditional sense? Was the meta-narrative built in from the beginning or did it come later?
Kita: Oh, it was there from the beginning.
Spoiler: The initial proposal was to tell an interactive story that uses the fact that we are in an interactive medium as part of its structure and motivation. That’s what excited me most about this book. This idea that the format of the story can be motivated by the story itself in a way I’ve never seen before.
I’m really happy that people open the book and see that the Mariner dies all the time and think, “Oh, sure, that’s because he dies so often in interactive stories like this.” Nothing new here! ‘But then the reader gradually begins to realize that something else is going on, that there is a secret sinister plot, and before they know it, they begin to interact with the book in ways they never expected, and the characters… You will begin to interact with. Mariner’s stake suddenly became your stake, too, in a way you didn’t expect. And that’s only the first half of the story.
I think it’s a really beautiful comic and I’m really proud of what we did.
Kaplan: Were there any Star Trek elements or Easter eggs in Legacy that you were particularly happy to include?
North: I have to say, I’m very happy that Freeman was able to say the phrase “Somehow…Khan is back.”
Fenoglio: Khan was a lot of fun. I read that entire section and couldn’t stop laughing. The Reliant was also a fun challenge and I really liked the result.
Antos: To be honest, Khan’s scenes always annoy me — I still can’t believe he was allowed to appear!!
Star Trek: Lower Decks: Warp You Own Way is available now at local comic shops and public libraries.
Click here to stay up to date on all things Star Trek from The Beat.
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