We still don’t know if Khan Noonien Singh, possibly Star Trek’s ultimate villain, will appear in the next Star Trek movie. But today, TrekMovie has the exclusive reveal that Khan will be the subject of the next new Star Trek comic book from IDW. The "Khan: Ruling in Hell" series kicks off in October. We have details and covers below.

Khan: Ruling in Hell – The Comic

For their next new comic series, IDW has decided to fill a gap in Star Trek lore by exploring Khan’s time on Ceti Alpha V after he was exiled there by James T. Kirk in the original Star Trek episode "Space Seed" and before we meet up with him again in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. According to IDW the new "Star Trek: Khan: Ruling in Hell" series will explain how Khan went from "the elegant, proud warrior-king to a grizzled maniac, twisted by loss and an unquenchable thirst for revenge". IDW promises that this new series will answer the question "What has happened between these two points in time to so radically alter what seemed to be an unbreakable will?"



New IDW comic to explain how Khan went from A to B

To take on this task, IDW has turned to their most prolific Star Trek writing team, Scott and David Tipton. The pair have already done a number of original Star Trek comic series for the publisher, including the current "Burden of Knowledge" series and their recent foray into Spock’s backstory in "Spock: Reflections" shows they are up to the challenge of filling in the blanks. The art is being done by Fabio Mantovani ("DS9: Fools Gold"), with covers done by Joe Corroney and Michael Stribling. The first of the four-issue series should be hitting comic ships on October 13, 2010.

Here are exclusive first looks at the two covers for issue 1.



Khan: Ruling in Hell #1 (Stribling Cover)



Khan: Ruling in Hell #1 (Corroney Cover)

Khan in the novels

"Star Trek: Khan: Ruling in Hell" will be the first comic book series focusing on the character of Khan, not counting IDW’s 2009 adaptation of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The title of the comic series borrows from a line from "Space Seed" (borrowed from Milton), that "it is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven." But it also sounds familiar to fans of Trek books. In 2005 Pocket Books released Greg Cox’s "To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh". The book finished off a trilogy about Khan, with the previous two books covering the Eugenics Wars. It isn’t clear if the "Ruling in Hell" comic will tie into anything from the "Reign in Hell" novel, but usually Trek comics and novels have charted their own courses.



2005 Khan exile novel

JULY STAR TREK COMICS

As for July comics, IDW is packing all their Star Trek comics into the end of the month. That means that Burden of Knowledge #2, McCoy Frontier Doctor #4, and the Star Trek Movie Adaptation #5 all are coming out on July 28th.



New Star Trek comics coming July 28th