Star Trek Mirror Universe Cover Design

Star Trek Mirror Universe: The Next Generation — from Licensing Style Guide to Comic Book Miniseries

We can’t wait for the release of Mirror Broken, a new Star Trek: The Next Generation comic book miniseries, written by Scott Tipton and David Tipton, and featuring art by J.K. Woodward.

For those of you not familiar with the Mirror Universe, it’s a parallel world in which the heroes of Star Trek possess villainous alter egos.

In 2016, we had the opportunity and pleasure to work with J.K. and the CBS Star Trek creative team of Jorge Ferreiro and Keith Lowenadler in developing a TNG Mirror Universe consumer product licensing style guide. The licensing program design and style guide included new logos, wordmarks, and icons for the Mirror Universe and the Terran Empire (for non-Trekkies: in the Mirror Universe, humans are called “Terrans”). It also included a variety of composed designs, patterns, and backgrounds. Many of J.K.’s illustrations from the guide will appear in the new miniseries.

The concept of the Mirror Universe began with the original series episode “Mirror, Mirror” and was later expanded on in episodes of Deep Space Nine and Enterprise.

This gave us a lot to work with. But we also had a lot of work to do, because the Mirror Universe was never covered in The Next Generation; where Kirk and Spock had their Mirror Universe counterparts, Picard and Data did not. And so we had to brainstorm with the Star Trek team to find a proper vision for each of the main TNG characters. The development of the premise and character overviews was one of the most exciting parts of the entire project.

The five-issue miniseries comes out at the end of May. IDW Publishing released a twelve-page introductory story of Mirror Broken for Free Comic Book Day on May 6, which the LA Times included with their top picks!

CBS will also be launching a line of Mirror Universe consumer products at this year’s Comic-Con in July. If you’d like to know more about the art of Star Trek Mirror Universe, check out this podcast with comic book artist J.K. Woodward.