Few actors have won over Star Trek fans quite like John de Lancie. With a gleeful grin and pompous yet playful condescension, de Lancie made the trickster-god Q one of Picard’s greatest foils on The Next Generation. The actor co-wrote the first DC annual starring Picard’s crew, which heralded Q’s return and examined Picard’s family before his backstory was revealed on TV. Series writer Michael Jan Friedman helped de Lancie script that tale and also penned the next two annuals, collected here as well.

In Annual #2, the Enterprise receives a distress call from Riker’s risk-taking childhood friend and ex-lover. Friedman mines Will’s past as discussed in “The Icarus Factor” by presenting flashbacks to his younger years in Alaska, thereby holding a mirror up to his adult personality. The third annual revolves around Geordi La Forge’s bond with an alien prince, whose mother had made Geordi part of their family after he’d saved her life as an ensign. Now she has inexplicably incited a civil war, and so the prince seeks his blood-brother’s help in determining why.