When you look at IDW Publishing’s roster of titles, you see some of the most popular characters in film, television, and comic books all in one place. The company specializes in licensed properties and delivers original stories featuring ‘My Little Pony’, ‘Star Trek’, ‘Ghostbusters’, ‘Judge Dredd’, ‘The Crow’, ‘Transformers’, and many more, but now they are adding yet another epic cult classic to their stable of books.

During this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, it was announced that writer Erik Burnham and artist Nacno Arranz will be bring Dean Parisot’s sci-fi satire ‘Galaxy Quest’ to the pages of IDW in a brand new comic series that will be a direct sequel to the 1999 film about the cast of a popular sci-fi television series that become actual space adventurers thanks to an alien race that believes them to be the real deal. Burnham, who is also handling the upcoming crossover series ‘TMNT/Ghostbusters’, will bring back the beloved crew of the NSEA Protector played by Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, and the rest of the cast as they have to deal with the repercussions of time travel from the movie, even if it was just for 13 seconds back in time. Here’s what he had to say about the series in an interview with Comic Book Resources:

“Well, at the end of their movie, Tim Allen’s character, Jason, used the Omega 13 device to rewind time 13 seconds and undo the catastrophic death of his crew. (Um… sorry for the 15 year-old spoilers!) Messing with time. Maybe that affected more than the ship. If it was more widespread, sure, most folks would just have a powerful case of deja vu. But what if it changed something else? That’s what we’re starting with. They’re the reason a new race — called the Drythans — seek them out and say, ‘You screwed something up. Fix it.’”

Previously, the company had released a series based on the film in 2008 that follows the cast of ‘Galaxy Quest: The Journey Continues’ as they prepare for their new show and deal with being pulled back into another intergalactic adventure. It’s not certain whether Burnham’s series will tie into that comic, but he does mention his journey that lead to him writing this book:

“Tom Waltz and I were talking one day and, mid-sentence, he remembers that IDW was going to be doing another ‘Galaxy Quest’ comic and he thought it’d be fun if I pitched for it. “Do something really ‘Star Trekky,'” is what he suggested when I asked what he was looking for.

So I wrote up a pitch — and this is almost two years ago! — and got it to Tom. A few months after that, I said “Hey, Tom — did anything ever happen with that pitch?” And he says, in his way, “Oh yeah, dude! … It, uh, well, it got turned down.” When I asked why, he says: “It was too ‘Star Trekky.'”

I laughed loud enough to wake my poor dog.

Anyway, IDW and the licensor both liked the pitch, they just wanted me to make some changes. Once that was done, voila, we were go.”

Though there has been a ton of exciting news coming out of SDCC about new DC and Marvel comics coming soon, I might be more excited to return to the world of ‘Galaxy Quest’. I’ve been a big fan of the movie since it came out and I loved the good-natured ribbing it gives us sci-fi fans. Hopefully this new series honors the legacy of the film and possibly leads to more opportunities for expanding that universe. After all, in the words of Commander Peter Quincy Taggart, “Never give up. Never surrender!”