Plus, the production designs are pretty cool, given the $1.98 budget restrictions.

I'm getting the individual issues but I am also getting the trades, so this is a nice addition. Should be a lot of fun to sit down and read the whole thing.

Edited for clarification.

Awesome!

Just watched the episode the other day, since I'm making my way through the TOS season 1 Blu-Ray set. Still a great episode. Very moody, with solid performances.

Seems like that was covered in the episode. No one knew what Romulans looked like, and whenever their break with Vulcan had occurred, it was long enough ago that there was no record of it.

It may well have been. Most of the TREK iterations since TOS have seemed to have as their mandate wiping out the original series. As presented in "Balance of Terror", however, the Romulans were a big mystery to everyone.

That episode presents some really interesting pre-TOS history, history that comes in second only to "Space Seed" for me.

There was an Earth-Romulan war a century before TOS, perhaps resulting from an attempted Romulan invasion. Other races may have been involved, as allies to either side. There was no visual communication between humans and Romulans, so neither side ever saw the other face-to-face. The battle was fought with primitive nuclear weapons, and the Romulan ships sported the bird motif. A treaty was eventually agreed upon by both sides over subspace radio, and the fighting ended. The Neutral Zone was established, and, until "Balance of Terror", no ship from either side broke the treaty.

Now THAT would be an interesting story to tell!

Of course, ENTERPRISE dealt with some elements of this backstory by showing that Romulans had infiltrated the Vulcan High Command, as well as featuring NX-01's encounter with a Romulan ship.

This will be a must buy for me.  That page looks awesome JB.

JB - Is this how you are filling your "void" month of August by working?

Not that I am complaining mind you if thats what you decided.