Countdown
By Mike Johnson and Tim Jones
When last we left the Star Trek universe, in 2002's Star Trek: Nemesis, Romulus had just had a military coup led by Shinzon, a clone of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Originally, Shinzon was supposed to replace Picard, but that plan was abandoned and he was exiled to Romulus' sister planet, Remus to work in the dilithium mines. Somehow, forgive my memory as I try to forget about this movie most of the time, he overthrows the Romulan Senate. For whatever reason, I don't think it is ever made clear, he wants to destroy Earth. Picard kills him and Data sacrifices himself to save Picard, but not before imprinting his neural nets onto his predecessor, B-4.
The last time we saw Spock, in The Next Generation's Unification two-parter from season 5, he was working underground on Romulus toward peace in the form of reunifying its people with their sundered cousins, the Vulcans. After the Dominion War, Romulus changed its immigration laws, allowing Spock to live there legally as the Federation's ambassador to the Romulan Star Empire. As such, he seems to have been disowned by Vulcan.
Countdown is written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman as a prequel to this year's Star Trek reboot. It shows the events that happen directly before the new film, which also effectively bridges the gap between The Next Generation series of films back to the original crew. Its main purpose is to tell the backstory of the new movie's main villain, the Romulan Nero. If you have seen the previews, you will have noticed that Nero is what I would call a "classic" Romulan — he does not have the V-shaped forehead ridges which were characteristic of the species in TNG and its successors.
The events take place not too long after those in Nemesis. Data is now Captain of the Enterprise-E, Picard is Earth's ambassador to Vulcan, Geordi has retired from Starfleet to design ships, and Worf is still a high-ranking general in the Klingon Empire. Spoilers for this comic book appear in the following paragraph; read at your own discretion.
The plot of the book revolves around a star in the Hobus system, near Romulan space, that is about to go supernova at any moment. When it does, it is in danger of destroying Romulus, and the galaxy, unless something can done to contain it. I have to digress a moment to point out that one of my favourite lines of dialogue spoken by Spock in this book is as he is addressing the senate, when he says, "Friends, Romulans, countrymen...we share the same ears," a play on the famous words spoken by Marc Antony in Shakespeare's Julius Caeser. Spock has a plan to stop the star, of course, but the Romulans turn it down, not wanting help from someone they still see as an outsider. Nero, a Romulan miner, offers to assist him in carrying out the plan anyway with the words, "If Romulus dies, I will hold your people responsible." The star goes supernova sooner than expected and Romulus is destroyed before Spock can carry out his mission, from which he does not expect to return. By this time, Nero has sworn revenge, as his wife and unborn son were just killed with Romulus. The book ends on a terrible cliffhanger in which the mission does succeed, but Spock's ship (the Jellyfish) and Nero's ship (the Narada) have been sucked into a black hole which was created when the star is finally stopped. And it is here that the new film will pick up.