If your problem with JJ Abrams' Star Trek is that it's a reboot, stop whining. The upcoming Star Trek: Countdown comic prologue will explain just how it fits with existing The Next Generation canon.
The new comic, from publisher IDW, is firmly tied to the movie; not only is it plotted by the movie's team of JJ Abrams, Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, but it's being scripted by two writers working for Orci and Kurtzman's production company, Mike Johnson and Tim Jones. So tightly does it tie into the new movie, in fact, that editor Andy Schmidt is willing to look at it as Director's Cut material:
If the movie was 45 minutes longer, this is what those 45 minutes would be... Our story starts off before the film begins, introduces the central conflict of the film as well as many of the characters involved and takes you through an action-packed story that ends just a moment before the film opens.
Scriptwriter Jones is more forthcoming with details:
[The comic is] a very poignant character piece tracing the steps of Nero, who descends from a proud Romulan patriot to a murderous arch villain... We kind of worked backwards from the Kurtzman/Orci script to figure out Nero’s back-story and find out what’s going on in the Next Generation world.
The comic came about, according to Orci, because of fan outcry to the return to the days of Kirk and Spock: "Anthony [Pascale] at www.trekmovie.com kept asking what bone can you throw the Next Generation guys as a kind of a passing of the baton, so we finally arrived at doing a [prelude] comic," he explained, and Mike Johnson is optimistic about the reception from fans to the... um... un-ret-conning, I guess:
[It passes the baton b]oth thematically and literally. Well, not literally that there’s actually a little baton that Picard hands over to the new guys – a little silver baton with the Starfleet logo, although that would be awesome. I want one. But literally, it is in the sense that the comic is the missing part of the story between the end of “Star Trek: Nemesis” and the new film... I think fans are going to be pleasantly surprised by the story that starts in #1 and how we introduce Nero. “Star Trek: Countdown” #1 is the issue that sets the stage, and after that the action and drama will steadily increase throughout the series, culminating in a cliffhanger that can only be resolved by a big fat summer blockbuster movie.
Star Trek: Countdown launches next month.
Writers Talk Star Trek: Countdown [Comic Book Resources], Star Trek's Comic Book Starting Point [Newsarama.com]