What's the story with Nero, the Romulan baddie played by Eric Bana in J.J. Abrams' upcoming Star Trek film? Fans will find out January 2009 when IDW releases the comic book prequel series "Star Trek: Countdown."

The new series is being billed as a prequel linked to the Abrams film, TrekMovie reports. Abrams' film follows Nero as he travels back in time before Trek's Original Series era. The comic's story will be primarily set in the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" era, after the events of the 2002's "Star Trek Nemesis," and, presumably, will involve Nero hatching his plan to travel back in time to bully Kirk and crew. Nero will share top comic billing with the TNG era Spock.

The comic "is about how you connect the Next Generation era to our continuity, inspired by when we last saw Mr. Spock in [the TNG episode] 'Unification," Trek screen writer Roberto Orci said.

"Countdown" is being scripted by "Superman/Batman" scribe Mike Johnson and Tim Jones based on a story by Abrams, Orci and screenwriter Alex Kurtzman. The series is slated to run monthly for four issues starting in January 2009, with a trade paperback collection set for an April release.

Italian artist David Messina will handle artwork for "Countdown." Messina has worked on a number of IDW's Trek comics, including the much hailed "Mirror Images" series.

"I can assure you that we all [IDW and Bad Robot] are at work in order to be faithful to the spirit of Star Trek ... and believe me, you can't imagine how huge and picky is our 'pre-production' work for this book!," he said. "Mike and Tim are great Star Trek fans, while even if I'm not a Trek's guy, I'm a really great lover of sci-fi."

"Star Trek XI" will premiere May 8, 2009.

Feeling a little horrific? Get your daily dose of horror news straight from The Doll, Rabid Doll that is at www.RabidDoll.com.

Hear Michael Hinman on SyFy Radio every Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT at www.BlogTalkRadio.com/SyFyRadio.