Farscape, the Comic Books (Part 1)
Continuing our look at Farscape, turn from the action figures to the comic books. Pay attention, there is a quiz.
Comic books related to TV shows aren’t new. From westerns like the Lone Ranger to sitcoms like I Love Lucy and soap operas like Dark Shadows, comic books have been a great supplement to their broadcast media.
Farscape’s first shot at comic book super-stardom was… lacking. It consisted of a two issue mini-series in 2002 titled Farscape: War Torn. Wildstorm would later find great success in licensed books like Friday the 13th, World of Warcraft and Gears of War, but Farscape did not appear to catch on and War Torn is a footnote in the superhero-heavy Wildstorm’s early days. At two issues, the series lacks the meat and bones to get collected even if the rights holders were interested.
Despite being written by Marv Wolfman, the story’s not that impressive. The main story is a fairly common war story about two groups on the verge of war that can only be stopped by the timely intervention of Moya’s crew who, as always, need supplies. The back-up is a Chiana centered tale where she and a handful of Nebari battle a contagion. The art is problematic, with great representations of D’Argo and Rygel, and varying degrees of success representing the more humanoid characters. Newly created characters look like disposable Image designs. The backgrounds are either blank white or gradients. Not very impressive, especially considering how Boom! Studios’ Farscape adventures managed to use bare backgrounds much more stylistically, and even captured better character likenesses despite a stripped down animated style.
Still, you have to respect the difficulty of creating a story within a pre-existing universe. You can’t shatter the universe without putting it back in place. You can’t add a new crew member, or kill off one. You can’t dismember Aeryn unless she’s magically healed later in the story.
Of course, that’s not necessarily a problem with the recently concluded Boom! Studios series and its related minis. Which we’ll talk about next time…
