The Rumor Buster

So far in honor of Farscape’s first time on Blu-Ray, and our give-away of the complete series,  we’ve talked about the series’s legacy in action figures, and its first attempt at comic book super-stardom with the 2002 Wildstorm series, but now we come to the most recent attempt to bring Farscape to the printed page thanks to Boom! Studios

Elements of the Boom! Studios continuation of Farscape were written by Rockne S. O’Bannon (the show’s creator), David Alan Mack (a Star Trek novelist) and Keith DeCandido (a Farscape novelist), and freed from the constraints of having to keep the characters static, the books have considerably more weight than their Wildstorm counterparts.

Originally a series of mini-serieses, the separate, episodic stories quickly developed into a considerable body of work that greatly expanded the established canon and, with no pesky show to worry about, the material could move characters forward similar to Buffy Season 8 and 9, or Angel After the Fall.

The minis eventually gave way to a 24 issue series that concluded in October 2011 with the end of a massive war against the Kkore, villains introduced during Scorpius’s 8 issue series.

All in all, the Boom! Studios Farscape universe consisted of 3 four-issue minis featuring D’argo (D’argo’s Lament, D’Argo’s Trial and D’argo’s Quest), the 8-issue Scorpius series, three 4-issue minis featuring the entire cast (The Beginning of the End of the Beginning, Strange Detractors, and Gone and Back) and 24 issues of the main ongoing title.  56 issues total over approximately three years… not a bad run for a show that had been off the air for so long.

The comics brought back many secondary characters instead of simply focusing on ship’s main crew.  Familiar faces from the show like Grayza, Sizoku, Noranti and Grunchlk are given roles to play in one issue or another.  Even D’argo and Zhaan make appearances through backstories, flashbacks and the use of an alternate reality storyline for one mini.

The comics lovingly pay homage to the television series itself, with throwback references like an issue where Aeryn and John return to the commerce planet they landed on in the pilot episode, and the books events build to a 12-issue epic War for the Uncharted Territories, which ultimately concluded this iteration of the Farscape universe.