Farscape #21 – Review

I never watched a lot of  Farscape, but I always liked what I saw. It was a show about an astronaut from present day Earth getting shot into a galaxy of aliens and spaceships designed by Jim Henson Company. What's not to like? Yet, somehow, here we are with what I found to be the worst combination of aliens and the Henson name since Muppets From Space.

We find series protagonist John Crichton and his friends at war with the Kkore, a species on their way to conquering every nation in the Uncharted Territories. Survivors of the Kkore conquest have banded together to presumably have epic space battles. I say "presumably," because epic space battles are not really a key feature in Farscape #21. All the characters seem pretty pleased to just chat about all the sweet war they are going to wage later and hypothesize about why they are basically getting owned at every opportunity. This contest to see who can spout the most in-universe jargon takes up a pretty good portion of the comic.


The second plot revolves around John having a very serious tough guy staring contest with some guy who has been tasked with killing John's son. Except his client is MIA, so dude has apparently stopped caring about killing anyone in particular for the moment. This makes the whole affair pretty pointless and only a brief respite before everyone gets back to talking about how much war they might wage later, if they get around to it, probably.

As far as the art goes, I could tell which one was supposed to be which character. That is about all I can say for it. To me the art just looks like someone sketched with very thick lines. It is a very minimal representation that, while I can't say is objectively lazy, certainly appears that way to me, especially when the source material has some pretty incredible visuals to draw from. It certainly doesn't help that nearly every panel is an extreme close up of people looking very stern.

If you absolutely cannot get enough of the Farscape universe and characters, then check this out. For everyone else, the original series is available on DVD and Netflix Instant Streaming. Do yourself a favor and stick to the source.