As Newsarama has been keeping tabs, Boom! Studios landed the rights to produce comics based on Farscape,
the Australian-produced cult-favorite Sci-Fi series which ran on the
network earlier in the decade. Much like Joss Whedon helming the
continuing adventures of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at Dark Horse, The
comic book version of Farscape will be written by series creator Rockne S. O’Bannon.
Boom! E-i-C Mark Waid sat down with O'Bannon to talk about the upcoming series for Newsarama.
Mark Waid: For latecomers to this amazing show, tell us what Farscape is about--not just the comic, but the series.
Rockne O'Bannon: Farscape is the saga of Earth
scientist/mission specialist John Crichton who goes up one day in a
one-man spacecraft to orbit the Earth a few times and conduct a couple
of experiments -- with every intention of touching down and going out
to dinner with friends that night. Doesn't quite happen that way.
Instead, while orbiting Earth, a sun flare hits, a wormhole opens up,
and Crichton is catapulted to some other part of the universe, becoming
the first human to make contact with alien life. But unlike Spielberg's
Close Encounters where the aliens were gentle and benign and
come in peace, the life forms that Crichton encounters are anything but
these things. Over the course of the four years of the television
series, Crichton faced down a rogues gallery of the most extreme,
deadly, scheming, strange creatures the Jim Henson Creature Shop could
build. Oh, and he also managed to fall in love -- albeit, with one of the aliens.
MW: The fans are definitely a driving force behind the show and
this new series. What would you say to fans about this book to fire
them up--particularly to Farscape fans who aren't normally comics readers
RO: Farscape lives! We're using this fantastic opportunity to keep the Farscape
world alive and the saga continuing. I'm personally looking at this as
if it were the next season of the series. I would hope that fans will
approach the comics as if they are reading scripts from upcoming
episodes -- except that there is also great art accompanying the words.
And the possibility of paper cuts. Other than that, it's very much the
same Farscape.
MW: How are you adapting Farscape to fit into the comic medium?
Is it a challenge? What parts translate the best from TV to comics?
RO: I'm finding that adapting the Farscape world to this
different medium is actually quite freeing -- because unlike producing
episodes for weekly television, I don't have to limit my imagination at
all. Environments, creatures, events that I might have had to tone down
or eliminate altogether on an hour TV budget are all readily available
to me now.
MW: Which characters are you concentrating on? When does this take place in relation to the series or Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars? What's happened since we last saw the crew?
RO: The story contained in the first set of four comics focuses
on Crichton and Aeryn and their newborn son, as well as those
characters who stayed aboard Moya at the end of the Peacekeeper Wars
mini-series. Talk about continuing the saga from the television series
-- the comics pick up immediately after the close of The Peacekeeper Wars. It's that contiguous.
MW: Tell fans how this project came to BOOM!
RO: Farscape is a very carefully protected asset of the
Jim Henson Company. It's Brian Henson's baby. And if we were going to
continue the saga in this different medium, we were only going to do it
with a partner who knew and respected the original series. The folks at
BOOM! are crazy-passionate ‘Scapers. Scary, really. Marry that to
BOOM!'s reputation as an wildly original, creative, truly bold comic
producer, and we knew we'd found our partner.
MW: What about this industry we call comics do you like? Have you always been around comics?
RO: I'm a life-long comics fan and I've always wanted to write
for the medium, so I'm totally stoked that my first foray into the
graphic world is via Farscape.
MW: Can you give us a sneak peek into the series? What can we expect from the first issue?
RO: Don't want to give too much away -- but I can say that one
of the places we're able to go in the first story is Rygel's home world
of Hyneria. If you think four television seasons of one Hynerian was wild, wait until we pay a visit to an entire civilization full of them.
MW: How're our artists doing? Happy with what you've seen?
RO: It's exactly the mix that I personally really like. It's
evocative of the look of the television series, but filtered through
some truly original artists' eyes. I've been loving what I've seen so
far.
Farscape #1 is written by Rockne O'Bannon with script by
Keith R.A. DeCandido and interior art by Tommy Patterson. Cover art by
fan-favorites Dennis Calero and Joseph Corroney. The Diamond order code
for the first edition of the Farscape comic is SEP083803. There will be
3 different covers released in a 50/25/25 ratio. Don't forget to talk
to your local comic shop about the 1 in 25 variant cover.
