REVIEW: Farscape: Strange Detractors, Part 4: The Binds that Tie
Release Date: 1 July 2009
Writer(s): Rockne S. O’Bannon (story), Keith R.A. DeCandido (script)
Artist(s): Will Sliney
Cover(s): Joe Corroney, Dennis Calero
Colours: Zac Atkinson
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
It’s Inner Space in Outer Space as John takes the antivirus from the Doc’s enclave back to Moya. It worked on him, so it has to work on everyone else, right? If he makes it in time, and they don’t kill him, John just might save the entire universe (again).
But it can never be that easy. This is space! Everything has to be convoluted and crazy! Also, they have 20+ pages to fill. Appropriately, John hatches a nutty plan that involves him being shrunk down and injected into Aeryn with the antivirus. He lists a bunch of BS reasons why he needs to go in with the antivirus (none of which involved a Honey, I Shrunk the or Innerspace reference – for shame, writers, for shame), and in he goes.
And for some reason, the antivirus (and virus) has a humanoid shape. Huh. Anyway, of course the antivirus works on everyone (even Moya) and they all have to blow chunks all over everything after they’re given the shot. John even comes out on an Aeryn Spewfall, and is restored to actual size (along with some of the antivirus dudes). The DRDs are going to be busy. For a while.
Seriously. You could have made a drinking game for this. The entire issue wasn’t just about pink vomit, there was also some tension within the ranks because of the horrid and nasty things everyone said to each other while infected. True to the characters, both Chiana and Jothee are butthurt over what they said to each other, while everyone else seems to be ouchy about it but moving on with life. In the end, John makes everyone do the right thing and pass the antivirus along to fight the virus (both on a microscopic level and human-sized level).
No surprise there. I wasn’t really expecting anything different to happen (showing everyone puking, that was unexpected), but at the same time being predictable isn’t always a good thing. If this really was just a one-shot miniseries, and you hadn’t picked up the other three issues as floppies, I’d say save the money and buy the trade if you were a really huge fan of Farscape. This is where calling these groups of 3 to 4 issues “miniseries”, while making them part of a single title, irks me a bit. As a stand alone miniseries, Strange Detractors doesn’t work for me at all. It feels like it should be a chapter/episode of an ongoing title, not like its own story.
Especially at the end when Aeryn and John find out that their hybrid son is unique in a way that not even the Doc fully understands. If that wasn’t a hook for the next “miniseries”, I don’t know what would be. In the end, if you’re already a fan of Farscape, you’ll probably enjoy this story for what it is – another chapter in the series.
Seriously. Everyone puked.
Thanks for the review (and generally for continuing to review the Farscape comics). Those last two sentences should, in my opinion, be a pull quote on the hardcover collection of “Strange Detractors,” though I suspect I will have a hard time convincing the powers-that-be at BOOM! of this…..
In the interests of full disclosure, the idea for having the end result of application of the antivirus being the recipient puking was mine, not Rockne’s. When Rockne saw it in my page-by-page breakdown of issue #3, it resulted in my Favorite Note Ever: “Love the puke! WHO DOESN’T LOVE PUKE?????”
Indeed.
Thank you!
Good call on the puking, dude! It was hilarious and fantastically gross at the same time, not something I would normally associate with the act of puking. :)