Broken Frontier

Anthony Rogers has always bucked the rules but when he bucks the rules of time and space he ends up in unfamiliar territory.

Dynamite Entertainment continues on their crusade to bring back yet another of the early newspaper comic strip characters. Re-imagined and re-invented for a new, modern audience with modern comic book art and technology brought to bear, the result is visually stunning to look at. Unfortunately, they look to have brought along another modern comic book idea: decompression.

Captain Anthony "Buck" Rogers is a member of a civilian team creating a gravity drive space vehicle. Of course, things like this never escape military notice for long… nor do the tests always go so smoothly. Buck believes he has crash landed back home… he has another think coming and it’s going to be coming hard and fast.

Writer Scott Beatty does an excellent job here of updating the original story – particularly putting a modern spin on the original sci-fi of the tale. In this modern era of computers, Bluetooth, and iPhones the original technology of the comic strip would be woefully outdated. In the process of doing this, however, the parallels between the original story and the TV series Farscape become even more noticeable.

While Beatty’s updating work is seamless and melds well with the original material the rest of the story leaves a bit to be desired. His attempts to inject a little mysterious tension to the story end up leaving the reader muddled instead of excited. The sequences flipping between past and present (future) are not always evident, leaving the reader wondering at times when they are in the story. Also, things are mentioned but not followed up on with either explanations or even more hints about their nature, again leaving readers confused. Finally, all of this mystery combined with the decompressed nature of the story leaves one feeling like very little actually happened or was learned here. It is all slightly frustrating rather than being wholly enjoyable.

The art, provided by Carlos Rafael, however, is top notch. Despite the well-known artists who had been associated with the comic strip and previous comic book versions over the years, Rafael chooses to go his own route, providing a distinctive and fairly "real world" look for the characters and costumes. Interestingly, Rafael and colorist Carlos Lopez also seem to have taken a page from Ethan Van Sciver & Moose Baumann by crafting Wilma Deering’s combat suit as unhighlighted black with glowing white strips. The look works to great effect in the panels and contrasts nicely with the more traditional spacesuit worn by Rogers.

While, overall, Beatty and company seem to be approaching the original source material with respect and even some reverence, in the end this has all the earmarks of being one of those stories that is so decompressed it reads too slowly in single issues and only eventually works when it can be read in one sitting. Bide your time and either wait for the trade or buy all the issues in the opening story arc in a bunch and sit down to read them all at once. Things will probably end up making more sense.