‘Dark Crystal: Creation Myths’ Comic Review

IDW’s Dark Crystal: Creation Myths is a graphic novel expanding the world of Thra, originally portrayed in Jim Henson and Frank Oz’s 1982 film of the same name. Written by Brian Holguin and illustrated cooperatively by Alex Sheikman and Lizzy John, it’s a prequel that tells the story of the creation of Thra and Aughra, the planet’s mother, child, guardian, and warden. With themes of nature vs. progress, the tale explores what happens when outside forces arrive from a distant planet, bringing promises of cultural and functional improvements they believe will perfect the world.

That said, given the possibility of so much promise, it comes off like a tired, heavy-handed metaphor for the parallel that mankind tends to draw between “technology” and “advancement”.

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The story itself works fine on a functional level, as there aren’t any glaring issues or plot holes, but it’s all been done before. World is created, world creates life, other beings come to world, bringing civilization and technology, and everything gets more complicated than it was. It’s a broad premise that allows for many opportunities to be interesting, and perhaps in later volumes some actual negative ramifications will be explored, but in this first volume, it feels like absolutely nothing of consequence happens.

The magic of the film was in Henson and Oz’s puppetry and Brian Froud’s designs, but the artwork fails to capture that on the page. Again, on a functional level, the art is respectable. The storytelling is never confusing, the pages are well laid out, and the characters all look consistent. However, for being so detailed and well-colored, the illustration generally feels flat, with uninspired facial features that make the characters’ reactions difficult to read. It’s not bad artwork per se, it’s just kind of… there. This is especially unfortunate if there was hope of stirring interest in fans of the original movie, as it feels more like canned fan-fiction rather than an honest attempt to expand into a different medium.

In the spirit of world-building, each chapter of the story ends with a prose interlude that focuses on a snippet of history through the eyes of an individual character which, although more interesting than the overarching story itself, unfortunately does nothing to move it forward. Epic stories are best built on a large cast of relatable characters, and had the foundation story been prose and the rest of the book filled with these short graphic adventures, the book might have been far more engaging than how it actually played out—conversations between a few barely developed personalities.

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Therein lies the main problem with the storytelling—there is little action during the entire tale. There’s a lot of narration—the narrator being the only interesting part of the book because he or she is shrouded in mystery—and an abundance of expository conversation. The closest instance of an actual adventure is in chapter four, which is the first time it feels as though a character has any sort of desire to achieve something. Sure, that character spends most of his time idling on a boat in the ocean, but at least he’s going somewhere.

An origin story should have a purpose. In that sense, Dark Crystal: Creation Myths feels more like a misstep than a failure, and the question the reader is left with isn’t “why?” so much as “so what?” The story makes sense, and it’s an easy read, but there’s just nothing unique or exciting about it. Hopefully, further volumes of the book will lead into something more gripping and fresh. However, this initial arc makes for feeble optimism and future installments become difficult to care about.

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