Comic Book Review: Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock by various creators
Fraggle Rock was a children’s television series that ran from 1983-1987, created by Jim Henson and primarily featuring his trademark Muppets of various sorts. The Fraggles live in a series of connected caves collectively called “Fraggle Rock.” Largely carefree creatures, the Fraggles spend much of their time singing, playing and enjoying themselves.
The five main Fraggles are adventurous Gobo, athletic Red, indecisive but good thinker Wembley, poetic Mokey and pessimistic but practical Boober. They interact with various other Fraggles, the industrious Doozer people, and the gigantic Gorg..and sometimes venture to Outer Space, where the Silly Creatures (humans) live.
There have been various comic books based on the show, and this volume collects the first three issues of the Archaia run in 2010. The stories are by a variety of writers and artists who tried to stay true to Mr. Henson’s vision.
I should probably mention at this point that I have never seen the original show. (Yes, shocking, I know!) Fortunately, the main points are easy to pick up.
The volume opens with Red challenging Gobo to spend an entire night in the Gorg garden. Which doesn’t so bad at first, but Junior Gorg is supposed to be taking a chair to the compost heap. He just happens to install it in front of the entrance to the Fraggle Rock, trapping Gobo and Red in the garden. The Fraggles must find a way to work together to overcome this obstacle.
The final story is Junior Gorg building a Rube-Goldberg type trap to finally, finally capture a Fraggle. It doesn’t work out, but maybe he never meant any harm to the small creatures.
Other characters also get focus, like Uncle Traveling Matt who is on a long-time exploration of Outer Space, Convincin’ John who tells how he overcame stage fright, and two tales of Cotterpin, a young Doozer with big dreams.
There are activity pages, and a completely different story about creatures called the Skrumps, who are a bit more absurdist and their difficulties with a Bath Bandit.
This is all sweet and wholesome material suitable for young children, though the very youngest will need someone to read to them. My copy came as a hardback that should stand up to some heavy reading.
I’d rate this as pretty good for small children, and will doubtless strike a chord with parents who watched the show in first run, or on endless video tape repeats. Some of you folks may even want a copy for yourself!
