‘Dark Crystal’ sequel released
12-part comic takes fans beyond the 1982 movie
What happened after the heroes vanquished darkness and restored balance to their world? Fans of “The Dark Crystal” can now find out.
Thirty-five years after Jim Henson and Frank Oz introduced audiences to Gelfings, Mystics and Skeksis in the puppet-populated world of Thra, the official sequel, “The Power of the Dark Crystal,” is finally here. The 12-part comic-book series from writer Simon Spurrier and sibling artists Kelly and Nichole Matthews picks up long after the events of the original film.
“The sequel begins a century later,” said Spurrier. “It’s been a hundred years of peace and prosperity, in which new cultures have grown up. But all isn’t quite what it seems. There are hints of the old darkness lurking just under the surface.”
“The Dark Crystal” saw the Gelfling survivors Jen and Kira shoulder the responsibility of their entire race and planet to heal the magical Crystal that anchors their world. After fulfilling this prophecy, the two are left with the new responsibility of shaping the future of their newly restored planet.
“‘The Dark Crystal’ specifically sticks out because it was just so different from other kids’ movies we watched at the time,” said Kelly Matthews. “Much darker and more adult.”
“Our story kicks off with the arrival of a stranger from a distant land,” Spurrier said of this new character, named Thurma. “She claims her people are dying, and she truly believes that the only way she can save them is to shatter the crystal.
As you’d imagine, nobody’s going to just stand by and let her do that.”
“The Power of the Dark Crystal” is based on the unproduced screenplay by David Odell, Annette Odell and Craig Pearce and published by Boom Studios’ Archaia imprint.
Spurrier and the Matthewses discussed the characters and story of “The Power of the Dark Crystal” over email. The following is an edited transcript.
Q: What do you remember about the first time you saw “The Dark Crystal”?
› Spurrier: The original movie’s only a year younger than me, so I must’ve seen it years later on VHS. I’m guessing I was maybe 7 or 8 — probably a smidge too early — and, actually, that’s an interesting point.
It’s the sort of movie nobody quite knows what to expect. Is it a fantasy? A Muppet-y comedy? I think a lot of parents just assumed, “Hey, it’s all puppets, this has gotta be kid-friendly.” Only to watch their youngsters reduced to gibbering snotty wrecks living in terror of lizard-vulture-monsters and gigantic scarab beetles.
I still loved that movie from the get-go. I tend to think kids’ stories should be a bit scary. Anyone raised on a diet of Roald Dahl knows the value of that. It’s one of the ways we learn who and what to root for. It can also teach us that not everything scary is bad.
Q: What was your favorite thing about the original movie?
Spurrier: For my money, even when you peel away all the extraordinary surface brilliance — the exotic creativity, the adventure, the sheer technical excellence of the puppetry — the unifying denominator which makes “The Dark Crystal” such a masterpiece can be boiled down to two words: childlike wonder.
Every character in the film is a version of a child, a youthful personality we all recognize.
Q: Design wise, do you have favorite creatures from “The Dark Crystal”?
› Kelly Matthews:
It’s so hard to pick just one, but we’d have to say the Skeksis are our favorite, with the Mystics coming a close second. They both have really unique designs that are easy to translate into our style.
› Nicole Matthews:
The Gelfings are great as well, but it was tricky at first to get them to look right; there was a fine line between too elvish and too human that took some practice to get right during the design stage.
Q: What can you tell us about Thurma and the Firelings?
› Spurrier: Thurma comes from another world made of benign, beautiful fire. A radiant utopia of plasmas, superheated gases and luminous architecture.
Her people, the Firelings, are totally at home in this environment (which would of course be unbearable to any of us), and they’ve built a rich and peaceful culture around the realities, rhythms and strange wildlife of this scorching place.
But now disaster looms. They must send one of their own into the “normal” world — a place which, to them, is impossibly cold and deadly. For this they choose Thurma.
› Nicole Matthews:
Thurma is a delightful little fireball who feels everything very strongly and fire itself can be very tricky, so there was a balance we needed to find that would be both reasonable to draw but also emote how we wanted.
Since Thurma’s fire reflects her emotional state, it was necessary to design it in a way that gave it personality.
It’s a lot more “fluffy” than what we would usually do. We spent a lot of time looking at scenes of Calcifer from “Howl’s Moving Castle” to get an idea of how fire could be emotive and took cues from that into what ended up in the final design.
Q: Will we see Fizzgig?
› Spurrier: Yes, of
course!
Oh heavens yes. I believe every story should feature at least one snarling monster who is 90 percent mouth.