Jim Henson’s Return to Labyrinth, Vol. 1
Published by: Tokyopop
Story: Jake T. Forbes
Art: Chris Lie

192 (164) pages.
Original Language: English
Orientation: Left to right
Vintage: August 2006
Inkers: Jeremy Freeman; with Robert Grabe, Alex McCaffrey, Tyler Niccum, & Em Stone
Tones: Erfan Fajar Studio
Layout and Lettering: Lucas Rivera
Cover Design: Anne Marie Horne & Kyle Plummer
Consulting Editor for the Jim Henson Company: Michael Polis
Contributing Editors: Tim Beedle & Luis Reyes
Editor: Rob Valois
Publisher’s Rating: Teen, 13+

Based on the feature film Labyrinth: Directed by Jim Henson, Story by Dennis Lee & Jim Henson, Screenplay by Terry Jones
Original Designs by Brian Froud

Rating:
4 out of 5

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Premise: Toby is an otherwise ordinary teenager whose wishes come true, sort of. Usually a wish is granted in a way that causes damage or brings down the wrath of parents and teachers, because Toby is being watched–and watched out for–by Goblins. To try and change this fate (and get back some stolen homework) Toby goes down the rabbit hole into a whole new world…

Synopsis:

After a brief fairy-tale-style intro, and a neat segue, we settle in with some introductory scenes to the mundane life of Toby Williams. He has the usual problems: His parents are detached and mostly absent, but still find time to nag him about homework. He just ruined the school play, but not before embarrassing himself by flubbing his lines on stage. He gets caught cheating on a test, but that’s not really his fault.

No, really. It’s the Goblins I tell you.

When Toby finally gets to confront someone about all this Goblin “help” he’s been getting, he demands that the King of Goblins stop it. And while Jareth and the other goblins stop helping him, they aren’t done messing with him yet.

Toby has to figure out a way into the Labyrinth, the city of goblins, and then struggle his way through it before he’ll find the answers, or his stolen history paper. He makes a few friends, and a few enemies along the way. But in the end, the answer he gets… will lead us into volume 2.

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Review:

So, I just finished telling you in my most recent column that Japanese manga, at least the volumes on the shelf at your LCS, are better than American Comics. And I spent quite a few words proving it, at least to my satisfaction.

So let me punch a few holes in that argument, immediately contradict myself, and review an American manga. I’m good like that.

Picking up 15 years from the end of the movie, now it is young Toby’s turn to face the Labyrinth. For those of you who haven’t seen Labyrinth (1986, Starring Jennifer Connelly, David Bowie, and a bunch of creatures built by Henson), relax, you won’t need to. Toby was just a plot device in the film (a kidnapped baby) and it was his older sister who played the heroine.

Toby’s sister Sarah is back again, too, but just at the beginning, in a supporting role. And a number of other characters and creatures make a return appearance.

The strength of the manga is not what it borrows from the film, but what it builds on top of it. The new characters and possibilities excite me a lot more than the cameos. The background is rich with possibilities; the few details we get only whet the appetite for more. I think the writer, Forbes, is doing well to take the original as his inspiration and move on with his own twisted fairy tale. The art style is fairly good, too, but once again new characters seem to fair better than those previously captured on film.

It is hard to take a character designed by Brian Froud, brought to life by Henson’s Creature Shop, shown 10 feet tall on a movie screen, and still living in my memory– and have it play out well as line art. The art is good, the inkwork and tones also well done, but it seems like a caricature. That may be why the new characters (who don’t have the burden of having to appear “cinematic”, and can merely be themselves) seem to be much more real.

While I’m on the topic of artwork, let me insert an aside: Damn that’s a creepy cover. Fortunately the art inside is not in the same style. I think the cover is the reason I stalled 4 months before buying this, even though I’m the second or third biggest Henson geek on the face of the planet.

There is a lot of story crammed into this first volume, and more events than I can describe in the space provided here. Some of the side stories, like when a fairie takes a couple pages to explain how she lost her wings, read like their own little fractured bits of Andersen and Grimm. It’s a fun comic. It also seems to be building a much larger story, even beyond the events of the movie or of this first book. I think the creative team (and it’s a big team, read the credits) are working on making this title into an fantasy epic. If it is done with the same skill and care shown here, and with even more new inventions in the world of Labyrinth, then I wish them well.

As a bonus after the story, we get a 24-page preview of another Tokyopop/Henson collaboration, Legends of the Dark Crystal, currently scheduled for a 27 February release. (…and more Henson: If you look at the initial press release, you’ll see they’ve also got Gaiman scripting a manga prequel to Mirrormask. Yes, that Gaiman!)