Beyond the Fringe #1 (DC)

writer: Joshua Jackson
artist: Jorge Jimenez

Full disclosure compels me to admit upfront that this comic was published earlier this year, and was originally serialized online last year.

Fine, and let me just also say for the record that I'm glad I finally stumbled into it.  I read DC's initial Fringe comics, based on the cult TV show, but lost track of them a while back.  I've been a fervent fan of the show since it debuted in 2008.  In case you don't know too much about it, Fringe is another ambitious project created by J.J. Abrams (his active involvement ended fairly soon, though), which follows FBI agent Olivia Dunham as she attempts to solve bizarre cases involving science run amok, which leads her to forming unlikely partnerships with Walter Bishop, the eccentric genius who inadvertently caused many of the problems they've since had to clean up, and his son Peter, whom Walter rescued from an alternate reality after his own son died.

Peter is played by Dawson's Creek alum Joshua Jackson, who is indeed the writer of this very comic.  The fact of his integral role in the alternate reality development that played an increasingly expanded role in the show is also central to the story Jackson chose to explore, what happened to Peter after his entered a particularly ominous machine at the end of the third season, which caused plenty of complications in the fourth when the aftermath of this event forced a monumental reconciliation of everything that had come before it.

The biggest concern was that this machine was meant to settle the affairs of the competing realities, with Peter having to choose between them.  In the one he had fallen in love with Olivia.  In the other he was technically a native.  The choice was not as easy as it might have seemed.  In fact, that's the general theme of the whole show, that nothing is as simple as it seems, from the traditional X-Files freak-of-the-week episodes to the subtle maneuvering of Olivia and the two Bishops from season to season as they confronted the wider forces at play.

Jackson's story is like the missing link that the show didn't quite get to explore about its mythology.  Granted a shortened fifth and final season that will explore the Observers who represent the logical end game of trying to manipulate science for personal gain, Fringe didn't quite get to tell this particular tale, including the role of the enigmatic Sam Weiss in the history-spanning saga that Walter initiated.

It's wickedly fascinating, although incredibly dense.  Jackson does an excellent job of capturing the feel of the show (something previous comics did not always do satisfactorily, mostly because they didn't have the proper vision or scope), and is in the right position to offer an authoritative view of the mythology.  If you love Fringe already this is essential.  If you don't know Walter from Walternate, this may serve as an elaborate initiation.  Until this final season Peter has always had to wait for his story to be told properly.  Well, aside from this comic.