What was my take on the first Futurama comic to come across my desk? Well, click the link, and see for yourself.

Spoilers Below

I have been an on-again, off-again viewer of Futurama. Whenever it came on, I would watch it if my cable box came across Cartoon Network or Comedy Central. It makes me wonder why this issue was never an actual episode of the show. Why, you ask? Zoidberg is the star!

The crew is at the Tartar House, for Professor Farnsworth’s announcement that he has invented the Quantum Ring. It exists at all times. So he invented something that has been already invented! The professor’s fried calamari rings came, and Zoidberg stole one. The problem was that he stole the Quantum Ring, and he is now skipping around in time.

This part was pretty confusing, so I am going to the important parts here. He does a skip to when he first came to Planet Express, then to Fry’s first day. He comes to a post apocalyptic setting where he is nibbling on a bone, that ends up being a part of Fry. He hits the present, then 2 years past the apocalypse Just as he was going to hear what happened, He gets to where the gang is sitting around a dinner table, where the announcement of Mom and Nixon’s wedding is going to happen. Just as that happens, he jumps back to he apocalypse, and he brought on by an army of Zaff Brannigans fighting a robot army.

He gets a bit more background on what happened from Leela, mainly Mom and Nixon wanting to kill each other. He jumps back to the past, where the Professor is taking Zoidberg to the doctor to get checked out. In what is undoubtedly a nod to the questionably popular Dr. Who, he gets checked by 11 doctors.

So, Zoidberg comes back to the apocalypse, right to when Fry gets vaporized and turned into the skeleton he was munching on earlier. Another time jump, this time to the wedding. Zoidberg gets to stop the wedding, and shows a picture of Mom and the Professor married. To make this point a little more convoluted, we get another time jump, this time to where Zoidberg got Mom and the Professor drunk, and marries them. And we get the final Zoidberg jump where everyone is leaving the wedding. We have a twist here, where the Professor swallows the ring.

Alright, where do I begin. This story was very confusing the first time around, especially when it was just the jumping. It took about half of the comic for the story to get any form of traction at all. Once it did, it was good. Unfortunately, when you have to fit the exposition, the climax and the resolution of the story into half of the story, it gets confusing, and rushed. Not something I recommend as a light read, for sure. Experienced fans of the show will follow it pretty well, but the casual viewer may want to take a pass on this, just out of confusion.

Overall: 6.5/10