Created and illustrated by Cristian Baldi and written by Claudio Baratti (season one) and Luca Saglimbeni (season two, still ongoing), this webcomic follows the adventures of the titular Captain Ufo, a short, bombastic green alien who aspires to conquer the Galaxy and (usually) fails miserably, triggering big adventures. Accompanied by his trusted yet rather stupid First Mate, Number one, a quirky crew and (since season two) a verbose judge on a personal quest, a no-nonsense soldier as Chief of Security and a neurotic young doctor as Chief Medical Officer, the captain travels among the stars on his ship, the Widowpunisher.
It's not clear in which galaxy the stories take place; so far there has been no human characters, nor in the main cast, nor as a background character.
Each season is a complete, self contained story arc. Season one follows ufo's first attempts to form an empire; season two starts with Ufo and Number One convicted for the events of season one, and later, dragged into the adventure by the same judge who put them on trial, they find themselves unwillingly involved in a story of pirates capable of destroying entire planets, corrupt corporations and conspiracies. While remaining comedic (especially when the Captain or his original crew are around), season two is much more adventurous than season one, with occasional dramatic moments.
The series is available on Facebook (Italian)
and (English), Webcomics.it (Italian only) and, for English speaking readers, Tapastic and Webtoon. Updates weekly, on tuesday (Italian) and wednesday (English). It began in June 2014; the current season is scheduled to end in July 2017 and there's at least a third season planned.
Captain Ufo contains examples of:
- Action Girl: Yonia, the new Chief Security Officer of the Widowpunisher in season two.
- Alien Blood: In season two we see that some aliens have green or blue blood.
- Aliens Speaking English: Played straight, as almost every species met so far speaks English (or Italian, of course) without any reference to universal translators of any kind. The only notable exception are the scorpion pirates from season one.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: every alien race seen so far.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: The scorpion pirates in season one have, of course, scorpion tails with literal stingers. The pirates' champion uses it as a weapon during the duel with commander Grishko.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: There's all sorts: multiple limbs, eyes, ears, nostrils, mouths, even boobs.
- Bizarre Alien Psychology: Crantorians love to obey orders, to the point that commanding positions have the lowest prestige in their society. Ufo thinks that this makes them the perfect subject for his empire untill his crantorian army meets the Ambrosians, who know the quirk and order the Crantorians to rebel against Ufo
- Blood Sport: The Crantorians are fond of this.Captain Ufo: (sees Crantorians hitting each others with check pieces) I've just remembered that I prefer checkers, thank you.
Crantorian President: Ok. Mariah, bring out the circular saw for checkers! - Character Title
- Chromatic Arrangement: the uniforms of Ufo's crew, loosely inspired by Star Trek's (especially the 24th century ones, from TNG onwards). There's red for the command and military division, blue for medical, yellow for engineering, purple for science and white for tacticians/advisors.
- Colour-Coded Emotions: In season two, Celeste enters Shaan's mind to interrogate him thanks to Dr. Marcuus' machine. The enviroment is usually a white-ish void, but memories are colour-coded (given the situation, red or blue/violet for anger and sadness).
- Cool Starship: The Widowpunisher.
- Disintegrator Ray: Used a couple of times in the first season on uncooperative alieans and at least one crew member.
- Drama Bomb: A few in season two. For example, the explosion caused by big bad's attack that kills General Lyne, or Shaan's memories of how he lost his crew, his family and the entire planet he decided to retire on.
- Extra Eyes: The scorpion pirates have four eyes. One of the scientits on season two's big bad's ship has four eyes too (and two mouths and six nostrils). On page 11 of season two one of the patrons of the pub has seven eyes.
- Faster-Than-Light Travel: Of the Hyperdrive kind. In this universe it's called Hyperblur.
- Humanoid Aliens: Almost all the alien races met so far.
- Insectoid Aliens: The scorpion pirates in season one.
- Little Green Men: The Captain and the members of his species.
- Loads and Loads of Races: Especially in the second season.
- Luxury Prison Suite: after he insisted that everyone should aknoweledge his evil genius during the trial that opens season two, Ufo is put in one of these as "voluntary inmate". He was not amused.
- Man-Eating Plant: Nesea is full of them; they also grow and adapt to threats at a ridiculuos speed.
- MegaCorp: The Brimen-Fukuoka Corp, among others.
- Mind Probe: Dr. Marcuus ends up on the Widowpunisher because she invented one of these and Celeste put her under arrest for that (Untill she finds that the machine can be usefull to crack Numer One's mind to access control of the Widowpunisher, and later to interrogate the comatose Shaan).
- Named After Their Planet: The Crantorians come from Crantor, Amrites live on Ambrosia, Neseans from Nesea, etc.
- Number Two: Well, Number One. Up untill the second season we didn't even know wether he had any name other than Number One.
- Negative Space Wedgie: The widowpunisher ends up trapped for several months inside a temporal bubble cause by the breackdown of it's own hyperblur engines thowards the end of the first season.
- Our Doors Are Different: Pretty much all listed varieties.
- Ominous Floating Spaceship: The Nesean ship at the end of season one.
- Plant Aliens: the Neseans
- Ray Gun: All weapons seen so far are of this kind.
- Red Shirt: The low rank soldiers of the crew can be this, at moments. Also, their uniforms are actually red (deliberate: the uniforms are loosely inspired by TNG's ones).
- Space Opera
- Space Sailing: The Widowpunisher, if you ignore the propulsion ring, is ship-shaped.
- Speech-Bubbles Interruption: happens some times, when noises interrupt the speech. For example, here and here
- Starfish Aliens: Most aliens are humanoid, however there's the occasional bloat-with-tentacles-and-eight-eyes, worm-like aliens and even a species that resemble vending machines.
- The Alcatraz: The Hole, the most secure prison space station in the USC.
- The Federation: The United Stellar Confederations.
- The Medic: Dr. Marcuus.
- The Napoleon: The Captain himself.
