Serenity | Those Left Behind

Dark Horse has provided one of the most perfect packages of a licensed product in a very very long time. In fact I can’t remember when I thought a licensed story had so much going for it. You see this particular 3 issue comic book actually matters in the grand scheme of things that are Serenity and Firefly based. It’s not a filler story. It bridges the gap between the end of the Firefly series and the beginning of the Serenity movie. You find out what led Book to decide to leave Serenity, how Inara landed on that pleasure planet.

So what would you have to do to make this project special? The simple answer is get the creator of the series involved directly. Luckily Joss Whedon is an UBER comic geek, so he’s got a vested interest in this series as well? Even though he doesn’t write it all, he’s credited for co-’story’ing the book, Brett Matthews does a wonderful job of keeping the voices of theses characters true to their television and cinematic versions. None of the characters speaks out differently, everyone acts the way you expect them to. Remarkably this 3 issue series reads exactly like an episode, down to how everything was resolved (or not in this case) and leading you to the next adventure.

The story begins with Mal, Jayne and Zoe on another backwater planet as they’re about to steal some cash unfortunately another group of outlaws are interested in the same loot as well. Guns get fired, people get stabbed, Serenity is used in weird and wonderful ways to give our heroes a narrow escape from an angry mob (we’ve seen this setup before many times). Mal goes to investigate what went wrong and why their informant/supplier of information stiffed them. Meanwhile the Alliance is not being idle as they recruit one of their old operatives that’s got a thing against Mal (yeah who doesn’t) to take him out. Like I said this reads like a very good episode.

Will Conrad is a new name to me (I only know of a Kevin Conrad, who used to ink Tony Daniel). His work is very solid. He doesn’t cheat on the details, he tells the story very solidly and he’s aided in no small way by the wonderful colours of Laura Martin (best colourist in the business). His work can only be described as a rougher, cruder version of Bryan Hitch. This is a big compliment I know, but I honestly believe that if he refines his work ever so slightly and makes things slightly tighter he’s onto great things in the future.

How exactly do you make this package even more special? You might as well get Nathan Fillion to write the introduction to the series. It’s a great little touch and one that I’m sure all Serenity/Firefly fans will appreciate greatly.

After everything I’ve said, would you believe that the story and internal artwork isn’t the star of the show? The cover artist roster assembled for this book is truly spectacular in every meaning of the word. Adam Hughes, Joe Quesada, Bryan Hitch, Leinil Francis Yu, Joss Middleton, Sean Phillips, John Cassaday, Jo Chen, Tim Bradstreet, JG Jones; I swear they had me at Adam Hughes. Apart from the front and back cover, all the internal covers were shots of the main characters with white backgrounds. Very striking stuff as everyone put all their efforts into making the character poses and details really matter. It’s a great collection of covers, easily one of the best I’ve ever seen.

My main gripe with the series are the ‘action’ scenes. In most cases these are the scenes that I generally get bored of to be honest, however in this particular book they’re integral to resolving the story(which I won’t be explaining) however I will be talking about the Book scene. At this stage if you know you’re buying this book based on what I’ve written before you can stop reading, come back later.

Spoiler Warning

Anyway for all those who have read the book, I’m supremely unconvinced by the Book hitting Mal scene. This is effectively the reason why he left Serenity. This is why he wanted off the ship. It makes sense, however I honestly thought they should have drawn this scene out a lot more. Put more words being exchanged between the two characters. Draw the scene out over a couple of pages more, build the tension up. Also it’s amazing how book moves from one end of the table and lands Mal a punch he didn’t expect. This to be honest is partly the art’s fault, and Will Conrad’s only real failure in my eyes throughout the entire book, that he gave so much energy and authenticity to. The other side of the coin is that the page count just didn’t allow for this sort of thing, however I’m sure that if the story called for it then they could have bumped up the page count, so the other fault is landed on the writer’s feet.

I do wish this sort of quality can be maintained if they do decide to continue the stories of Serenity through our favourite medium. Fuck television and Hollywood, let there be more Serenity stories told using this medium. I know I’d buy it and so should you.

Witers: Joss Whedon & Brett Matthews
Artist: Will Conrad
Colourist: Laura Martin
Publisher: Dark Horse