Not bad, but not on the level of the BUFFY and ANGEL comics Warning! Minor spoilers!
I don't think it takes a lot of thought to realize why the SERENITY comics -- either this series, BETTER DAYS, or the earlier one, THOSE LEFT BEHIND -- are not as successful as the very good BUFFY Season 8 or ANGEL Season 6 series: Joss Whedon is saving his "A" material. It is not a coincidence that both series were placed in the time period between the end of the series FIREFLY and the film SERENITY. There remains a very good possibility that there will be a second SERENITY film. Whedon therefore does not want to deal with the time period following the end of the earlier movie. The series FIREFLY ended with three pretty hefty mysteries. One was Book's back-story. We'll unfortunately never get that one, unless Whedon decides to do another series of Serenity comics. A second one was Inara's back-story, which was hinted at on a couple of occasions, but never revealed. Coupled with some sort of resolution of the relationship between Mal and Inara, it is pretty clear that a new film would have to have Inara at the center of it. The third mystery was the whole enigma of River. That was the subject of the film SERENITY. Until it becomes obvious that there will never be a movie (and Whedon is not among those who believes it impossible), we'll not see a resolution of any of this.
So, we are left with only the "B" material in anything having to do with Serenity. Whedon's work has always excelled when the overall story is moved forward. But by necessity Serenity is in a holding pattern.
Still, I did enjoy reading these three comics. Unlike the previous reviewer, I do not think that expanding them would have helped much. The brute fact is that it isn't a story of much substance. We did get some nice moments, and we learned a significant detail about Zoe (namely, that she was a Dust Devil aka a Terrorist against the Alliance), but all in all there was simply not much potential. That possible sequel squelches any really interesting story. And the situation of the crew at the beginning of the film SERENITY significantly limits just how far they can go with anything. But it was nice to see the gang again. Unlike BUFFY and ANGEL, we didn't get anywhere near a satisfactory number of episodes. We got more of a taste than a long satisfying draught.
So while I was grateful for these comics and while I would certainly buy more if they produced more, I really hope they hold off until everyone agrees that the possibility for a second movie is completely dead. Then Joss can use all of the "A" material he has sitting there, waiting.
Feels Rushed: Would Have Worked if Series Was Five Issues, Not Three It's better than #1, but not as good as #2.
I admit, this issue confused me. After the second read it clicked a bit better, but a lot of the time I was wondering what the Special Hell was going on. Especially in the action sequences, but that's more of an art problem than anything else, so will be addressed in the "Art" section. But what's that about Simon and Inara? Was she just giving him advice, or...? If the other thing, why was such a huge plot development left up in the air. This is supposed to be canonical, so if that DID happen, wouldn't the things set after this reflect such an incident? I might be totally off the mark here, but that just didn't make sense at all. I've read and understood comics far more convoluted than your average issue of Serenity, so I really don't know what was up with that.
Other than that, the issue was pretty good. The reveal about Zoe's past was a remarkable idea, and really serves to separate Mal and Zoe's backstory, preventing it from being the 'exact same past,' which is a really good thing. All the voices were spot on, probably more so than any other issue. The dialogue feels like it came right out of an episode of the show, which is really good.
As far as the art goes, Will Conrad rocks the character's likenesses, but the action is horribly done. Adding to the WTF-Is-Going-On factor that the plot kind of smelled of, the big climatic action scene didn't work well at all. In basically ANY other comic I've read, I could easily follow the action. Not so much here.
Other than the artist's depiction of action and the stuff I spoke about in the first paragraph, this made me feel like I was watching Firefly again, which is what both the Buffy and Angel comics have done for me. Which is why I love them so much. Even though I didn't think it was a really great issue, the past two "Serenity" installments have given me hope that this story can live on in this medium.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tony's Online Tips
Trevor
