Serenity: Leaves On A Wind #1 (Comics Review)

A few years there was this out-and-out space opera science fiction show called Firefly. It didn’t last long, only like half a season or something, but in the years since its untimely and abrupt cancellation, it has become one of the great cult classic television shows. Fan reaction to the show was so severe that Joss Whedon eventually came back to do a movie, Serenity, to tie off some of the loose ends that were left open. I saw all of it in my college years, and I remember that it was a really good show and movie. I certainly enjoyed both. So when Dark Horse announced last year that they were going to continue the story in a comics series, I was very ecstatic.

Written by Joss Whedon’s brother Zack Whedon, and drawn by Georges Jeanty, this issue is everything I could ask for, story-wise. It carries on from where Serenity left off and it lays some really good groundwork for what happened afterwards, since in the timeline, eight months have now passed since the truth about the Reavers was exposed in the movie. Art-wise though, I have my reservations, because most of the characters look nothing like how they are on the show/movie. I mean, I realize that there would be differences, but the differences here are on the order where I can’t even recognize them!

The issue starts off with a prime-time news sequence. A channel has brought in two people to argue the case for/against the revelation about the Reavers being true. The paranoia is all there in full effect. The man arguing against is a brutal force and he puts forward a succinct case for why it is all hogwash, why none of it is true. I almost ended up believing him, truth be told. Thankfully, I have the perspective from the movie to keep me grounded on that front. The woman arguing for, however, isn’t quite collected in her arguments. And she seems to be more on the fence. She makes a stronger case for the new Browncoast resistance that has sprung up in the wake of the revelation than she does about the revelation itself. A bit weird there, but I can forgive that.

From there on out, we get a big perspective on how this revelation is the hottest topic on the Alliance ‘verse-wide communications channels. The big question that everybody is asking is: where the hell is the crew of the Serenity? Where did they go? Are they alive or dead? Just what the hell happened.

The Alliance military, for obvious reasons, is quite interested in the answer and that creates some really nice moments in the comic, all of them good. The first one is, once again, a setup, whereas the second scene really ups the the scales involved since it involves a character we last saw in the show, and this character was in some dire straits at the time. The inclusion is quite welcome and I definitely look forward to seeing where Zack takes the story in.

We do get to see the Serenity crew in the second half of the issue, but a lot has changed in the intervening eight months. Kaylee and Simon are definitely a thing now, as are Malcolm and Inara. The sex scene between the latter seemed to be a really odd fit here, and I’m not really sure if I liked the inclusion of it. But, it is a done-and-shadowed thing, so I won’t complain. Much. Things with Zoe are quite dire of course, given that Wash is dead and she has nightmares about that, not to mention that she is pregnant! Holy hell that was unexpected. I don’t remember if the movie had anything to do with that, its been a while of course, so this was a surprise.

Georges Jeanty does the pencils here, while Karl Story does the inks and Laura Martin does the colours with Michael Heisler does the letters. Pencils-wise, the first half is really good but the second half is not. The second half is where the crew comes in and aside from Mal and Simon, I had a really tough time identifying the characters. It also didn’t help that the “first” appearance of them didn’t have their names in the dialogue, which I think is an oversight, so there’s a double negative here. The characters just don’t look like they are supposed to. But, the inks and colours are good, so there’s that.

Either way, I’m liking where this is all going. Oh and the cover, eh, it could have been better. Has zip all to do with the story other than making Inara look a bit subservient to Mal, which she has never been as far as I recall.

Rating: 8/10