A Grand Entrance Would Not Go Amiss: Serenity: Leaves on The Wind #1 Review

If you are a geek in the 21st Century, it is almost a prerequisite to be a fan of Firefly. The only question is when and how you got involved in the show. Here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives, we either stayed in on Fridays to watch them or we set the VCR to tape them (note for the kids: back in 2000, TiVo was a toy for the rich. The rest of us had devices called “video cassette recorders,” which could record television if you set a timer, left your cable box on the correct channel, and remembered to insert the appropriate magnetic analog physical media. Next time, I will explain the concepts of “cable box” and “magnetic analog physical media.”), and not only saw the movie Serenity twice in the theaters despite being unemployed and broke at the time, but convinced my parents to go, despite the fact that they believed that “Firefly” was a form of designer synthetic amphetamine.

So I’ve been watching Firefly since the beginning, but honestly, a lot of the comics based on the show have left me a little cold. Sure, it’s always fun to hang out with the crew again for a little while, but the stories in the comics have always felt a little disconnected from the general goings-on of the main storyline. They’re flashbacks or side jobs or something like that, so while they’re fun to read, the stakes always feel a little lower because, since they’re not part of the main throughline, you kinda know that everyone’s gonna get out all right. And it ain’t a true Joss Whedon Firefly story unless anyone could wind up dead at any time.

Well, enter Serenity: Leaves on The Wind, written by Zack Whedon with art by Georges Jeanty, which, after nine years, is the “official” sequel to the movie Serenity. It takes place weeks or months after the crew broadcast proof of the Alliance’s role in creating the Reavers at the conclusion of the movie, which means that the Alliance has resigned in disgrace, the frontier worlds have been distributed all the supplies they need to become civilized, and Malcolm Reynolds and crew have been lionized as heroes, right?

Yeah, not so much.

In response to Serenity’s broadwave of proof that the Alliance caused the creation of the Reavers (and, you know, the deaths of millions), society has responded pretty much how any resident of 21st Century America would expect: with entrenched authority denying everything and demonizing the crew of Serenity as terrorists, while those against the current regime are using are using the information as the catalyst to start protesting and sometimes rioting. The government is desperate to get their hands on Serenity and her crew to start chucking prosecutions around, because discrediting an absent malcontent isn’t nearly as satisfying, and besides: people in custody aren’t nearly as good as being ready-made folk heroes. In the meantime, the people protesting the Alliance are leaderless, and have decided that the best way to go would be to organize under the leadership of, well, Captain Mal Reynolds. Which is a tricky proposition, since he and his crew (minus Jayne, who, having always had is eye out for the Main Chance, has fucked off to run his own crimes) are laying low until trouble passes. But this is the crew of Serenity, and not only does trouble never pass, but sometimes old trouble comes back.

The most positive parts of the issue are catching up with the crew of Serenity, depressing a situation as they find themselves in. Sure, they’re on the run, low on cash and supplies with no prospects and prices on their heads, but the banter is as good as it ever was, and the reality on the ship is enough to send every Firefly ‘shipper’s heart a-twitter, no matter who they were hoping would get together, unless you’ve always had some weird Shepard Book / Mal / Jayne circle jerk with blue handjobs in mind. And if you have, please close your browser and never return here.

The downside to the sequence on Serenity is that everything feels a bit rushed. We spend an extended period of time with Mal and Inara, where they spend as much time showing us that they’re fucking as they spend having them explain their current conundrum. We get a panel learning that Kaylee and Simon are still doing the Dirty Boogie, but we learn it from other people talking about it. We only spend ten of the issue’s 24 pages with the crew of Serenity, and nearly a full page of that is a recount of Wash’s death from the movie, which anyone likely to buy a Serenity comic is probably intimately familiar with. So while it’s good to spend some time with these characters again, I just wish it had been a little more leisurely and less rushed.

One thing I really liked was the lack of, well, Firefly slang. The show and the movie gave us a patois that is distinctive and interesting, but after so many years, having too much of it in places makes some stories feel more like fan fiction than real writing. Sure, dropping, “Shiny!” all over the place would remind the reader that they are reading a Firefly story, but after so much time, it would feel forced and a bit lazy. It was one thing to have that stuff all over the place in the show, when Joss Whedon was trying to establish the vernacular, but too much of it would make it feel like you were stuck in a Browncoats cosplay meeting where nobody knows each other and yet wants to fans a way to talk to each other. I counted a single, “gorram” and another lone, “‘Verse,” which was enough to reestablish the slang without overdoing it. And yet Zack Whedon nails down the strangely formal pattern of speaking that Mal and some of the other lowlives use in an effort to elevate their station, at least in how they speak. So the overall dialogue effect is to drop us effectively back into the Firefly universe, without rubbing our faces into it. I found it to be well done.

I had a little more of an issue with the activities surrounding the Serenity crew. Sure, I can buy the government denying the broadcast about the Reavers, and trying to discredit and capture Reynolds and company, while protestors rail against the government… but they are all on the nose to obvious current events – the reaction against Edward Snowden and Occupy Wall Street, respectively. And while there’s nothing wrong with stories “ripped from the headlines” – without them, Dick Wolf would be dunking chicken at KFC right now, and the USA Network would be dark for four hours a day – it feels a little weird when it’s happening in a sci-fi story. And yes, I know that that is a hell of a thing to say about a story that relies as much on the American Civil War as it does artificial gravity – but seeing the obvious influences on those parts of the story kinda pulled me out of it a little bit.

Georges Jeanty’s art is much as it is on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, by which I mean that he does a really good job in aping the faces of the actors who originally portrayed the characters he’s drawing, but without being slavish imitations or lightbox jobs. His figures are generally realistic, and he draws big, round, open faces with big eyes that really accentuate the emotions. And while there really isn’t much action beyond a one-page dirt scooter race, he sets good scenes for conversations, with earthy, more claustrophobic settings for the more blue collar settings, with big, wide-open, pristine settings for the Alliance douchebags. With that said, his sweaty pro-government conservative talking head seemed a little over-the-top and obvious from a characterization standpoint, and there is a face in the Anonymous / Occupy Wall Street meeting that looks like someone drew a Calvin mouth on a basketball, but all in all, it’s good-looking stuff.

There’s a lot to like for the Firefly fans. Whedon really nails the language and the linguistics without rubbing our noses in it, and when he has that particular character give the “leaf on the wind” line, it felt dead-on perfect. And while I wish we spent a little more leisurely time with the crew of Serenity, and a little less with people I’ve been reading about on Boing Boing for the past couple of years, it was a pretty solid beginning to the sequel to Serenity we’ve all been waiting for since 2005. It ain’t perfect… but then again, Firefly started with the wrong episode and I still got into it. If you’re a Firefly fan, this is well worth reading, flaws and all.