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.