Serenity #2 - Dark Horse (2005)

I'm not one of those people who thinks Firefly was the best show in the world. I'm one of those people who thinks it was the best show in the universe! Ever!

Being such a drooling fanboy about the show, I had mixed feelings when I heard that a comic miniseries was on the way. My first thought was, "Sweet! A Firefly comic!" This was quickly followed by, "Oh, jeez! I hope it doesn't suck."

Good news! It doesn't suck. The dialogue and story really capture the feel of the show. The art is hit or miss but it's not easy to consistently draw images of actual actors and it's not like I ever got, say, Jayne and Inara mixed up.

This second issue was a little jumpy in places. For example, I'd like to have seen more build up before Book decks Mal. The way it happened in the comic made it seem out of character. If it had happened on the show we would have seen it move more organically. This may just be a matter of pacing. A different arrangement of panels would have solved that problem.

Overall, I am really enjoying this. The few flaws such as the aforementioned pacing and the Chinese being written in actual Chinese (although phonetic spellings would be equally distracting) are overshadowed by the quality of this miniseries.

One smart thing Dark Horse did was to hire three cover artists per issue. I normally despise the variant cover thing but these are so well-done that I want to collect them all. I only bought one version of the first issue (Mal by John Cassaday) and I currently only have the Kaylee cover by Jo Chen (see above) but if I can get my hands on a copy of the Tim Bradstreet Book cover (see below) it will be mine.