Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal

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Thad
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Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal

Postby Thad » Thu Feb 20, 2014 1:22 am

Serenity: Leaves on the Wind #1 is scientific proof that Zack is the most underrated Whedon.

I laughed out loud. Twice. Granted I had a couple beers in me, but my point stands.

There have been a couple Serenity comic miniseries in the past. They had that creepy uncanny-valley artist-tries-too-hard-to-draw-the-actors shit going on. I did not care for them and couldn't read past an issue or two.

There have been a couple Serenity one-shots which I quite liked. One was by written Patton Oswalt and was about Wash's old buddies telling war stories. The other was written by Zack Whedon and was part of a rather clever little Free Comic Book Day flip-book where the other side was a Star Wars story (also by Zack Whedon) with the exact same premise. I hear The Shepherd's Tale is pretty solid too but haven't gotten around to picking it up. (It's a bit overpriced for a hardcover and I've never seen it in paperback. It's another Zack Whedon book, though, and Chris Samnee drew it and I love that guy.)

Leaves on the Wind is the first non-one-shot Serenity comic I've read and really enjoyed. Zack Whedon wrote it, as I mentioned; the artist is Georges Jeanty, who I'm unfamiliar with but who has a real gift for composition. Like, I read a lot of comic books, you guys. And most of the time I don't look at a page and go "Holy shit that's a pretty amazing panel layout." And usually when I do it's something flashy like JH Williams does. This is not that. This is fucking brass-tacks grid shit. Now, I'm sure I'm becoming more observant in my old age, but I'm also sure that when I notice layout and composition BECAUSE they're subtle, the artist must be pretty good.

As for the setup: it takes place shortly after the movie, and does a great job of establishing the current political mood in the 'verse -- the first panel is a shouty Hannity/Limbaugh analogue shouting about how the Miranda video was faked, and it spirals out from there, from the Alliance military to a group of sympathizers to the Serenity crew themselves.

Oh and Zoe has a baby and Mal and Inara are finally doing it.

I guess those are spoilers so I'm tagging them but they're kinda the most immediately obvious things you'll notice if you just flip through the book on the rack.

Anyhow, good for Zack, and good for Jeanty too. This is a solid damn start that captures everything I love about Firefly except the actors (and you can hear their voices in your head).

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Re: Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal

Postby Thad » Sat May 10, 2014 12:09 pm

I've complained at considerable length about previous Serenity comics where they just draw the actors, and I stand by that.

But the opposite can be a problem too. I can recognize the main cast from their costumes, but what about incidental characters?

I had NO IDEA who the fuck the guy in the big reveal at the end of #3 was supposed to be. Kind of takes the shock out of the ending if you're going "Who's that?"

(I guess I should have worked it out by simple process of elimination: there are three black guys in Firefly/Serenity, and one's dead and another's already shown up by this point in the story.)

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Re: Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal

Postby Thad » Tue Jul 15, 2014 2:32 pm

Image

via Whedon

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Re: Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal

Postby Thad » Fri Jul 25, 2014 1:28 am

Firefly Online is still happening; entire cast to reunite. Yes, including Alan Tudyk, though I doubt they'll be pulling any death cheats, no matter what that piece of notebook paper says.

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