Serenity – Firefly Class 03-K64 volume 1: Those Left Behind


By Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews, Will Conrad & various (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-59307-449-4

For those far-too-few folks who actually saw it, Firefly remains one of the best Science Fiction TV shows ever created. It was cancelled after one season. Buy the box-set or seek it out from an on-demand, streaming media outlet as soon as you possibly can.

That crushed yet select fanbase were eventually reassured and delighted by the superb Serenity – one of the best science fiction movies ever released.

Rent it, buy it, watch it however you can.

You don’t really need to, but it will be fun and afterwards you’ll be even more properly primed to enjoy this delightful digest-sized full-colour paperback continuation which bridges the period between the show’s end and the film, offering further details and moments in the eventful lives of reluctant freedom fighter Malcolm Reynolds and his oddball crew of reprobates aboard an independent trader starship of the Firefly class.

Collecting the 3-issue miniseries, Serenity: Those Left Behind, this is the first volume of comic adventures starring the nomadic, semi-piratical outlaws, and if you aren’t au fait yet – did I mention the live action iterations are readily available and extremely entertaining? – here’s a little help.

After they used up Earth, humanity migrated to the stars and settled another star-system packed with hundreds of more or less hospitable planets and satellites. Now it’s the 26th century and mankind is living through the aftermath and reconstruction period of a punishing internecine conflict known – by the victors – as the Unification War.

This still-fresh, tender and, for far too many, unconcluded clash saw the Outer Colonies crushed after attempting to secede from the authoritarian Alliance of first-settled inner planets. Reynolds fought valiantly on the Rebel/losing side and now spends his days eking out a living on the fringes of an increasingly repressive and dangerous universe: a fiercely free agent skippering a small cargo vessel.

Hopefully that’s just shipping cargo and people from world to world and trying to avoid the ever-expanding Alliance’s representatives and security forces, but occasionally survival means bending the law a mite….

It’s hard, risky work: often illegal and frequently dangerous – especially as the outer regions are where the insane cannibal berserker savages dubbed Reavers restlessly prowl.

Life changed forever after Serenity gave passage to fugitive Alliance doctor Simon Tam: on the run after stealing his apparently psychic sister River from a top secret research project.

The Government spared no effort or expense to get her back, hounding the fugitives from pillar to post until Mal and his crew finally resolved to push back. After too many close shaves and at the cost of too many friends, Reynolds and Co finally uncovered the horrific secret the Alliance were so desperate to keep hidden and broadcast it to the entire ‘Verse…

Before that moment, however, for this yarn the unhappy wanderers are back at the daily grind of getting paid and not getting caught, as scripters Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews, illustrator Will Conrad, colourist Laura Martin and letterer Michael Heisler, open this stellar rollercoaster ride with the rovers indulging in a spot of bank robbery on a frontier world, only to stumble upon a much nastier gang of desperadoes with the same idea…

All too soon Malcolm’s party have surrendered the loot to their far-more-bloodthirsty rivals and are fleeing for their lives from the irate homesteaders to make another astounding hairsbreadth escape, but as the captain apologizes once again to long-term passenger Inara the Companion for the slow, agonizingly torturous and oft-diverted passage to her intended destination, they have no conception that more Alliance manhunters have just latched onto their trail…

The stalkers have devious plans which involve recruiting another deadly maniac Reynolds has made a lasting impression upon, but by then the oblivious crew of Serenity are already embroiled in another bad idea. Vile criminal fixer Badger has convinced them to go after millions in lost cash, left to rot amongst the uncounted dead and wrecked, vacuum-blasted ships lost in the cataclysmic and legendary Battle of Sturges…

And in a hidden bunker, the hunters of River Tam inspect the ship that maimed, mad Agent Dobson plans to use in killing Reynolds and Serenity and feel extremely confident that their prize will soon be back in their hands…

Voyage time aboard the Firefly passes as it usually does, with crew and passengers sniping, sparring or just plain fighting, but all too soon the ship eases into the horrific debris field and the amiable bandits-turned-grave-robbers are cautiously searching for the loot. At that moment Dobson launches his blistering attack and the Alliance hunters make their own move, surreptitiously boarding Serenity to capture River.

They know all about her incredibly lethal capabilities and think they’re ready for anything, but have severely underestimated the power of a brother’s love or engineer Kaylee’s devious ingenuity…

As that particular Alliance plan goes to crap, back amongst the dead men, Dobson and his cohorts are so obsessed over settling accounts with Reynolds they completely forget how dangerous his shambolic, cantankerous crew can be…

This power-packed good thing in a small package is supplemented with stunning cover-art portraits of the crew from John Cassaday, Joe Quesada, Tim Bradstreet, Brian Hitch, JG Jones, Jo Chen, Leinil Yu, Josh Middleton and Sean Phillips plus a wistful, funny Introduction from Nathan (the man Reynolds himself) Fillion and comes sporting a tone and sensibility that is pure Jonah Hex (back when the bounty-hunting gunfighter was as blackly funny, sardonic and socially critical as he was thrilling, scary and action-packed), delivering astoundingly terse dialogue and winning characterisation plus all the intoxicating bonhomie and sense of wonder any starstuck reader could want.

This is a book no lover of space opera shoot ’em ups can afford to miss.
Serenity © 2005, 2006 Universal Studios. Firefly™ and Serenity: Firefly Class 03-K64™ Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.