At christmas, I found peace... and Serenity

[Raiyven]

Alright, I'm not going to make a post lauding Serenity and Firefly that's reminiscent of the many others you've probably seen floating around the media. And don't think I hate it, Joss Whedon is my intellectual love bunny.

Actually, I wanted to point out the seven-book series put out by Dark Horse Comics that serves as a nice prequel to Serenity and a bridge between it and the series. It's actually only 3 books long (i read it, rather hungrily, in half an hour. then put it all back in plastic), but seven books have been released with cover art by four different artists depicting each character. The art on the cover and inside the books themselves is amazing... both in the penned detail and in the colour detail. They didn't get too far out of the earthtoned rustic, western frontier look you often saw in the series, but that doesn't go toward making it bland, either.

I won't spoil the story, but it sets up the beginning of the film perfectly from the series with a typical Whedon-esque episode of the Serenity crew; a failed job, a few shady deals, and character development all around. The script was penned by Whedon (go figure, right?), so it still kept the same feel the series did; and something I thought was kind of neat, whenever the characters lapsed into Chinese, he actually wrote the Chinese dialect in. Can I read it? No. But it makes me look cultured to be reading something in another language, right?

Anyways, if you can get your hands on them (my gal has an in with about ten different comic book stores around here, so she got em right off the truck for me as a surprise), do so; both for the collector's value, and it's a great read for those of us (like me) who want more damn Firefly.

Also, check out the Serenity RPG that's been published for tabletop. Friend of mine picked up the sourcebook, and it looks really neat, and meant to very much create characters that reflect not only what you want, but ones that fit in with the Firefly universe as well.

-R