Firefly Lives - New Comics in 2008

gambit3 writes "'Serenity: Better Days' will be released as a 3 part comic in early 2008. The series is a step back in time to the early years of the Firefly crew, and the fledgling gang's turbulent attempts to cope with success after they pull off their first successful heist. It features the same creative team as Those Left Behind, with the story by Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews, art by Will Conrad, and Adam Hughes providing all three covers this time." Ironic, considering today's brand-new poll.

Re:Blah

[wizardforce]

I'm not surprised that they decided to go with a format that certainly costs less than a movie or a series, yet will still bring diehard fans in to buy it.

Indeed if it fails they are not out much except the respect of many of their fans. What concerns me is that the only thing worse than no Firefly series is a badly re-animated Firefly series.

Re:I bet you really didn't see the series

[Macrat]

You only caught it on TV, right? When some episodes were dropped and played out of order? Go rent the series and watch it for real. I think you'll be surprised at what you missed.

Meh!

[solios]

I liked Buffy, I loved Firefly. I like comics. I make comics (okay not for a living thank gawd but that's not the point). The Buffy comics, in my opinion, are nowhere nearly as good as the series was. Could be pacing, could be the layouts (they don't help), could be the fact that one issue of the comic seems to cover a bizzaro combination of a quarter of an episode and half a season. Whatever it is, it's lacking.

So, meh. I don't want an artist's attempt at facsimiles of Mal and Jayne - I want more Nathan Fillion and Adam Baldwin. With shows like BTVS and Firefly, my enjoyment doesn't come from the script. The script is corn. My enjoyment comes from the actor's execution of that script. In comics, you don't have an actor giving a performance - you have a penciller (and then an inker, then a colorist) executing their impression of what they think the writer is trying to convey.

I hobby in comics, I've done bit parts in short films and web serials, I've made my own shorts - a great - or even a good - actor can make a passable pulp script a cult phenomenon. Anthony Stewart Head and Nathan Fillion are great examples of this. You cut down the creative team (as opposed to scale UP the creative team), and something gets lost in the process.

It's one thing to turn a comic book into a TV series or a movie - going the other way has always felt like a giant step backwards - not only do you lose the acting, you lose the cinematography and the editing, And even if all of that wasn't an issue, there's the fact that individual comic issues are as saturated with ads as a nuclear reaction chamber is with radiation - and with comics, the shift in visual style between comic content and ad content is even more jarring than it is with television ads or movie previews.

So, it might be good but as far as I'm concerned it won't actually be Firefly. If I'm lucky it'll be available in trade paperback by the time I'm finished with my reading list of comics that only exist as comics (currently plugging through The Invisibles as the spare change permits).

Re:I bet you really didn't see the series

[unsigned integer]

Also, the director commentary (Joss) for many of the episodes is great to listen to. I enjoyed 'Objects in Space' *more* after watching some of the hows and whys coming from Joss as the episode played along. It was really quite engaging.

You can see the basis for the long opening continuous shot in 'Serenity' at the end of this episode - something you don't /appreciate/ until you realize there were no cuts, no different cameras ... all one take. It was so subtle and well done that I hadn't realized what Joss was doing (had done) until he mentioned it in the commentary.

Firefly, canceled before finishing a full season. Does that seem right to you?

Is Firefly the only SF show you've seen on TV?

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefly was the very best SF show ever on TV.

Reading this, it was obvious to me that you've never seen Babylon 5 or Blake's 7. But then I began to wonder. Even the original Startrek was better than Firefly, which isn't really SF at all, just a cowboy series plus a spaceship.

Perhaps I'm being unfair. Maybe you've seen Startrek Voyager, and are comparing it with that, in which case we just have a difference of taste concerning which reasonable people may disagree.

Re:I bet you really didn't see the series

[crashfrog]

Yeah, count me another one who never saw the series until the DVD, saw them in order, whatever. I found it hackneyed and corny. Space-guns that make laser sounds, but look exactly like period Western firearms? Every space hooker has a heart of gold, particularly if they work at the Heart of Gold in an episode called "Heart of Gold"? And what the hell was with that assassin dude in the last episode? ("Am I a lion"? What? I was as confused as the doctor guy. Who the hell wrote that shit?)

Space/western fusion could be cool, and is, but Whedon seemed to only combine the parts of space opera and westerns that were lame and didn't make any sense outside of their genre. And also - yes, we've all seen Gina Davis in "The Long Kiss Goodnight" and watched "Dark Angel." We know that crazy amnesiac chicks who escape from government facilities have always been trained as assassins. Was there anybody in the entire world who didn't guess everything about River's back story after the second episode? That person is an idiot, if so.

Hackneyed, predictable, cliched, generic. There was nothing about Firefly that ever deserved its praise, which is why it had one season and BSG's coming back for a fourth. Cowboy Bebop is still the best space western show out there.

Re:Irony ? Coincidence

[MoriaOrc]

I'd say it's more likely a "better anything then nothing at all" scenario. Movies and TV shows are pretty high budget, especially TV shows with a lot of fancy special effects like Firefly. Comic books are relatively cheap, and they've done a few comics in the past so it probably wasn't to hard to get the rights to do more.

On a lighter note, I wouldn't say dead last. It's a pretty heated race for 2nd from the bottom between "Video Game" and "Comic Book."

Re:I bet you really didn't see the series

[SanityInAnarchy]

Martial arts are for some reason the greatest power in the universe.

Ok, this one I take issue with. Did you not see the gunfights?

And River is not a weapon because she's good at martial arts. She's a weapon because she can read minds, even unconsciously -- her martial arts (and gunplay, when she has a gun) are impossibly perfect.

So the rest of your points, I could debate for quite awhile, but it's really more a matter of opinion. (Example: Everyone does not always have to say it "witty", they do because that's what real people do. Quite frequently, they say it straight: "You turn on any of my crew, you turn on me. You did it to me, Jayne.")

But the bit about martial arts is pure bullshit.

Re:I bet you really didn't see the series

[dpastern]

I know...Joss has copped a bad hiding from the TV studios - he's consistently produced brilliant shows, all for nought. Lucas can provide a shitty script for any of the new Star Wars shows and they sell like hotcakes, Joss produces very well written scripts, thoughtful direction, excellent acting from his cast, on a shoestring budget and gets screwed over.

In my eyes, Joss is the best talent in Hollywood, he just is so imaginative and doesn't conform to what Hollywood wants that this gets in the way of him becoming 'successful'.

Dave