Serenity, Vol. 2: Better Days

--- 3.5 stars --

Wait, so Inara had sex with Simon? What? How? Why? When? I AM SO CONFUSED.

...which basically sums up my experience with Better Days.

In short, the crew is pursued by a high-tech, top o' the line drone while robbing a ... museum? Mansion? Since they can't outrun it, they bring it on board and try to sell it to a ... colleague ... in exchange for a hot tip on where a giant stash of money is hidden. When it turns out to be even more than they expected, Wash, River, Jayne, Simon, Kaylee, and Shep fantasize about what they'll do with their share. (Cue comic relief. River's is like a fever dream meets a Fruity Oaty Bar! commercial. In other words, the best.) The drone's owners are hot on their tail, as is some military guy - show more a client of Inara's, incidentally (or is it?) - who's still hunting "dust bunnies" from the war. There's a Gozilla vs. Mothra sitch, yada yada yada, and ooops! Money's gone.

The colors on the art are lovely - lots of rich browns and gold - but the likenesses are hit or miss and pretty inconsistent, even across individual characters. River's got mousy brown hair in one panel and in another, on the same page, it's black. Many of the secondary dudes look interchangeable, which made the action hard to follow ... especially when there are three separate groups (or maybe four? Hard to tell!)

The daydream sequences are pretty sweet, and it's great to see badass River show herself for a change.

Total dick move on Mal's part, though. Seriously Captain? show less

Like my favorite dinner-table game, "What would *you* do if you won the Powerball?," "Serenity- Better Days" allows us Browncoats another tantalizing glimpse onboard Serenity and at what each crewmember sees in their "mo' money" fantasies (or what they'll allow the other crewmembers to see of said fantasies.)

Again, the Whedon-Verse maxim of "Joss is Boss" is proven correct here- strong voice writing and oh, gorrammit, I laughed *hard* at the full-page artistic depiction of River's fantasy- no spoken dialogue could do this justice, just as no CGI on TV or film could be as apt- apparently River and Delirium (of Neil Gaiman's Endless) share some character-DNA!

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1247391.html

A great nostalgia item, a new episode of Firefly in graphic novel form, set (obviously) between the end of the series and the movie. Another of the nominees for the experimental Hugo category Best Graphic Story, and so far my favourite of the three I've read. I tried the early Buffy season 8 comics, but didn't like the artwork on the characters; Will Conrad seems to have tried harder here, so that they actually look like who theyr are meant to be. Though really what makes it is the script; a fairly ordinary space opera story, shot through with those moments of wit and characterisation that made the original TV series such fun. I can't imagine this appealing much to people who hadn't seen Firefly show more or Serenity, but they are clearly not the intended audience! show less

Okay, so I went to the library to pick up a few dvds for a few days I had scheduled off work, and I just had to pick up new installments of Serenity and Buddha while I was there. As far as I could tell, this was the next Serenity graphic novel, so I picked it up. Started reading it on the bus and finished it before they called my name in the doctor's waiting room.

This story starts in the middle of action, and it was confusing to try to figure out just when this story was. The back of the book establishes that it was written after Those Left Behind, but it clearly takes place before it. Later, after I'd finished reading, I looked up a timeline on the internet and found that indeed, it took place after the TV series, but before Left show more Behind. Ok. Glad that's clear.

Although the credits claim the same artist illustrated Better Days as Those Left Behind, I had a totally different experience with the artwork this time. Maybe I got used to his style, maybe he hit his stride, I don't know. This time faces were the familiar faces that I loved, this time pages were sumptuous when they needed to be, gory when they needed to be, many individual expressions were so spot-on perfect that I had to stop and stare at them awhile to fully appreciate them. There was one action sequence where I'm still a little murky on what exactly happened and how, but I'm willing to let that slide.

As for the writing -- well, I defy any lover of these characters (and really, who else would be reading these?) not to delight in the crew's fantasies of what they would do if they were dirty filthy rich. The crew interactions in this scene capture much of what was best about the series.

Anyway. I'm not going to go on and on. I thoroughly enjoyed this. show less

Better Days strikes a better balance between narrative explication and fannish knowledge than its predecessor, Those Left Behind. While it is still mainly written for already-familiar Firefly fans, this instalment provides a full adventure for Serenity's crew. The full page character illustrations remain a highlight of this particular volume, and Adam Baldwin's introduction is a nice touch and a pleasant read. The entire crew is back in fine form, and tiny hints of backstory and (potential) foreshadowing dot the narrative to good effect. The reader is also treated to more information about at least one character that never truly had a chance to shine due to the premature cancellation of the TV series (and not through any fault of the show more writers or actor herself).

Where Better Days falls down, however, is in abrupt scene changes that leave the reader floundering to switch gears. These changes lack proper segues or markers past sudden background and character differences, leading to a choppy, jumpy feel to the whole. If these artistic decisions supported the action of the plot, it would be one thing, but often the reader is simply left to catch up without explanation or with a belated reason that stops the narrative mid-stream. Perhaps this is a problem caused by the one-volume format, as breaks between the original issues might more clearly delineate scene changes. There is some attempt to create these breaks through the full-page character illustrations and insert pages, but given the graphic novel format and the speed at which one can read such books, these pages tend to blur together and be forgotten in the forward thrust of the plot.

Regardless, Better Days replicates the speech-patterns and vocabularies of the various characters with impressive accuracy, leading to an authentic feel reminiscent of the original Firefly series. I much preferred having a full story in my hands rather than a gap-filler (as provided by Those Left Behind), and I hope to see more graphic novel adventures for Serenity's crew. My fingers are crossed that when that does happen, the series (within this format) continues to improve. show less

Serenity: Better Days by Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews and Will Conrad (2008) – Captain Malcolm Reynolds of the Firefly-class starship Serenity and his crew of misfits endure another battle after their heist of some valuable art works. Although they are outgunned, they somehow manage to escape and even capture a valuable piece of equipment from their attackers. They discover that the sale of this piece of equipment could make the entire crew of Serenity very wealthy and the reader gets to share their musings about how they will live with the wealth. However, selling the booty could be a very complicated process. This is another beautifully done graphic novel with an interesting and entertaining story about Mal and his space marauders. show more Fans of the short-lived TV series and the Serenity movie should especially enjoy it. show less

Summary: Mal and the rest of the crew of Serenity are pretty used to having their heists not going exactly to plan. What they're not used to is to having their heists go better than planned. When a job turns up unexpected millions, the crew has to deal with suddenly being rich... and they all take a turn planning to do with their cut. But the good times never last, and soon they run up against not one but two men who want to take everything away - for good.

Review: Three things to know about Serenity: Better Days:

1) It is listed as Volume 2, but that is purely a publishing order. Better Days and Those Left Behind both take place between the end of Firefly the show and before the movie Serenity, but plot-wise, they're totally unrelated to show more each other, and Better Days actually comes first in the show's internal chronology.

2) It is the equivalent of a single episode of TV. It is therefore short, even for a graphic novel. This means that while it is very fast-moving, it also doesn't explain a some fairly large details, and that since there are not one but two baddies, neither of them are developed particularly well.

3) It still looks and feels very much like a Joss Whedon script, with everyone sounding like themselves, and with a few nice callbacks to earlier episodes. Everyone mostly looks like themselves as well, and while there were a few visual notes that struck me as out of place (highways with traffic-jammed cars? on a central planet?), there were also a few bits (namely, River's plans for her share of the booty) whose awesomeness counteracted any of the other quibbles I had. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: I liked Those Left Behind better, mostly because of its better-developed story, but any excuse to spend an hour with the Serenity crew is a welcome one. show less