Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Serenity: Better Days, Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews, Will Conrad

Title:
Serenity: Better Days
Authors:
Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews, Will Conrad
Rating:
Good

This is my last review in 2008. Several things wiped out my time at the end of the year and slowed me way down. But I'm still trying to read, even if things keep getting in the way.

Serenity: Better Days is a short comic book about the crew of the space ship Firefly, who were featured on the TV show of the same name. If you don't know the setting, this review isn't going to help much, I'm afraid.

As usually happens with tales of this crew, it's the story of a "job" gone wrong. Our heroes are minor criminals, living on the edge of a corrupt society. We applaud their willingness to go it alone and do the right thing in the face of adversity, even if it violates the law, simply because that law is so obviously overbearing and unjust. (You know, simply writing that sentence makes me stop and think about the state of America in a new way, but I digress.)

Amusingly, this story actually starts with a job going well, but then things turn. I won't give away any more than that.

What I can say is that it was a bit disjoint. There were a few places - in a very short book - that I had to back up and reread to try and figure out what had happened. I suspect the authors actually had more material but lacked the page space to include it, so it was cut to fit. The result is OK, but not as easy to follow as I'd like.

I enjoy the Serenity series, and I hope it continues. But I also hope the next one is a bit better edited than this one, so the story flows a bit better.