Browncoats, rejoice!

If you’ve been in mourning ever since you watched Serenity once or twice or a thousand times, there’s a glimmer of sunshine waiting for you:

Mal is back! And so is his crew of big damn heroes.

Picking up after the events of the movie Serenity, we rejoin the gang some eight months or so later, on the run, avoiding the Alliance baddies, and trying to lie low and go their own way. But Captain Mal doesn’t manage to stay out of trouble for very long, and some very bad bad guys are trying to track them down.

Meanwhile, there’s bittersweet joy onboard the Serenity, as personal lives have moved forward in all sorts of ways — most pretty expected, but at least one development totally unexpected.

Sigh.

I can’t even begin to express how great it was to spend time with these guys again! River, Kaylee, Inara, Simon… even Jayne’s hat!… and the mule… and so much more.

This isn’t just fan service, though. Serenity: Leaves on the Wind has a story to tell, and it’s a good one. The plot is tight and action-packed, but with the same heart that held together the stories told in the too-brief life of Firefly.

The artwork is a bit spotty at times — sometimes Mal and Simon seemed interchangeable, and ditto for Inara and River. But overall, the likenesses worked well enough to make me happy.

What really and truly sent me over the moon was the dialogue. Words on a page aren’t the same thing as words spoken on a big (or small) screen — but the writers of Serenity: Leaves on the Wind have done a gorram great job of capturing the essence of the characters through the words they speak.

I know! Let’s play a guessing game! Can you guess who says each of the following in Serenity: Leaves on the Wind?

a) Bad people got in my head, put things there, secrets. I could feel them hidden away, dug in like parasites.

b) This job can’t go but one way. Turns out you’re beyond your depth, I ain’t gonna drag you back.

c) This ain’t right, havin’ that man on our ship.

d) Vera’s got this.

e) I marched a lot of young folk to their deaths and had it in mind never to do so again. Anyone shows up uninvited, there’ll be a fine amount of hell to pay, that clear?

f) Plus, you need me, sir.

g) Case you don’t remember, we dealt a pretty ugly blow to a giant wasn’t too fond of us in the first place.

h) I can hear everything, all at once. I can hear the whole ‘verse.

Whee! I could go on all day. But I’ll stop there. Share your guesses in the comments. Whoever gets the most right wins… the undying admiration of your peers!

Serenity: Leaves on the Wind is a hardcover compilation volume of six previously published comic book editions plus a short story comic, “It’s Never Easy”, from Free Comic Book Day in 2012. The story is left open-ended just enough to allow for more Serenity tales to come (although I couldn’t find anything saying one way or the other whether more are planned at the moment).

If you’re a fan, you’ll want to read this. It’s fun. It’s exciting. It’s sexy. It’s moving. It even brought on a tear or two.

But you know what it is, more than anything else?

Shiny.

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The details:

Title: Serenity: Leaves on the Wind
Author: Zach Whedon
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
Publication date: November 5, 2014
Length: 152 pages
Genre: Comics/graphic novel
Source: Purchased