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Serenity Comic Book Series
stoolpigeon writes "CBR News is reporting that Dark Horse will be publishing a 3 comic series to provide material that bridges the gap between the Firefly T.V. show and the Serenity film. From the press release: 'The plot of the comic book series centers on the crew members of the ship known as Serenity, who once again find themselves broke and on the wrong side of a number of very large firearms when a heist goes awry, and some old enemies catch their scent. After facing one failure after another, Malcolm Reynolds becomes the target of a conspiracy between government and mercenary forces, and a tense and divided crew must try to unite behind their compromised leader...'"
WTF? Ok, we like Firefly, we are all gooey over Serenity. Why do we have a 3 comic book series as a major /. story item? Is the news really that slow or are people just so incredibly wrapped up in
Firefly/Serenity that it takes precedence? This whole post is a massive spoiler though!
Really, Dark Horse does some fine publishing and I'm sure they've lined up some excellent artists, colorers, letterers, inkers, etc. and it'll be a great read. But why spoil it all right there in a post? Can't leave people to surf over to the site with all the dirt?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Hoochie mama! Hoochie mama!
hhahahahaha
I feel like I'm taking CRAZY pills!
Can't wait for these. About time too.
Any word of a date or release?
If the film does well and with DVD sales going strong (currently ranked #48 on amazon, not too shabby), is it possible that the series will come back to TV?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
but what the heck is Firefly? All these Slashvertisements lately and I don't even understand the product! Damn my cheap college funding! I can afford Cable TV or Cable Internet but not both!
..will there be explosions? what about a grizzled cigar chomping bad guy with a heart of gold? Nekkid chicks?
oh! and what happens on page 23?
Starsucks
I was looking forward to the film, but it'll now be based on a comic book. Films based on comic books are almost entirely rubbish...
Firefly, the gay TV show not the badass GI Joe character, still sucks. Look, it's orginal: Cowboys in space, with whores too. So futurustic.
Movie looks HORRIBLE.
evil adrian
A: Who Cares? /. article? OH for Gos's sake...
B: Who Cares?
C: Who Cares?
D: Who Cares?
E: A comic issuing constitutes as
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Serenity is the movie sequel, scheduled to come out this fall.
The entire series is centered around an interesting crew of renegade smugglers in the distant future. There are strong elements of the Wild West. It's basicly a space opera, like star wars, but without all the lame acting.
the DVD is well worth the purchase price. If you don't believe me, grab a torrent of the first episode off http://www.isohunt.com/ and check it out.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
Regardless of how much I love the subject matter, I refuse to buy individual issues. Guess I'll have to wait for a collected and bound book. As an Alan Moore fan, however, I'm used to the pain.
Let me remind you all that one of the central characters is a high-class whore! She travels the known universe to pleasure men and women! In a space vessel! Perhaps the problem is that /. isn't much of a teenage crowd.
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
a comic book about incontinence pads?
Age old question: How can you tell if the movie/show you're watching is science fiction or fantasy?
Easy. If it's fantasy, there will be dwarfs and men with beards in the cast.
If it's sci-fi, the script will talk about mercenaries a lot. If it calls them "mercs," it's a dead giveaway.
Breakfast served all day!
It always did. Step back for a few moments, try to ignore the goodwill you have towards Joss because of the first 3 seasons of Buffy, and realize that Firefly was pretty lame. Better than a lot of stuff on TV, but still pretty lame.
I mean, I love Firefly, and I'm really looking forward to Serenity... now I have to excited over some silly comic books without which I won't get the full story?
That's sad. It feels like Joss Whedon has sold out, something like the Matrix people did with all their product tie-ins before the final two movies (they even made cartoons for god's sake).
Oh well, money is money.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Any word of a date or release?
May 5th and the production run is already sold out.
The entire series is centered around an interesting crew of renegade smugglers in the distant future. There are strong elements of the Wild West. It's basicly a space opera, like star wars, but without all the lame acting.
;-)
Or... all that in 2 words
You can't take the sky from me...
So we're imagining that:
1. Fox sent the episodes out of order, destroying the arcs.
2. Fox changed the timeslot around.
3. Fox interfered with the creative process.
4. Fox didn't bother airing in WS even though the episodes were actually filmed to be viewed in WS.
This is all in our imagination. The series had a real chance to find an audience? If you really believe that, what happened when the DVD came out and sold like hotcakes, and why are there at least one movie being made?
Actually, I believe the the thesis "the series never had a chance to find its audience" fit the facts much better!
Since the press release neglected to mention it, I looked up the release date of the first issue on Dark Horse's website.
Issue #1 hits July 06, 2005 at a cost of $2.99.
I'm a sci-fi author who's jealous of Firefly's resurrection, because I know how to write sci-fi scripts, but I sure as hell don't know how to draw attention to them. Speaking of which, I post my series of sci-fi anime scripts at my web-site http://www.geocities.com/radiomovie2002/
My point: For every one sci-fi show idea that gets produced, there are hundreds more whose scripts go unnoticed. Firefly was EXTREMELY lucky to even get produced, and even more lucky to get resurrected, and because I'm a starving sci-fi anime writer whose scripts still need to be noticed (you can read them at http://www.geocities.com/radiomovie2002/ ), I am EXTREMELY envious.
Lucky Firefly.
Bah humbug.
"I am a fictional character."
In Fantasy, the hot chicks are scantily clad because you want them to be.
In Science Fiction, the hot chicks are scantily clad for a reason central to the internal logic of the universe.
Remember kids, any sufficiently advanced Science Fiction is indistinguishable from Fantasy.
You clearly did not see the series on DVD. Yes it looked like crap when it aired on Fox, but this is (as mentioned about 100 times already) because it was aired out of order, putting the weakest eps first, and saving the pilot that explains everything until AFTER the show was cancelled, and not then not airing some of the best episodes at all. Watching it on DVD in right order makes a huge difference, which is why the DVDs sell so well.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Looking forward to seeing it again in September.
Serenity the adult film star has her own comic book? Cool!
A: Who Cares?
/. article? OH for Gos's sake...
I do
B: Who Cares?
My friends do
C: Who Cares?
My friend's friends do.
D: Who Cares?
Many other nerds reading slashdot do.
E: A comic issuing constitutes as
News for nerds. Stuff that matters.
Frankly, I just don't think you are nerd enough. Please return your nerd membership card and exit this site. (You can keep the toaster)
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
I watched a few episodes; initially I thought, finally, a decent science fiction show for grown-ups. The opening was excellent. But pretty soon I realised it was falling into the same pattern as the other efforts. No attempt to create a plausible setting; instead we're all supposed to be just fascinated by how these characters interact... It was the same shit as Voyager or whatever: each episode is all about how amazing the captain is and how they all teach each other moral lessons. Yawn.
Hahahahaha... ahahahaha.
Hahahahaa... ahahahahaha.
For example, how big is the Firefox universe? Is it a galaxy? A group of star systems? A single system?
The Firefox universe consists of Firefox, Mozilla, Thunderbird, Bugzilla, and Camino...
This is refreshing. He's not complaining that the crew tries to turn a buck by smuggling live cattle or that people in this future apparently still use electrical signals carried by wires strung along poles. No, that would be too easy. He's complaining that the Mal and Wash don't spend enough time in Astrometrics, charting just the right path through Federal Space.
Right with you, buddy, oh yeah.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
Yes, but at least Star Trek: Voyager/DS9/Et al had the name cachet to keep going - had being operative, given that even recognition couldn't keep Enterprise on the air. So, no matter how horrendous those shows actually were, they were given the chance to keep going...Fox just up and pulled the plug because costs of production weren't commensurate with diminishing returns. Whedon and co. had all of 16 episodes to create as much of a universe as they could, so if there were inconsistencies and holes and confusions, they probably were under the impression they'd be given more time to flesh it all out, fill in the gaps and create something more cohesive...*shrug*
There exists a distinct possibility that these movies will serve as a natural extension of the overall story-arc that had been intended by the writers...hell, they may even be enhanced by the larger budget, more concentrated medium (two hours to tell a sotry that they might have planned on telling over half a season or longer), and a creative team that is reinvigorated...but we won't really know that until we see them.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
Hey, hey, HEY! Hold on there, buddy...
Don't you ever forget Sunbird...ever! I love that thing, I do.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
While I love the series and am really psyched for the movie, is it just me or is the synopsis of the comic plots exactly the same as that of about half the episodes?
It depends. I may be wrong, but I seem to remember that in some cultures in some eras of our history, whores were considered respectable women. (Examples, anyone?)
Besides, the Companions in Firefly weren't exactly high- or low-class, they were sort of in between. You could always tell that Mal had sort of a love-hate relationship with Inara. He really liked her, but he absolutely hated her profession. Even though many held her in high esteem, you could tell that some did not. Watch the episode "Shindig" to see this sort of high-class/low-class duality of the job.
Also worth noting is that not all "whores" in the Firefly universe were respectable, only registered Companions. There were presumably the cream of the crop, women of such exquisite quality that they were very well thought of. They also weren't "whores" in the sense of the word that you simply paid them for sex, they were also very highly educated women, trained in many arts and skills, who provided a sort of relationship fulfillment service, not just mere physical pleasure. Watch the episode "Heart of Gold" to see how the non-Companion whores were treated. They were low-class outcasts. Even today in the United States, this whore class system exists. The prostitutes at the brothels in Vegas are much better thought of than the whores on Seventh Avenue. Some porn stars are held in extremely high regard in a weird sort of way.
So I guess my point is that although it's different from the way we think of prostitutes today, it's not really too farfetched an idea.
And no, I didn't memorize all of the episodes of Firefly, I cheated.
Don't get me wrong. I'm super excited that a Firefly movie is coming out. The release can't get here soon enough.
That said, I wish it was still a TV show. I would much rather have 22 bite-sized morsels of Firefly a year.
Who knows what kind of legal black hole a future TV show is tied up in. Plus, there is already talk of more movies if this one is successful, and Whedon is supposed to be doing a Wonder Woman movie now.
Will we ever get another Whedon TV show?!?
-prator
I hear what you're saying - and I guess I was too harsh; it was certainly a lot better than the Star Trek shows, and deserved more time than any of them.
good point.. firefox, firefly, firebird.. too confusing.
If the blue sun is a main sequence star (and not a supergiant), then it's stellar mass will be around 50 and it's biozone range (the range where liquid water can occur) would be between 500-750 AUs. That's freaking huge. It should be enough to fit in the hundreds of planets that livable range.
However, don't take the science too seriously.
Then what was it exactly that you thought the show needed? It seemed perfectly consistent to me. Were you looking for maps, timelines, what?
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
They didn't quantify how large the universe is so it's a bad show? Huh?
It's all implied, anyway...which I like. Hell, how large is the star wras univers? That was also all implied. It's a subtle story effect.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
I'll state right off that I watched all of Firefly recently, and I loved it.
Firefly kind of reminds me of a cross among the two anime series Trigun and Cowboy Bebop (both originally released in Japan in 1998) and old post-Civil War setting westerns. Trigun can be classified as a sci-fi western. Bebop doesn't lean quite as heavily on the western genre, as it's all over the map as far as influences go, but the world as presented seems similar in nature to that of Firefly.
Firefly resembles Cowboy Bebop in that you have a ragtag crew of misfits and folks with questionable intentions travelling in an old beat-up secondhand spaceship going from job to job trying to make money wherever they can, in some cases only enough to keep the ship running. The ship Serenity even kind of reminds me of the Bebop somewhat in how it is designed. Also, Cowboy Bebop's settings involve various terraformed planets, but most of them have a reasonably near-future level of technology apparent. In Firefly, the settings are mostly old Western in nature on the border worlds, like Trigun's world in the apparent far future after human extra-planetary colonization goes horribly wrong. The firearms used are sort of like both, in that both current and antiquated weapon designs are used with a little futuristic flair to jazz things up.
You made an interesting Freudian Slip. You called it the Firefox Universe, rather than the Firefly Universe. Someone likes his new browser :)
"I am a fictional character."
Historically, Dark Horse:Ocean::Comics:Video Games w/r/t their rabid craze for licensing.
I learned from 80s Marvel Star Wars comics and 90s Dark Horse Star Wars comics that just because you have the rights doesn't mean you have the capability of producing quality material.
That and they have the same problem DC does with their Vertigo line - extremely high quality covers with interior work that has always, in my professional opinion, had a rushed or unfinished feel to it (work for hire, DH rates, contracts, bills, making a living, etc, etc.).
I'll probably check it out, despite my traditionally itchy experiences with Dark Horse - Whedon's {co}writing it and it's only three issues - it's not like they're pulling a Marvel and hoping to suck us in for a ten year run of recycled crap with new writers, pencillers and inkers every three months.
Too bad you didn't read the Wiki you linked to. You would have found that Geisha's ARE NOT PROSTITUTES.
...either the film or the comic book after visiting the web site.
I get the feeling that Joss Whedon has a genuine desire to tell his story in it's entirety, since he wasn't able to do that with the TV series.
I don't think he's doing it for any financial incentive... the film industry tends to pay a bit better than the comic book industry, in case you didn't know.
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
Joss wrote an eight-issue series called "Fray" for Dark Horse, about a Vampire Slayer in the future. And he is currently writing the "Astonishing X-Men" series for Marvel.
Mashed potatoes can be your friends!
Except for the pilot, each episode was prefaced by a video montage to cover for the fact that the pilot hadn't even aired. And the montage had a voiceover:
"Here's how it is -- the Earth got used up, so we moved out, terraformed a whole new galaxy of earths. Some rich and flush with the new technologies, some... not so much. The Central Planets, them as formed the Alliance, waged war to bring everyone under their rule. Few idiots tried to fight it -- among them, myself. I'm Malcolm Reynolds, captain of Serenity. She's a transport ship, Firefly class. Got a good crew: fighters, pilot, mechanic. We even picked up a preacher for some reason, and a bona fide Companion. There's a doctor, too; took his genius sister out of some Alliance camp, so they're keeping a low profile. You understand. You got a job, we can do it -- don't much care what it is."
There's your setting, and the central premise, too.
Well, dunno about GGP, but I was looking for a little bit more tech.
I mean, there are many instances throughout the series were troubles could have been avoided by just using some kind of telecommunications device -- which they have, as small two-way radios do appear here and there, even in miniaturized form.
Another thing is about the ship sensors: more often than not, ships only detect each other when they are within a few hundred meters away. Take for example the episode when they ram/dock to a station to rescue Mal who's being tortured.
(Pseudo)Science aside, an intelligent viewer is left wondering how they can really travel around space when their ships see less than moles - and in space, no one can smell you :-)
The movie has a little intro where it makes it clear that it's a single system with a lot of planets and moons.
Wait a minute? We were supposed to get a toaster?
I never said they were, you idiot.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
If you thought Firefly was a moralizing show, you must not have seen very much of it. Yes, it's character-centric. Yes, much of it relies on character interaction. But beyond basic goodness, there was no moralizing to speak of.
Let's see.....
-Mal tries to help out the girl who poses as his surprise wife, only to be betrayed and figuratively stabbed in the back. Yeah, that really suggests helping people is a good thing.....
-An entire episode was devoted to a moon on which indentured workers are virtual slaves, working in the mud-pits, and when it's over.....the status quo is no different. The episode wasn't about changing things for the better, it was about dealing with things as they are.
-Mal tries to make a fair deal with another ship captain, and gets shot for the trouble. He doesn't shoot the other guy back, but mostly because to do so would be to invite certain death.
And let's not forget "Shindig"....
Mal: "Yeah, it would be humiliating. Having to lie there while the better man refuses to spill your blood. Mercy is the mark of a great man."
*STAB*
Mal: "Guess I'm just a good man."
*STAB*
Mal: "Ah, I'm all right."
Basically, if you think Firefly was a moralizing show, you [i]seriously[/i] need to take a second look at it, becuase you're pretty much dead-wrong.
thats why the technology is non-consistant - its about telling the story, one which isnt entirely compatible with its setting.
Being in the Uk, I've only seen DVD version and I can only say watch it now - either rent it or buy it.
Yes... They keep trying to get rid of talkie.... (I fed mine to the tribbles)...
Programming is an Art. I am an Artist. Does that mean I get to wear a daft hat?
Specifically, they're pretentious snobs who refuse to admit that they're reading comic books, so they force themselves to only read them in big, thick books. They're simply ashamed of what they are.
They're also one of the reasons why I tend not to bother with most comics message boards. I've found that I enjoy comics much more when I just read them by myself and stay away from all the snobs on the Internet.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Serenity Now! Serenity Now! get yours here or here
A number of people are getting bent out of shape about why FOX seemed to do everything it could to screw over the show.
It;s really very simple. FOX has no understanding of how to handle sci-fi and probably didn't understand the ramifications of showing it out of order. Some suit probably remembered watching a few episodes of Twilight Zone or Outer Limits and thought it was a series of self contained episodes. That' or they were thinking of Star Trek, most of which (DS9 aside) could have been shown in just about any order without hindering the viewers' enjoyment of the show.
I doubt it was hostile, just mismanagement.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Well, what am I supposed to do with this Twonky?
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
It was the same shit as Voyager or whatever: each episode is all about how amazing the captain is and how they all teach each other moral lessons. Yawn.
No, that's what TNG was about, and to a lesser extent Enterprise. The point of FF *is* the characters and their interactions. It's damn good drama . . . something previously unknown in the Sci-Fi universe. ('cept fer mebbe B:5 and later DS:9) TNG was nearly unwatchable for me because of all Picard's high-falutin' moralizing and internal agonizing, not to mention the obligatory didactic pap moral lesson at the end. The only moral lessons even vaguely detectable in FF have to do with loyalty - and they're taught by example, not preaching. I mean, c'mon, Mal is an outlaw with the ultimate 'Han shot first' ethos.
Furthermore, who cares how big the Firefox universe is? It's pretty obvious to anyone who watched more than three episodes that it's more than a single star system, and likely more than a few, but really, who gives a damn! Anybody who watches Sci-Fi so that they can analyze the imaginary physics of subspace or transporter harmonics or whatever needs to get out more.
In sci-fi, they drink beer. In fantasy, they drink ale.
Furthermore, who cares how big the Firefox universe is?
Bill Gates and all the other folks at Microsoft in the Web Browser department are all greatly concenrned about how big the Firefox universe is in relation to the size of the I.E. universe.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Wrong. Your theory seems to hinge on the idea that there is only one razor and therefore proceeds logically into further fallacy.
Simply, Occam is for removing needless complexity, Gilette is for removing needless hair, and mine is for removing needless clothing.