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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.
It is "ironic" because the comic book form received 0% of the vote in that poll, yet it's the only one we get.
I seem to be the minority, but I didn't find this series particularly engaging. In that context, 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.
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
I wish with all my heart they had made "Better Days" as a movie and "Serenity" as the comic. Firefly was the very best SF show ever on TV. To have short-circuited its comeback as they did with making the movie so very harsh was IMHO a wasted chance at a relaunch. Fot those of you that haven't yet gotten what all of the fuss is about, hey, Christmas is coming, get the DVD as a present to someone else and give it one more try. Firefly is the American Western mythos of the past presented in a Space-Age future. We need to remember the vibes it resonates on now more than ever.
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.
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).
I'm of the same opinion as the gpp and did watch the entire series and the movie (I was sorta bored).
My theory is that most fans just really like Whedon's characters, cliches and style of dialogue. If you don't know what that is, you can see it repeated exactly in Angel, Buffy and Alien:Resurrection. Examples: no one can say anything straight, it's all got to be "witty". Martial arts are for some reason the greatest power in the universe. Every character is "bad" but would do all sorts of heroics to save a kitten (while cursing reluctantly of course... because they are bad!!), etc.
Basically, there's nothing particularly wrong with Firefly. It just lacks any sort of brilliance. The series ends up coalescing into a bland, insipid whole.
There was only 1 episode out of order, and I happen to think The Train Job made a better first episode than episode 1. The "dropped" episodes weren't dropped from the middle of anything... they're the ones that never aired because the show was canceled.
I agree-- buy the DVDs. Best DVD set evar, and great commentary (I love that they brought the costume designer in for a couple of them). But still, don't oversell its presentation of the storyline. It's pretty much the same as you saw on TV (right down to the resolution, since FOX didn't do full HD back then, only widescreen 480p), with a couple extra episodes.
E pluribus unum
Weird, I'm not much of one for Buffy and think I watched one episode of Angel, but I loved Firefly.
(Wikipedia provides the air dates here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Firefly_episodes)
By putting episodes in the right order, the DVD set improved things considerably.
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.
/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.
You can see the basis for the long opening continuous shot in 'Serenity' at the end of this episode - something you don't
Firefly, canceled before finishing a full season. Does that seem right to you?
Um, if you weren't aware, there was a firefly comic book already released years ago after the show but before the movie, that dealt with the timeline between the two.
The characters were drawn as the actors, and it was very well done, with a forward by Nathan Fillion.
Obviously not as good as the return of the show, but so long as the series makes profit off the air there is a chance it will return in some form or fashion.
Check it out
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Most slashdotters are probably aware that Morena Baccarin showed up on Stargate SG1, and that Jewel Staite is the new doctor on Stargate Atlantis, and some might even be aware that Summer Glau did a stint on CBS's The Unit, but the one who really caught my eye was Christina Hendricks, as the ne'er do well called "Saffron":
http://www.entil2001.com/series/firefly/season1dvd/ff1-6p2.jpg
So if you liked her work on Firefly, then you might be interested to learn that she's now got a gig as "Joan Holloway", the head of the secretarial pool, on AMC's "Mad Men":
http://weblogs.variety.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/08/31/joan.jpg
Let's just say that she's everything you remember from Firefly and then some.
Hubba. Hubba.
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.
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
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."
Kaylee: Luh-suh?
Simon: Sorry?
Kaylee: Serenity ain't luh-suh.
Simon: No, I.. I didn't mean...
Kaylee: Yeah, you did. You meant everything you just said.
Simon: Well, no. Uh, actually I was being ironic... so in-in the strictest sense...
Kaylee: You were being mean... is what. And if that's what you think of this life... then you can't think much of them that choose it... can you?
Bender: Pretty annoying, huh Leela?
Leela: (shouting) What? Are you talking? Oh God I'm deaf!
Bender: Oops. I'm so so sorry Leela. I just wanted to annoy you.
Leela: (shouting) What? Oh this is horrible. I won't be able to hear Fry's opera. [She starts to cry. The Robot Devil stands at the end of the corridor watching them.] Robot Devil: Ah how delightfully ironic.
Bender: It's not ironic, it's just mean. Take this! [He blows the airhorn weakly.]
Robot Devil: Ooh! Out of aerosol? Also ironic!
Bender: Oh yeah? Well bite my shiny metal - [He points at where his crotchplate used to be. No ass left to bite.] (shouting) Oh nooo!
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Interesting characters like this was the entire point of Firefly for me. If you wanted a western, I can perhaps see why you were disappointed; I've never liked westerns.
Hendricks has also done a couple episodes of NBC's new show Life. She's playing Damian Lewis' soon to be trophy wife stepmom.
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.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Most prequels suck, I think, because there's really no reason for them. They've run out of things to do in sequels, and they're looking for another direction to expand that universe, but it doesn't work, because it kind of ruins the originals. (Example: Star Wars. It's kind of hard to watch the originals after watching the prequels, and kind of hard to watch the prequels, period.)
But think about it -- the first few minutes of Serenity were a prequel, after all. And there actually is a ton of story there, maybe written out, maybe not.
Example: What did Book do before he was a Shephard, and why does the Alliance like him so much? Where else can you find out, except in a prequel or a flashback?
How did Mal come to side with the Independents, anyhow? Why did Inara leave House Madrassa? Why was the Alliance formed?
I'd much rather have a sequel, but unlike you, I'm not ready to kill it off. I want more Firefly, because I'm convinced the show was good enough that it wouldn't jump the shark. Think about it -- would Firefly really suck as much as Star Trek did after 7 seasons?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Little pointed out because it's also completely wrong. Firefly borrows from lots of things; Cowboy Bebop is one.
I'll accept it's in the same genre (subgenre?) as Bebop, but, for example, where'd Inara come from? I know Jayne was inspired by a character from Alien, for instance. And the box River was in? Taken straight out of the first episode of Outlaw Star.
What sets Firefly apart isn't that it's revolutionary at all, but that it's so well done.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Ditto, hated Angel, meh for Buffy (girls in mini skirts is always eye-catching), but Firefly was almost British humour. I was impressed, and found the stories to be reasonably entertaining as well.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
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
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. --Martin Luther King Jr.