Dark Horse Comics’ new Serenity series will detail what happened to Joss Whedon’s characters after the 2005 feature film.
Despite its legions of loyal fans, Joss Whedon’s Firefly was an incredibly short-lived series. The show was cancelled after a single season in 2002, and not even the Serenity feature film could provide closure for its audience. Today, the slightest hint of a Serenity reunion sets Browncoat hearts a’flutter, but realistic prospects for a second season are slim. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the story isn’t finished yet: Dark Horse Comics will soon be offering a Serenity sequel that continues the crew’s adventure in comic book form.
Dark Horse has published Serenity comic books before, usually to flesh out backstory or bridge events between the series and movie. This new Serenity comic, however, is a continuation of Firefly‘s storyline in the same spirit of Whedon’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Eight. While Serenity‘s new writer is yet to be revealed (I suspect Whedon is too busy to help), Buffy artist Georges Jeanty is lending his pencils to the sci-fi project.
“[Firefly] was a series I started watching when it began on Fox,” Jeanty told Comic Book Resources when justifying his Browncoat roots. “I really looked forward to it. Fox was doing sci-fi very well; they just never gave their sci-fi shows a chance. I remember very clearly how they started shuffling around the airdate from week to week. The ultimate offense was putting it on Friday nights!”
Where will the new series take the Serenity crew? According to preview pages, the Alliance hasn’t given up its pursuit of Simon and River Tam just yet. Series mainstays like the Reavers are also likely to return, while an Alliance commander threatens use of a “precious resource” as a new threat. The crew, meanwhile, is still adjusting to the events of the Serenity film, most noticeably the very pregnant Zoe still mourning her husband.
It’s not clear whether Serenity will be an ongoing series or standalone storyline, but Jeanty expects that Browncoats will examine his work very closely. “When I was drawing Buffy, I could start from scratch. Sure, I had to keep in line with how the characters looked, but everything [else] was up for grabs,” Jeanty explains. “With Firefly there are seven characters and a ship to consider … fans know what every inch of that ship looks like, so I have to be very meticulous with my depiction. Not to mention there are a few very subtle differences in the ship from TV to the movie. This is definitely a learning experience, one I don’t think I’ll fully master until the series is over!”
Source: Comic Book Resources
