Revisit: Serenity: Better Days

Having posted some soundly negative opinions regarding the Firefly comics, I figured it was time I give you one I do actually like. Sorry, not like, love to friggin' pieces.

Now this is what I was expecting from a Firefly comic - material that is just as good as what I'd seen on the TV screen. This comic is wonderful. I cannot sing it's praises high enough. The crew find themselves in a lot of money and take a little vacation, each of them day dreaming what they would do if they had enough money to do anything. It's very touching and provides the kind of insight into the characters and their relationships with one another that was indicative of the show. I love this comic. Go out and read it. Now. Right now. Do it. Stop reading this post, and go do it.

Revisit: Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale

This comic was a severe disappointment. Shepherd Book's backstory was one of great mystery on the show, and I would have expected it to be treated with great care. Unfortunately, it seems to have been nothing more than a second thought.

Book's backstory is given in a haphazard way. We're given the facts and certain scenes of his life, but there's no reason given for why he chooses to do the things he does. There's no emotion given from him or insight into his thoughts as to how he feels or thinks about events. It's presented more like he travels through life "just because."

Book, in the TV series, always appeared to act with purpose. He also seemed regretful and possibly haunted by his past. It would make sense for him to be a reckless youth who grew to realize his mistakes, but the emotionless and mindless Book in the comic provides no connection between the two. Book doesn't "grow" or "change" or "discover," he doesn't anything. He just does, floating mindlessly from one stage of his life to another.

How can this be Book's backstory when it seems so carelessly and thoughtlessly put together? How can the Book in the comic be a younger version of the one in the show when there's no emotional or thoughtful connection between the two? I can read this comic and say "this happened, then this happened, then this happened, and then he ended up on Serenity." But I can't explain the how or the why or Book's motivation for anything. And without that, there's no meaning for anything Book does, rendering this comic practically pointless. I'm quite happy to pretend it never existed. 

Revisit: Serenity: Those Left Behind

Firefly is a TV show near and dear to my heart. I simply fell in love with the characters. And with the show being so short lived, the comics offer an opportunity back into that world. Unfortunately, in my experience, they are a bit of a mixed bag.

This book is a hodgepodge of craziness. For one, agent Dobson is back - you know, the one from the unaired pilot that Mal shot through the head. Apparently, Mal just shot out his eye, which I'm not sure how bullets and the laws of physics work but I'm pretty sure that's not all that realistic. And anyway, Mal shot him through the freaking head! 

I take serious issue when characters who are supposed to be dead, suddenly come back from being dead. It's just lazy, in my opinion. Was there really no other bad guy that could have been created for this comic? We had to resurrect agent Dobson? Really? Not to mention we now have to question anytime Mal has ever shot anyone, but I digress.

The Hands of Blue men are back, but their defeat is so anti-climatic and simple it's almost not worth noting except to bemoan the terrible injustice of it. These guys were some of the most terrifying beings in the series. And they die like that? They deserved something more befitting, not a struggle that begins and ends in a couple frames.

The crew has a job to do, and they find themselves ambushed right before they reach the bounty.They are forced to kill everyone there and then they leave the bounty behind. What the serious F? I seem to remember Mal saying something about "a powerful need to eat" one time, and another time about "I do a job, then I get paid." I shouldn't need to explain how crucial it is that the crew get the bounty from this job. If they'd been running for their lives, it'd be one thing. But they stand their ground, clean out the room, and then once the coast is clear, they leave. They had the perfect opportunity to grab what they came for and go, and instead they leave without it.

This comic wasn't terrible, but it has some serious issues that I just can't get over.

Revisit: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Graphic Novel

There was a lot of hype around Pride and Prejudice and Zombies when it was first released. And I was curious about it but didn't want to read it because I had read Pride and Prejudice once and hadn't found it to be anything special. I mean, there wasn't anything particularly wrong with it, and I read it from beginning to end, but I didn't find anything charming about it or really anything that would make me call it a good book. In fact, while we're at it:

I feel bad giving it such a low rating because I have a friend who loves Jane Austen, and I'm just so "meh" about it. But, the world would be a pretty dull place if we all liked the same things, right?

So, anyway, I hadn't enjoyed the original and I wasn't convinced the presence of zombies would make it any better. So I didn't pick up the novel. But then, I heard there was a graphic novel. Awesome, I could read the story in less pages! And if I hated it, I wouldn't feel like I had wasted hours of my life. Turns out, that was a pretty good call.

I'm now certain I would have never made it through the book. The premise is that zombies have taken over the world (they are rather common), but the world continues on as ever. Elizabeth and her sisters have been trained as ninjas in the art of killing zombies, and they are very good at it. But, even with that spin. The story is still very much Pride and Prejudice, just with a different flair. And, in the end, I didn't find it made that much of a difference at all in my perception of the novel.

Aside from the story itself, I do want to gripe about the artwork (which is not considered in the overall effect of the story). Most of the women are hardly distinguishable from one another, and I absolutely hate it when a graphic novel does this. What is the point of illustrating the characters if the reader can't tell them apart? (Sadly, the Firefly comics fall to this same issue.) Jane and Elizabeth are only distinguishable by hair color. The same can be said for Bingley and Darcy. Mrs. Bennet also changes in age from frame to frame, which is extremely annoying. The zombies are drawn in wonderful detail, and I don't understand why the same effort wasn't put into illustrating the main characters.

This is just "meh" all around.

Revisit: Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo is my all time favorite book. It is a lengthy novel (if memory serves me 1,400 pages). It contains flowery swaths of language, detailed descriptions that go on for pages at a time, and a long enough list of characters as to cause confusion. Any one of those things can be enough for a reader to cast the novel aside and never pick it up again.

And yet the Count of Monte Cristo is a novel that remains immensely human. We follow a young man, Edmund Dantes, who is at the height of his career and happiness, having achieved every man's dream. In one moment it's all taken away from him through jealously by people he had counted as friends. Edmund falls into despair, then anger, then finds new purpose in his quest for vengeance. Through hard study and money he remakes himself to point of being unrecognizable. His revenge is cool and calculated as he tests the potential victims to confirm their treachery and then resolves to make them suffer as equally as he did.

Through his actions, Edmund is certain beyond any doubt that his revenge is right and just, that not even God would deny him (and certainly the reader can't fault him either). Only when an innocent is harmed does his confidence shatter and he realizes he had no more right to meddle in the lives of those who wronged him than they had to meddle in his. He sets out to make right what he can. And then he tries to move forward. He can't go back to man he used to be - the Edmund Dantes from the beginning of the novel is dead. Nor can he any longer be the Count - that vestige of destruction is behind him. But with hope, time, and a little love, he might find joy and happiness again.

Through Edmund's journey the novel covers the full spectrum of human emotion and countenance: joy and innocence, despair and distrust, anger and cool calculated vengeance, doubt and uncertainty, and at last hope and trust in time. If ever a novel can be said to embody the whole of human nature, it is this one. Every fault and virtue of humanity is covered in the spectrum of characters and every emotion is felt as we follow them.

We despair as Edmund's life is taken from him, we relish the results as he carries out his vengeance, and as the novel closes with "All human wisdom is contained in these two words - Wait and Hope" we find ourselves strangely reminded of our own lives - our dreams and triumphs, our failures and betrayals, our choices of action or feelings of helplessness - and we realize the final line of the book couldn't ring more true. There's something satisfying in following the journey of Edmund Dantes and finding it isn't all that different from our own - despite his having a certain flourish.

A more perfect novel, I don't believe can ever be found. But, being my all time favorite, I'm extremely biased.