Serenity: No Power In The 'Verse #2 - An Advanced Review/Preview

Answering a call regarding a missing friend, the crew of Serenity stumble across a secret that puts all their lives at risk. Unfortunately, their friend learned the same secret and has fallen into the clutches of The Alliance. The future of the whole damn "Verse may rest on what happens next.





Chris Roberson has perfectly captured the flavor of the original Firefly show and has a good handle on the characters. Unfortunately, the story still suffers from the same problems that plagued the last Serenity mini-series - Leaves On The Wind. Namely, for a franchise built on great female characters, the ladies on the cast have precious little to do with the action, apart from River. Zoe doesn't even appear in this issue and Inara - while seen - doesn't have any lines!

A bigger problem is the artwork by Georges Jeanty, which is sloppy and inconsistent. All sense of detail is lost beyond the middle distance and perhaps one close-up panel in four will resemble the original actors from the show. Karl Story and Wes Dzioba do what they can to finish things properly but it's akin to painting a cow pie to make it presentable.

Serenity: No Power In The ‘Verse #2 will be available for purchase on November 30, 2016 from your local comic book store (Don’t know where that is? Here you go.) or digitally via Comixology.com.

Firefly Cast Returns for Firefly On-Line MMO!

Rumors of an MMO based on the world of Joss Whedon's Firefly have existed in abundance for a while. Many Browncoats remained skeptical even after pictures and video of the gameplay manifested. Now, there is no room for doubt. For it was announced at SDCC yesterday that not only is the game real but that the entire Firefly cast would be returning to reprising their roles.

 A new trailer explains it all.


Registration has begun at KeepFlying.com

Serenity: Leaves On The Wind #5 - A Review

In previous reviews of this series, I called it a good story hampered by bad artwork. I will not be doing that this month. Oh, not because the artwork has gotten better. It hasn't. If anything, Georges Jeanty's atwork is getting sloppier and more inconsistent by the month. No, this month I can't say it because I'm no longer sure if I'm reading a good story.


I was fully prepared to deliver a rant about how poorly served the female cast of this series are served by Zack Whedon's script.  How Zoe is completely absent from this issue and has been reduced to the princess to be rescued.  How Inara doesn't have a single line in this issue and has been marginalized into Mal's girlfriend/Zoe's nanny.  How Kaylee does get to do one awesome thing but it involves recycling one of Wash's old plans and that he gets more lines in one flashback than Kaylee does in the whole issue.  And how River gets her ass kicked by a male reader until Mal gives her a hypodermic needle full of sedative to use as a make-shift weapon.

I was ready to rant about all of that... until I realized how badly served the male cast was by the same script.

Simon has been just as useless as Inara for the better part of this series and also goes without a line in this month's issue.  Jayne has been recast in the role of total comic relief.  And Mal... well, Mal is the big damn hero who finally gets a plan to run smooth at the cost of making Bea - the rabblerouser trying to recruit him to lead a new Browncoat movement - look even more incompetent at the revelation that The Alliance has been funding her movement from the beginning as part of an effort to organize the agitators so it would be easier to get them all in one place and kill them.


I'll give this one more issue to see if something can be salvaged from this wreckage.  That's it.

Dallas Comic Con 2014 - ALL THE PICTURES! - Part Five

Black Canary- Classic Model With Mask


Jimmy Olsen & Lois Lane


Twin Kaylee.  Double the engine-power & triple the shiny!


Black Canary Sans Mask


A trio of G.I. Joe soldiers.


Gwendolyn & Marko from Saga.


Ghost.


Supergirl, Aquagirl and Jinx from Teen Titans.


Detective Chimp!


Captain Marvel & Captain Marvel.


Everything is awesome!  It's Emmet from The LEGO Movie


Black Cat, Green Arrow and yet another Black Canary


An awesome dragon!  Not sure if she's a specific one but it's still impressive.

Dallas Comic Con 2014 - ALL THE PICTURES! - Part Two

Classic Lara Croft.


New 52 Poison Ivy. 


Ken from Street Fighter, Babydoll from Suckerpunch and Goku from Dragonball Z.   Odd trio, that...


GlitzyGeekGirl as Ariel from The Little Mermaid. 


Hat of Cunning +10.

Deathstroke and Winter Soldier. This will not end well...


Jubilee.


ALL HAIL BRAK!  And cross-play Space Ghost!  But mostly Brak!


Deathstroke is a Bronie. Who knew?

Dr. Henry McCoy a.k.a. Beast.

Raven from Teen Titans.



SHAZAM!


Cosplayers everywhere, you can stop.  For none of you can match the beauty of Princess Batman!


Alss, the fair Princess Batman refused my proposal.  He'd had seven other proposals that night.
 I didn't ask how many of them involved marriage..

Dallas Comic Con 2014 - ALL THE PICTURES! - Part One

Usually when I write a con report, I talk about the lay out, the experience, the things I did and the people I met.  Given the sheer number of pictures I took this time around, that isn't going to be very practical and I said everything I wanted to say about the con experience already in my first article about DCC 2014.

So what I'm going to do is go through all the pictures and tag as many I can per update.  I'll do five such postings per day until I get through them all.  Whenever possible, I'll link the websites of the cosplayers and other people who are involved.  Please feel free to speak up if I miss something or someone and I'll correct it ASAP.

Clear?  Good.  Now, my journey through DCC... in pictures!



A family of Browncoats as Wash, Kaylee, River and Jayne.


Green Arrow and Black Canary. 


War Machine in his Iron Patriot rig. This little hero chased me down & returned my bow when, in my haste to get through registration, I set it down and forgot it.  And they say there's no heroes...


"FEED ME!" - Seymour and Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. 


Black Widow and Doctor Strange.

Another Black Canary and Green Arrow.  You'd think there was a convention of them...


Deadpool: You know, everyone keeps confusing me with you?
Deathstroke: Ditto.



Female Scruffy from the Futurama episode Neutopia.


Wayne and Garth?  Excellent! 


Batgirl


Dr. Henry Jones Sr. was handing out discount passes for the Indiana Jones And The Adventure Of Archaeology exhibit currently at the Fort Worth Museum of Science & History until August 10th.


All the kids love Deathstroke.  It's kind of disturbing...


Yet another Black Canary and Green Arrow.  In this case, it's me with Chelphie Cosplay.

Serenity: Leaves On The Wind #4 - A Review

This will probably be the last issue of Serenity: Leaves On The Wind I'll be reviewing.  I enjoy the book immensely but it occurs to me that there is little point in my writing about it.  To speak the plain truth, this book doesn't hold much for anyone who isn't already a card-carrying Browncoat.  And despite the first two issues doing a good job of playing "catch-up" for anyone who hadn't seen Firefly or Serenity already, this issue - and the previous one- haven't been as accommodating.

The plot has Mal tracking down The Operative - the bad guy from Serenity - in order to secure his help in breaking into a secure Alliance facility and rescuing a dozen other psychic combat bunnies like River.  Why?  So they can help them break into an even more secure Alliance facility to rescue Zoe.  Of course Mal's plans never run smooth and complications arise, starting with everyone else on the crew having objections to one degree or another about accepting The Operative's help.

Confused?  Then you're probably not a Browncoat and this comic is not aimed at you.


A larger problem with this series it hat it has leaned heavily on some the more action-oriented (and, coincidentally, male) members of the crew.  True, Zoe does get a fight scene in this issue but it seems to be tacked in so there's some action somewhere in this chapter.  The more non-combat oriented characters - like Simon and Kaylee  - aren't given much to do except stand in the background.  This is marginally better than Inara, who has had nothing to do in this story but bed down with Mal and take care of Zoe's baby.  Granting that she's probably the one person on the crew best equipped to handle taking care of a newborn, greater care could have been taken to make it clear that she's taken the role on because of her Companion training.


I also have little to say about Georges Jeanty's artwork at this point beyond the fact that I don't like it.  There's little consistency from panel to panel.  Jeanty can capture an actor's likeness perfectly in one moment and then render them off-model in the next.  His mid-range characters lack any definition at all, and if it weren't for such cues as skin-tone and clothing it would be hard to tell who is who in the far-shots.