by Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews, Will Conrad
ages: adult
vol 1: Those Left Behind
First sentence: “And so I say to you on this fine day, citizens of Constance, that your lives are not defined by that with which you enter this world, but rather with what you leave behind on it.”
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vol 2: Better Times
First sentence: “I don’t like speeches.”
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I saw these over at The Written World, and since I was feeling a bit on a Nathan Fillion kick, I picked them up. (Yes, I do like the show because of him. Or maybe I like him because of the show?) I am shameless sometimes. (Yes, I have also caved into curiosity and am reading Heat Wave.)

The graphic novels pick up the world in the time period after the series ended but before the movie Serenity. (That will only make sense to fans.) They’re basically episodes in graphic novel form, something which I simultaneously found entertaining and irritating. Entertaining, because it’s always nice to visit with old “friends”, characters one loves. Irritating because I wasn’ really sure what was going on the whole time; it was a bit confusing in its storytelling. Oh, sure, I think I caught the general arc, but I’m just not a skilled enough graphics novel reader to really capture the whole essence of it all. And, in spite of the drawings looking amazingly like the actors, I missed the actors. You didn’t get Jayne’s sardonic inflection, Mal’s snarky smile. Little things — like intonation and inflection — that make acting a storyline out so much better.

That said, I adored the introduction in the first one by Nathan Fillion. (The second’s introduction was written by Adam Baldwin, and was highly entertaining as well.) Anyway, Nathan wrote about his love of comic books as a kid and how Mal was his favorite role, thanking Joss Whedon for making him, and all of them really, a superhero. That, at least, was very cool stuff.