I feel a bit meh about this. I wanted to love it more. It’s too short to get much character development in, especially to build anguish around Mal’s choice, and it exists in this weird space between the show and the movie, I think? I tend to think of the movie as it’s own separate thing that wouldn’t have connected to the series, ideally. But that’s neither here nor there. It just feels like it isn’t set up well.

I like the idea of the theme of dealing with the trauma of war, but I think this bounces around a bit too quickly for me and that’s a distraction from the emotion.

The art is also not as consistent as I’d like it to be. I couldn’t easily tell River from Inara without dialogue to guide me. It’s like their faces aren’t developed enough? Or perhaps that the chapter pages are detailed to look like the actors from the show/movie, but then the comic book characters don’t continue the look from the more detailed art spreads.

I’ll keep reading the next installment, but I’m going to move to the full novels for my real Firefly fix.