Serenity: No Power in the Verse Part One
Dark Horse Comics
Written by: Chris Roberson
Art by: Georges Jeanty & Karl Story
Taking place after the events of the movie Serenity, the crew of the aforementioned ship find themselves in a constant struggle to survive as wanted criminals. Captain Reynolds (Mal) is still struggling to find a way to be free in a universe still controlled by the Alliance while keeping his ship together, and his crew fed.. Mal picks up a job stealing supplies from an Alliance supply station and like everything with the crew of the Serenity, the job always starts off going as planned and falls apart almost immediately. After securing the cargo, first mate Zoe Washburn is greeted by former fugitive and current pilot River Tam holding Zoe, with her late husband Wash’s daughter Emma.
The crew escapes just in time and Mal is confronted by Jayne regarding the risk involved in their theft versus the reward. Apparently, the
Alliance has started to crack down on thieves and smugglers since the revelation and blame them for the creation of the Reavers. The Alliance has made fencing high end merchandise much more of a risk, so Mal has had to take some jobs that are less than glamourous and not nearly as lucrative. The intimacy of this issue shows that there are still some raw nerves and unresolved issues between members of this family, including Wash’s death, Jayne’s irresponsibility and River’s past.
Chris Roberson gives us an insight into the evolving relationships between the crew during their interactions while Georges Jeanty’s art does a good job of staying relatively simple, with close ups and boxes that tend to only show one or two characters at a time. The main plot seems to revolve around a young woman named Iris, a character introduced in Serenity: Leaves on the Wind. She calls on Mal and his crew for help when the woman she’s been traveling with Bea disappears while trying to meet members of the New Resistance. There isn’t a lot of action in this first issue, but the writer does take the time to strategically set up the conflicts that will, hopefully, be explored over the remaining issues.
Serenity: No Power in the Verse Part 1 is a solid beginning to a new story arc and as long as they “aim to misbehave”, I’m in.