Firefly #7 // Review
Firefly worked so well on television (and in its spin-off film, Serenity) in large part because of the chemistry of its cast of actors. Watching them play off each other as a group was incredibly gratifying, but the comic doesn’t have the benefit of those iconic performances, so Boom! Studios’ Firefly #7 continues the trend of dividing the Serenity crew, to increasingly positive results.
This issue continues exploring the dynamics of the crew when divided up on different missions. Mal and the ostensible villain, Boss Moon, continue their truce as while they try to stay alive on a planet with dangerous wildlife. Zoe and her team of Browncoats head out to rescue Mal and put a kill-on-sight order on Boss Moon’s head. After leaving River and Simon (and the now-arrested Jayne Cobb) behind, Kaylee and the obviously-destined-for-death new character Leonard take a shuttle on a rescue mission, while Wash, Inara, and Book travel to an Alliance world to get the bounty taken off Mal’s life through back channels.
Writer Greg Pak smartly focuses on three different subplots--Mal/Boss Moon, Zoe, and Wash/Inara/Book--while keeping the rest of the characters mostly off-panel. Even these three subplots feel like a very full 22 pages. Pak mines a great deal of Whedonesque humor out of these situations, in particular out of Wash’s masquerade as the fictional owner of Serenity.
Dan McDaid’s art does the job adequately, telling the story clearly without any bells and whistles. McDaid primarily eschews exact likenesses of the actors who built these characters, but the reader can still easily differentiate between them. Marcelo Costa differentiates between the different storylines with distinct color palettes, and Letterer Jim Campbell’s work is solid as well.
Firefly #7 is a solid, if unremarkable, entry in Boom! Studios’ management of the license, and dividing the characters up continues to be an excellent way to overcome the small weaknesses of the series as a whole.
