Boom! Studios Review: Firefly #21
[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Writer:Â Greg Pak
Artist: Daniel Bayliss and Lalit Kumar Sharma
Colorist: Francesco Segala
Letterer: Jim Campbell
Reviewer:Â Tony Farina
Summary
THE BLUE SUN RISING EVENT CONTINUES! The Blue Sun Corporation has launched their new line of high-tech robots designed to help local law enforcement, and they already have their electronic eye on a new target-the Chang-Benitez Gang! Mal wants to help his former crew on Serenity, but can they trust him while he still wears the badge?
Positives
Firefly #21 has two artists and they are really, really good. I just love the dirty feel that this comic brings to the ‘Verse. The incomplete images, the browns and tans and more browns remind us that this is a western and these are dirty, smelly, ugly times and yet, we want to hang out there.
I think that way the Pak finds Mal’s voice inside the Mal robots is amazing. What I like most about this story is that Pak continues to have a conversation with us about morality. How do you define morality? How do laws factor into that? What do we do when a corporation runs amok? All of these are excellent questions that are totally applicable to our lives today.
Negatives
Firefly #21 should have nothing wrong with it, but alas, it does. I have to say, and I didn’t really realize it until this reading, I don’t like Leonard at all. I don’t care about him. I don’t like him with Kaylee. I just don’t care. I know this isn’t supposed to be the exact same set up as the show, but he is just out stayed his time on the ship, with the crew and in the comic. Summer makes a joke about Kaylee and the love triangle she is about to create, but even that felt ham fisted. There was a moment where I thought he would just be killed this issue, and I was ready for it. Meh.
Verdict
Firefly #21 feels like it is trying to get itself somewhere but it is just taking a long way to get there. This series is excellent in some places and simply meh in others. This issue is somewhere in between those extremes. It is not the weakest issue in the series, nor is it the best. I am always keen to spend time in the ‘verse so that always gives it a leg up.
