The Greatest Adventure — Reviewing ‘All-New Firefly: The Gospel According To Jayne’ Vol 3

Every so often, there is comic a book run that stands above the rest. They pull off something that seems truly impossible, transforming that which we know into something that is deeper, or more developed than anyone thought possible. These runs change how we view that world or character forever.

This is what David M. Booher, Simona Di Gianfelice, Francesco Segala, Gloria Martinelli, Jim Campbell, and many others accomplished with All-New Firefly. Everything the story was building to comes to fruition with the third collected volume, closing out one of the best adaptations the franchise has seen.

I’ve never hidden how Jayne was, by far, my least favorite character from Firefly, with some supporting or one-off characters probably being more favored than him in many cases. In one season of the fan-favorite television series, as well as the movie and previous comics, he was a pretty one-dimensional character. Carrying a big gun, he was loud. As the muscle of the team, he was willing to betray others for money (thus how he came to be part of the Serenity crew). Booher saw that, said it’s not good enough, and spent the entirety of this series turning it on its head.

Sure, Jayne is still crude and such, but buried under all that muscle and hardheadedness was a heart. Just like the Grinch at the end of the classic story, the Jayne’s heart grew three sizes before the series came to an end. From a long-lost son to a dive into his humble origins all the way to Jayne coming up with solid plans that help others. The moment Jayne realized how bad he was and offered to help Simon with a hurt monk and feeling bad that the monk still died, I knew I was starting to actually like this character.

It made his fate hit far harder than it would have in the past. Jayne Cobb, the hero of Canton is dead.

While many would think that someone like him would go out in some overly macho or dumb way, the man went out a hero as he sacrificed for those he loved. As soon as the ship with his son Owen and brother Mattie is stuck with a space mine attached, he doesn’t hesitate to spacewalk to save them. The moment that the mine stuck to Jayne and he was drifting away speaking about his life and feelings and it was cutting out, heartstrings were tugged.

Truly, what Booher was aiming to do here with Jayne, turning the one-dimensional into the three-dimensional character that people care about, is a masterclass not only on how to write a good adaptation of popular media, but also on how to handle truly amazing character development. In eleven issues Jayne went from zero to hero, leaving a giant Vera (his beloved gun) sized hole in the cast and crew of the Serenity.

In various canonical potential future set stories, from the short-lived Firefly: Brand New Verse or the recent Firefly: Keep Flying one-shot, we always see that Jayne isn’t there with the others. It was easy to assume he died in some bar fight or battle or some other ridiculous way. Booher though leaves us believing that it’s more than possible that no matter the present or potential future, Jayne Cobb is a hero when it counts.

Once more, we get fantastic work from Di Gianfelice and Segala, with Martinelli on color assists, to bring visual life to this story.

Di Gianfelice has the ability to make even seemingly naturally static moments, with people standing around talking, have that powerful kinetic energy. The facial expressions and body language are on point. There is natural applied movement assigned to panels and pages to make each successive panel speak as it flows right into the next. Within these final issues, there are many of these quieter moments. With this artwork, they speak volumes louder than they appear.

A good portion of the story takes place in space. Not only is space gorgeous, but there is a very weightless floating feeling to the artwork, which is hard to fully explain. It feels authentic to what I assume space is actually like, feeling heavy and dark and just truly vast. Dotted with the light of stars so far away, feeling cold and unending, with an unforgiving nature. Despite that, there is a power and hopefulness that resonates.

This helps to really make the moments near the end feel sad, as Jayne floats towards death, but also powerful. We know what he became and what he meant to the people who are there with him till the end.

While there are overall visual differences to the variety of locations we visit here, Segala and Martinelli  make every single planet or area feel wholly unique with the colors. We get some good pops of color but the overall palette remains somewhat toned down, almost Earthy in quality. Mixed with plenty of really deep and strong shadows. Inside the buildings, especially the monastery’s lower levels, feel authentic. They are cold and full of dark shadows that mute the colors of the characters involved just as happens in the reality of darker spaces.

Different color palettes for different areas makes Requiem look distinct from what we saw of Earth that Was, just like every part of Serenity from the bridge to the rooms to the shuttle, and beyond all has its own unique feeling. A reddish hue for Inara’s shuttle, cooler greens and browns for the bridge, a blueness for the monastery, and a more centralized set of colors from what we glimpse of Jayne’s space.

These final issues, and the series as a whole, have been emotionally heavy. It’s a feeling carried through every part of the issues, but especially within the lettering.

We can see the emotion that is happening visually from the faces and body language, but Campbell makes sure we hear every bit of it. One of the tricks is using all caps as a standard volume of conversation with sentence case (along with faded and slightly smaller font size) becoming the default for whispers and then even bigger all caps for yelling/exclamation. Anger hits harder with the clear louder beats, and the softer quieter moments pull at the heartstrings as we really take in their sadness. It all flows around the pages in a logical and natural way, going from off to the side to in your face depending on what a moment needs.

Some speech bubble changes, like adding a colored border or getting jagged for yelling, and other little things let us hear things properly and also just break things up in a visually pleasing way. Also, I always love the good in-your-face right there part of the action colorful SFX.

Speaking of angry or loud, the big giant bold wording surrounded by a red-ringed speech bubble is just some glorious stuff. It takes the loudness up a whole other notch, which I’m always in favor of, cranking things up to eleven basically. This is very befitting of Jayne, but also anyone who finds themselves irritated by Jayne such as Captain Kaylee Frye.

Truly, this series is just beyond words in many ways. No matter what some out there say, one can create emotionally powerful forward-moving things with characters that belong to a corporate entity. Firefly might not have made it past one season on TV, but the impact of that show resonates to this day. This series shows just what can be done not only with the franchise but the characters themselves. There are no ‘bad’ characters, just characters that are waiting to truly be explored and guided by the right hands.

All-New Firefly: The Gospel According To Jayne Vol 3 is now available from BOOM! Studios.