Can’t Take The Sky From Them — Reviewing ‘Firefly: Verses’ #1

A butterfly flaps its wings, and the entire outcome of a massive intergalactic war greatly shifts toward the underdog’s favor. Down goes the Alliance, and in its place rises the Coalition of the Brown Coats.

Except, that’s not how things went in the Firefly universe that we know and love. It is, however, the world as it exists in Firefly: Verses #1, an alternate reality story from Ryan Parrott, Lalit Kumar Sharma, Francesco Segala, Gloria Martinelli, and Jim Campbell.

Thanks to BOOM! Studios gaining the license years ago, the time we’ve been able to spend in the Firefly universe has expanded greatly. Stories have carried on from the short-lived series and it’s follow up movie, really allowing the characters and world to grow. With all the movie forward, it’s a novel idea to do some backward gazing at this point.

Especially since ‘what if?’ or alternate reality stories are a comic book staple.

The series opened with the Unification War and the battle of Serenity Valley, where we saw the Brown Coats (as well as Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Alleyne) lose to the Alliance. Parrott takes us back to that moment and with one change, the momentum shifts. You might think that seeing the characters we know as the ‘heroes’ winning would make for a better universe. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

Parrott doesn’t sugar coat things, as the characters we know end up in wildly different (yet logical) spaces within this one-shot. Instead of the Alliance with a boot heel on the outer planets, it’s the Coalition that is doing the same to planets that were once the rich Alliance ones. The former Shepard turned Rebel Darriel Book points to those in power tending to turn to such moves to keep their power.

There is a very solid grasp on the characters, and the way that some of them are mixed up makes perfect sense. Taking some relationships and turning them on their head, or deepening them, because of the changing circumstances.

Being a rough series, Kumar picks that vibe up very well artistically. Everything has weight, depth, and sharper edges to it. Some elements are out of focus or blurry for effect, to either sharpen foreground figures or to give focus to specific things. There are a couple of spaces where some faces and figures get a little rougher than others, potentially just from the length of this book or the publishing timeline.

In the same vein, the color palette that Segala, with assistance from Martinelli, brings to the page just is so heavy, darker, and rough. No surprise since the duo has been doing coloring work in the Firefly Universe quite a few times now through the various series. It’s a murkier type of color palette with lots of shadows and colder colors, with some room for things that are brighter or lighter where needed. It keeps things very similar to what we see in the ‘regular’ universe, because while the powers-to-be changed the oppression of the universe remains.

A perfect way to show that as much as things change, they stay the same.

Another familiar name to these books is Campbell, still doing all the great lettering things. Creating solid, personality-filled, emotionally resonating voices. Adding little quirks here or there to give accurate voices, capturing the performances that the actors established so long ago. At the same time, little things are pulled off to change the voices a bit for these new situations and connections.

Firefly: Verses #1 is now available from BOOM! Studios.