A decade ago, Dark Horse gave us the previously secret backstory of Book in one volume, “The Shepherd’s Tale.” Now we get a similarly classy (and expensive) hardcover volume for Hoban Washburne – Boom! Comics’ “Firefly: Watch How I Soar” (November) — and it’s good, but it can’t be quite as good because Wash is pretty much the opposite of Shepherd Book. Serenity’s pilot is an open book, so to speak.
True to his character
Also, a one-shot Wash retrospective was already done — Patton Oswalt’s “Float Out” (2010) — albeit from his pre-Serenity friends’ points of view in that case. These are longer tales (128 total pages), but nothing revelatory.
Still, these six stories feel true to the spirit of his character; someone who knows nothing about Wash would get a good picture of his life. Although this isn’t referenced in the narrative itself, the back cover says these are the moments that flash before Wash’s eyes before his surprising death in “Serenity.”
In four of the six tales, the writer also does the art, which explains why the tones match so well. The chapters are not labeled – we go straight from one story to the next – but it’s always clear we are transitioning to a new story in Wash’s life because the art styles are different enough.
As I’ve said in previous Boom! reviews, its art is a step down from Dark Horse’s, which often featured Georges Jeanty’s cute but nonetheless appropriate likenesses, along with vibrant colors. To generalize, Dark Horse’s work makes me think of science fiction, Boom!’s work makes me think of Westerns.
Variety of styles
Jeff Jensen, the former Entertainment Weekly writer who went from covering great TV to working with those TV creators, respectfully adds “Firefly” to his resume with the bookending stories “Windfall” and “The Flight Lesson,” both of which show Wash’s devotion to his loved ones.
The first is a tone-setting vacation with Zoe, the last a surprising and touching “what could have been” yarn. Jorge Monlongo and Jordi Perez (with Maxflan Araujo coloring on the latter) bring a dreamy quality to Jensen’s chapters.
Ethan Young’s “The Land” tells of kiddie Wash’s acquisition of his toy dinosaurs, and I believe this is the first time we meet his dad, Wash Sr., also a pilot. Young takes a poke at the surprise of Wash’s death in “Serenity” with Wash’s plotting of a story about his dinosaurs and rejection of his dad’s idea for a twist. Young’s art is the volume’s most basic.
Jared Cullum’s “Born for the Stars” shows Wash’s natural piloting talent and explains why he loves space so much: He grew up on a planet so smog-shrouded that he couldn’t see the stars. Cullum’s art is the volume’s the most stylized, and it has hiccups in the narrative flow, with moments of action (such as Wash catching a falling colleague with his ship) not being crisply shown.
Reflective but tangential
Jorge Corona’s “Take the Sky Away” chronicles an early mission in the pilot’s time with Serenity (he still has his mustache) and reveals in a poetic way that he had eyes for Zoe from the beginning — even though she insists on being addressed as Officer Alleyne.
With Fabiana Mascolo coloring, Corona unleashes the collection’s wildest, scrappiest art and flirts with being too confusing as Wash flies a shuttle through various rings to evade pursuers and reach Serenity in outer space.
“Home,” by Giannis Milonogiannis, refutes “The Land’s” anti-twist stance and delivers a good surprise about why Serenity is being chased by Junkers (space wreck salvagers), and it also has the best dialog of this collection. With Giada Marchisio coloring, Milonogiannis brings us back to a crisp, clean look.
“Watch How I Soar” is a reflective, tangential volume. The stories are written and drawn with love for Wash, but are not memorable or essential. To put it kindly, they are ephemeral. To put it cynically, I wonder if this is something Joss Whedon allowed Boom! to put out while he shapes more essential backstories for, say, Inara or Kaylee.
You might want to wait for the book to go down a few bucks from the full price, because there isn’t $20 worth of storytelling density here.