Serenity: The Shepherd’s Tale
by Joshua Malbin on Nov.06, 2010, under Comics
Zack Whedon again. Last time, with the Dr. Horrible book, it was ambiguous how much Zack contributed to the original idea. With Serenity: The Shepherd’s Tale, it’s quite clear. Firefly was big brother Joss’s creation. And Zack tells us in an author’s note that Joss outlined this story; Zack merely wrote the actual script.
Which, let’s face it, is lame and smacks of Joss using his little brother to cash in.
I also think Zack may have believed too much something like the blurb copy: “Shepherd Book, one of the most beloved characters from the cult-hit television show Firefly, is an enigma amongst the vagabond crew of the starship Serenity.” The truth is, I think most Browncoats would rate Shepherd Book as nearly the least beloved of the crew, ahead of only Inara and maybe tied with Simon. Certainly far behind the affection fans feel for Mal, Wash, Zoe, Kaylee, Jayne, or River.
He does have a mystery in his past. That much is true. That mystery lent weight to a character who, while well played by Ron Glass, was otherwise pretty thin. But by the end of Firefly‘s all-too-brief existence we viewers had at least a partial handle on his past. He used to be a fighter and someone of status in the Alliance. Then something happened and he went to live in an abbey. We just didn’t know what that something was.
A comic book that filled in the reasons for his conversion from Alliance fighter to Shepherd could have been a nice addendum to the series, then. But the Whedons needed to understand that even fans didn’t especially care about Shepherd Book, and had to be made to care. We fans/readers needed conflict and uncertainty—an actual character arc ending in Book’s decision to enter an abbey (or his decision to leave the abbey, I suppose).
Instead Joss outlined and Zack faithfully scripted a story in reverse that assumes the reader does care about Book and merely wants his mystery solved. Worse, it’s a story with too many steps for its length, a string of reversals and deceptions stretching all the way back to Book’s childhood. Told forward, at much greater length, it could have given me the insight into Book’s character I wanted. Told backward, with gaps of years separating each vignette of a few pages, it merely answers questions without any feeling.
(A much smaller complaint is that it answers one of those questions in a manner inconsistent with an episode of the TV show. In Safe, Book is shot and gets medical treatment aboard an Alliance ship by showing his ID papers. The explanation in A Shepherd’s Tale for his departure from the Alliance military would seem to preclude that possibility. I wouldn’t be getting all continuity-geeky, though, if I felt the comic stood on its own.)
Preview here.