Review: "Those Left Behind" hardcover
October 27th, 2007 | 
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First off, let's see what it is.
Dark Horse's biggest hit of 2006 is now available in a special-edition hardcover!
Joss Whedon, the pop-culture mastermind behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, bridged the gap between his cult-hit Firefly TV series and his Serenity motion picture with this three-issue miniseries.
Penned by Whedon and Brett Matthews, a Firefly show writer, the ragtag crew takes on a scavenger mission with the promise of a big payoff. Only too late do they realize the gig is orchestrated by an old enemy eager to remake their acquaintance.
* Sporting a new cover by Adam Hughes, this oversized collection shows off the work of penciller Will Conrad and colorist Laura Martin, and the array of pinups by phenomenal guest artists. In addition, over a dozen backup pages delve into the work and art behind the scenes-original material assembled especially for this hardcover edition.
And it is all that. Beautiful new cover — where's the poster for this, Dark Horse? — and the production and colors are great. If you peek under the slipcover you'll even see a nice Serenity logo on the book cover. All the stories and covers* from the original 3-issue, 9-cover series are here, as promised, and Nathan's intro from the paperback collection came along for the ride. All well and good.
My problem with the book? The extras.
They're not new. None of them. You get Joss' pre-production memo "A Brief History of the Universe, Circa 2516 A.D.," which is funny and very revealing abgout the underpinnings and history of the 'verse, and some stunning production artwork which are truly wonderful to look upon. At least, that's what I remember thinking when I first saw them all in the Serenity Visual Companion from Titan Books.
Hey, Dark Horse? Serenity fans tend towards the obsessive — trust me on this one, note the name of my site and imagine the mail I get– and an awful lot of us bought the Serenity Companion. You know what would have been a great thing to put in your collection?
Joss and Brett's script, or even a portion of one. Their notes back and forth. Pencils of the finished pages. Character studies by the artists. Ship and cast pinups from other comic artists. New interviews from just about anybody involved with the comics about their involvement. Even an essay on how this became your hottest seller would have been good, and even the slightest, roughest peek at the next Serenity mini-series would have brought Browncoats by the scores to the bookshelves. Stuff that only you have, that we haven't already seen.
* Update: Didn't notice this until Simon from Whedonesque mentioned it, but the hardcover doesn't have all the covers after all. Simon's and River's are combined, and Book's is missing altogether. C'mon, Dark Horse, that's just sloppy.
The book is a great collection that will make a great gift for Browncoats and new fans alike. I highly recommend it, especially if you still haven't read the mini-series or don't own the Serenity Companion. But it could have been so much more. The best thing about it, to me, was the great big "1" on the spine. I can't wait for "2."
(By the way – whomever has the rights to Joshua Middleton's artwork of Inara's costumes and the Companion House? Please release them as prints. Please.)
Available now at TFAW.com or your local comic store, coming soon to Amazon and bookstores everywhere.
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Who-hooo! I might be having to wait a bit, I pre-ordered one of the Brett Matthews signed ones. The cover art on this sure looks nice.
Where did you order the signed one?
I saw this in the comic store last week. I already have the trade paperback — I can't imagine why I'd want to buy this if I didn't already have the trade version. I mean, I'm still trying to convince myself to buy the deluxe Serenity DVD after buying the first version.
I ordered the signed version through a link on serenitystuff…..Dark Forces or something maybe? It's probably still on here somewhere.
That's too bad this is really nothing new…..I'm getting an uneasy feeling about some of the Dark Horse stuff. They started out great – the Serenity comics, the wonderful ship ornament, the PVC figures are great…..but lately they seem to be leaning on repackaging the Serenity logo (which is cool to a point, I have ordered lunchboxes and shot glasses and mugs, but they need original stuff too, or that gets old real fast), repackaging the comics, and adding more expensive and less interesting ships.
I'm grateful for it all, and I want to see them succeed. I know they are capable of putting out some really stellar stuff. But it seems that lately, they've gone from a strong start serving the wants of browncoats to just cashing in on the franchise without putting a lot of thought into it. I hope they didn't just decide that browncoats would buy anything (let's face it, we will!), so they didn't need to really put any effort into expanding the 'verse.
I could be way off-base, but your review of this book makes me wonder even more than I already was. I hope I'm wrong though!
I have to agree with Jessi. As someone who is also a big Trek fan, it's the same treatment that the trek fans have been getting. Once a company finds out the fans are …well…fanatical…they get dollar signs in their eyes and start producing crap and when we stop buying it, they decide that the fan base has dwindled or that interest has waned, but in reality it's that we want quality items for our hard earned money.
QMX has been great and I would like to see more companies follow their lead in making quality products (I know, I know, not everyone thinks they're great, but at least they do more than slap a sticker on a shot glass and overcharge us for it)