Actually, I already mentioned this. But now there’s Jo Chen’s cover art!

Serenity: Better Days follows everyone’s favorite space cowboys in a thrilling, action-packed adventure, where Mal and his crew take on a heist that promises a big payoff. But when one of Serenity’s crew is taken captive and tortured, the gang must put their enduring differences aside and work together to save one of their own, even if it may mean losing the cash prize of a lifetime.

Joss Whedon returns to the world of his blockbuster film Serenity, reuniting with Brett Matthews and Will Conrad, his collaborators on the bestselling 2005 series Those Left Behind.

* Collects Serenity: Better Days #1-3.

Full color, 80 pages, TPB, 6″ x 9″, with an introduction by Adam Baldwin, and if you preorder it from TFAW.com you get 20% off cover price, so, you know, do that.

The folks behind Kids Need to Read have whomped up another fantastic auction to benefit children’s literacy. You’d think there was a Big Damn Hero behind this or something…

You have the opportunity to own a complete set of Browncoat reading material: Firefly: the Official Companion I and II, Finding Serenity: Anti-heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon’s Firefly, Serenity Found: More Unauthorized Essays on Joss Whedon’s Firefly Universe, Serenity – The Official Visual Companion, and Serenity: Those Left Behind (Hardcover). All of them signed by Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk! Woo!

The auction is on now and lasts till June 15th. It’s a fantastic offer for a great cause. Go! Bid!

Dark Horse Comics is really cool. They are unbelievably cool. They are, in fact, so unbelievably cool that they’ve joined forces with the California Browncoats to make a variant Serenity comic to sell at the San Diego Comic-Con, just to benefit Kids Need to Read.

Which is pretty cool, you gotta admit.

The California Browncoats will be selling the comics at SDCC. It will be a variant edition of “Serenity: Better Days #1″ with the Will Conrad wraparound cover art they used for their special DH 100 version, only this will display Will’s pencils instead. 32 pages, all the stuff from the first one, but with a cardstock cover for extra specialness. Only 5,000 will ever be available and they’ll be $10 each, a good portion of which goes to Kids Need to Read, the children’s literacy program founded by Nathan Fillion and author PJ Haarsma.

These will only be available at Comic-Con 2008, but even if you can’t go the California Browncoats are there for you. Specifically, on eBay, where on all five days of the con they’ll be selling copies of the DH-California Browncoats SDCC edition of Serenity. Again, all proceeds will go to Kids Need to Read. Bookmark their eBay page and be ready (I’ll give you a heads up when it gets close).

Major thanks to Dark Horse and to the Cali Browncoats sponsors Gabriel Stempinski, Margaret Weis Productions, Creation Entertainment, Poplollies.com, The Powers Team - Marsia and Eugene, Dwight Bragdon, Done The Impossible , SaveHiatus.com and Quantum Mechanix, who helped make this possible.

This is a great collectible and a great cause (funny how so many Whedon-based projects combine the two). Check out the California Browncoats site for more details.

It’s here! Go hit your local comics store and pick up Serenity: Better Days #1, the first of a new three-part Serenity comic by Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews, Will Conrad, and Michelle Madsen, with the first of a triptych cover set by Adam Hughes.

Better Days revisits everyone’s favorite space cowboys in this thrilling, action-packed adventure, with Mal and his crew on a heist that promises a big payoff–what’s surprising is that this heist just might make good on that promise.

This takes place after the show, but before the movie and before the first comic book miniseries “Those Left Behind.” If you want to try before you buy you can see some sample pages. (If you want to peek aghead, sample pages from #2 are over here.)

You can also order it from TFAW.com here. 
#2 will be out Apr. 9 (Preorder it here!).
And the 3rd will be out May 14 (Preorder it here!)

Back when Serenity came out, there was a deal with Pocket Books to release two original Serenity novels. Quite a few authors jumped at the chance and submitted proposals such as Keith R.A. DeCandido (author of the Serenity novelization) and Jamie Chambers and Margaret Weis (creators of the Serenity RPG). Those submissions went into a holding pattern due to Serenity’s lackluster box office and finally sat waiting for Joss’s approval. It was never forthcoming, and the whole idea died.

Steven Brust’s submission, however, was in the form of an entire, completed novel, and it would be a shame not to do something with it…

Brust, author of the popular Dragaeran Series, “Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille,” and many others, wrote the 55,000-word book because, as he said, ”I couldn’t help myself” and this was the only way he’d get to read one. Since finishing it he has been reading the first chapter at conventions to riotous reactions and now, as promised, after exhausting every possible way of publishing it, he’s posted it online as fanfic.

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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.

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Oh, you gotta get this.

I really liked “Finding Serenity,” BenBella Books’ first collection of Firefly/Serenity essays edited by Jane Espenson. Lots of fun, lots of new insights, even some new facts a diehard Browncoat like me hadn’t heard yet. So, yeah, we’ve seen the movie since then, but how much new stuff could they write about?

You’re thinking I’m going to say “quite a bit, actually,” aren’t you? Damn. You guys are good. Here’s what you’ll find in “Serenity Found”:

Jane’s intro. Jane Espenson’s memories of the ‘verse and what it’s like working with Joss.

“Not every writer does this. They assume that there is a chance that the viewer is distracted, or very young, or unsophisticated. They try to accomodate. Joss doesn’t give you an inch.”

Catching Up with the Future. Science fiction master Orson Scott Card runs through the history of science fiction in films to explain with unrelenting honesty how movies dumbed sci-fi down, how that worked against print sci-fi, and how “Firefly” brought the bar back up where it should be.

The story of “Serenity” was smart, hard science fiction. Not only were the regular cast still good strong characters, the new characters - Mr. Universe and the assassin - were fascinating, surprising, quirky. The plot actually hinged on a moral decision made by the bad guy. Who does that?

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The summer before “Serenity” came out, I starting to work on a book about fandom. I wanted to try and explain to all those people who mock conventions and online forums and geeks and freaks exactly what being a part of a fan community is all about. I did some interviews with various Browncoat movers and shakers but ultimately I let it go because, being pleasantly antisocial both on- and offline, I was the wrong person to write it.
 
Which is good because Allyson Beatrice’s book would have blown mine away. She’s the perfect person to write it because she doesn’t try to analyze the socioeconomic impact of talent-consumer interaction or the changing trends in the networks’ use of end-user-friendly viral marketing. She just wrote a book about herself and her friends.

It’s called “Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby?” and if you’ve ever made a friend online you will not be able to read this book without smiling. Allyson is not just a fan, she’s a fan who can mobilize other fans. She started the Posting Board Parties for Angel, led the postcard campaign and wrote the famous Variety ad for “Firefly,” and offered support for countless numbers of people she never actually met. And in 17 essays she captures the feel, the love, the responsibilities and affections and fun and manic behavior and cheerful obsession of fandom. She talks about organizing cons, mail-in campaigns, parties, and last-minute weddings. You’ll find out how to handle trolls, deal with sock puppets, and argue with uppity showrunners. You’ll see the transcript of the night a group of people on a forum abruptly decided to raise money to bring a much-loved, never-met friend over from Israel and the speed with which the thought became the deed will look awfully familiar. You’ll laugh and get sniffly and most of all, you’ll recognize the people she’s talking about because you are the people she’s talking about. Sometimes literally, especially if you’ve ever hung around The Bronze or Whedonesque…
 
Q: You wrote a freaking book! How cool is that?
 
I’m having a hard time letting it sink in. I’ve always had this romantic view of writers, all smart and mysterious behind their typewriters. And then an idiot like me gets published. Standards have gone down the toilet, obviously.
 
I’m so pathetic that I went to Barnes & Noble the day after they shelved it so I could stare at the endcap display and try to burn it into my brain, just in case I never sell another book. I was on the same display with Woody Allen, Gabe Kaplan, and The Big Book of Jewish Humor. I’m on the Jewcap. My people are a funny people, apparently.

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I can’t play a note on anything more complicated than a kazoo but I wanted this anyway, and I’ll bet you do too. It’s “Firefly: Music from the Original Television Soundtrack,” a folio of 12 arrangements for piano from show composer Greg Edmonson. 40 pages, no extras or intro, unfortunately. But you get 11 of his playful, haunting compositions in the combinations he created for the official soundtrack CD, scored for piano solo, along with Joss’ theme song:

– Firefly Main Title
– Cows/New Dress/My Crew
– Dying Ship/Naked Mal
– The Funeral
– Inara’s Suite
– Inside the Tam House
– Leaving/Caper/Spaceball
– Out of Gas/Empty Derelict
– River Tricks Early
– River’s Dance
– River’s Perception/Saffron
– Tears/River’s Eyes

There’s a great interview with Greg Edmonson at TrackSounds from a few years back, by the way. And a new one with Firefly Talk that mentions the sheet music, along with the Backup Bash and more.

Order it at Amazon or bug your local music store to get it. Request it for your school’s band class!

Finally on sale! Now you can eat like the crew (or, hopefully, better). Recipes were submitted by fans, Jewel Staite, fans, Greg Edmonson, fans, Niska, fans, and “Buffy” alums Claire Kramer and Camden Toy into a massive, 264 page book with artwork by (you guessed it) fans. 

The 250+ recipes were either favorites of the cast or inspired by the show, which should make for some interesting eating. Profits from the book go to Freedom from Hunger. Some samples:

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