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When the crew of Serenity gets beau coup bucks (or credits in this case) off a job, you just know that these guys and gals are in for a world of hurtin’. After years of barely scraping by, all of a sudden, unimaginable riches fall into their laps. What’s a Browncoat to do? Well, thanks to Serenity: Better Days #2, we get a glimpse of what they’d do, and it’s again filled to the brim with every element that keeps us “Firefly” fans happy: action, suspense, intrigue and a very healthy dose of fun and whimsy.

When the issue opens, we get a true ‘WTF?’ Moment when it shows Jayne captaining a ship and telling the Alliance to, in no uncertain terms, go screw themselves. When we get to the next page, though, it’s revealed that this is Jayne’s fantasy of what he wants to do with the windfall of cash they have. Thus begins one of the sub-plots of this issue, of which there are many. The crew is now on vacation on the beautiful planet of Pelorum, where they’re staying in thousand-credits-per-night suites. Of course, this is all very contrary to Mal’s disposition, being one who likes to live entirely off the radar, and he makes no secret of this, even when he teams with his crew to stop a robbery in the bar of the hotel, which for once is not greeted with further violence or an immediate need to escape, but with applause from the appreciative crowd.

But wait, there’s more! We’ve got the extremely vindictive mystery guest, with a dental fixation akin to Olivier in “Marathon Man” and an apparent mad-on for Mal, who is hunting the crew who stole his robot, and we’ve got an Alliance black-ops squad run by a man named Ephraim Sanda who is hunting ‘dust devils’, guerilla-style fighters from the Alliance/Independents War… and Mal just may be one of them. He’s also got an ‘appointment’ with Inara, which doesn’t do much for Mal’s common sense.

What sets this apart from last issue is its dialogue. You can really feel Whedon’s done a lot of work on the script, because the characters really sound like they do from the show/film, as opposed to last issue where it just seemed a little off. Now that’s nothing against Brett Matthews, since he’s outdone himself on several occasions with his work on The Lone Ranger, and he did some terrific work on the other Serenity mini, Those Left Behind, but to have a more, I don’t know, Whedon-y feel to a Serenity story is a very good thing. Also Will Conrad’s art has more kick to it than last issue. And with any Serenity story, there are some true laugh-out-loud moments, like the sweaty fantasy of Kaylee, the amazingly bizarre fantasy of River (and Zoe’s line following is priceless), and the faux fantasy of Shepherd Book, which is just awesome. And of course, Jayne’s non-stop search for getting himself ‘sexed’, to which he also consults Simon, is just hilarious.

My complaints are two-fold, though. First, it has a kinda clunky saw-that-one-coming ending, and second, there’s so much going on for just a three issue mini here that you get the sense they’re really going to have to pack a lot into the final issue.

But it’s Whedon. I have faith.

Serenity: Better Days #2
Written by Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews
Art by Will Conrad
Colors by Michelle Madsen
Letters by Michael Heisler
Cover by Adam Hughes

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