Serenity : Float Out #1 Review

One of the signs of an excellent work of fiction is how enduring the characters remain.  If, after all the stories have been told, and all the arcs complete, there is still a large base of readers who want to know more — want to fill in the cracks, and want to know what happens next.  I’ve seen it happen in Dragonlance, Star Trek, Buffy, and now, obviously, in Firefly/Serenity.  I would have to say this is a sign that Joss Whedon knows what he’s doing.

As you probably know, fans clamored and bought enough DVDs that the studio was convinced to film a feature film, and Dark Horse published a 3-issue mini-series that actually covers the time between the end of the series and the beginning of the movie.  And now we get this one-shot issue, “Float Out” which is essentially a eulogy for Hoban ‘Wash’ Washburne, the pilot of our fair ship.

Wash, as you probably are aware, died in the Serenity movie (That’s a 5 year old spoiler, deal with it.)  This story is a collection of friends, acquantances, and his wife, trading stories about the past, him in the war, him as a smuggler, and generally what kind of guy he was.  If you were a fan, Wash always made you smile, and this was a fitting end to his story.

Not a lot of new revelations or new stories, but if you are a fan of Firefly, you’re going to love this issue.  I don’t know how much we’ll be seeing of these characters ever again, but this is probably the last we’ll see of Wash.