Nine months after David Booher’s All New Firefly series came to a close, the crew of Serenity is back at BOOM! for more adventures in FIREFLY: THE FALL GUYS #1, the debut issue of a new six-issue miniseries by Sam Humphries.

From the get-go, the tone of this series already sees a seismic shift away from Booher’s character-examination of Jayne Cobb in the last series. Humphries’ plot feels more like the first episode of a multi-episode arc from the original Firefly series. After an initial stand-off with an opposing crew, the Serenity group, now broke and looking for any work to make ends meet, agree to perform an Ocean’s 11 style heist and split the profits. Things aren’t what they seem though and, as the title of the series alludes to, our crew realizes the heist is just a ruse and they’ve been set up to take the fall for an even bigger crime.

Humphries’ writing makes the issue accessible to even the most lapsed or casual Firefly fan and I’d argue that someone who isn’t even familiar with the franchise could find something to enjoy in this script. Each member of the crew gets a mini-introduction and a chance to show their personality at various points throughout the book. As mentioned already, the twist at the end is spoiled by the series’ title so it didn’t really have the payoff that Humphries was likely expecting. But given this cast of characters and how well Humphries plays into their unique and lovable personalities, I’m interested to see how the crew gets themselves out of this mess.

Jordí Perez’s designs have a sketchbook feel to them that allows for a nice continuity from prior Firefly comics and plays really well with the space-western genre. The issue is heavy on panels featuring character close-ups and while they can often be simple character close-ups without much background, Perez does a strong job at conveying emotion through facial designs for the most part. There are a few of these panels that could have used more detail though. I also would have liked to see a more angles used to gauge the scope of the environment. There are a few panels wide-shot panels where we get to see things like a dignitary spaceship and the dignitary’s parade route outside the heist and they offer some of the best visual world-building moments of the book.

The color palette from Francesco Segala and Gloria Martinelli offers a wide-range of washed out colors that also fit the space-western theme. The approach gives a very retro-vibe to the book that reminded me of the television series, but felt uninspired. The panels when hints of vibrant colors were used popped and I’m intrigued to see how these are used going forward to liven up the pages.

Overall I thought this was a fun first entry into the new miniseries and it served the cast of characters well. Now that the main plot has been set up, I’m hopeful we get some unexpected twists and turns along the way as it wouldn’t be an entry into the Firefly universe if things didn’t go as planned.

Rating: 7/10