Serenity, Volume 3: The Shepherd's Tale

Somehow, I have repeatedly forgotten over the last several months that I read this and was able to write about it. But that's not a knock against the comic itself, it's just one of those weird things that happens. The only disappointment about finally learning Book's backstory all these years later is that it doesn't take that many pages to do. In the end, his secrets aren't all that secretive, the kind of things that  most people wouldn't talk about, but they aren't world-shaking revelations either. Zack Whedon's script makes the way the story is told more interesting than the story itself, using a very familiar technique to turn a man's life story into an intriguing plot with many twists and turns. It's told backwards, starting around when he's with the Serenity's crew and jumping back years at a time, revealing his time with the Alliance and the earlier events that led to it. There's not much to it that you haven't seen before in science fiction stories, but just seeing how it all works into what the show set up and just spending a bit more time in the Firefly setting is always fun. It's not the best value for money, just based on page count, that you'll find in the world of comics, but I can't imagine many fans thinking it's not worth checking out.