WRITER: GREG PAK | ARTIST: DAVIDE GIANFELICE | PUBLISHER: BOOM! STUDIOS | FORMAT: SINGLE ISSUE | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

What’s that? A misprint on the front cover? Surely they mean Mal Reynolds?! But no! In this precursor story, to lead into Firefly #13, we get to explore the backstory of Mal Reynolds through his relationship with his beloved Ma. Well… beloved may be a strong word. Tolerated? Not hated? Well, they don’t shoot each other on first sight, let’s put it like that. Not anywhere vital, anyway.         

Which is just as well, as the Alliance have allowed a reduced sentence on Mal Reynolds if he’ll team up with bounty hunter, demi-cyborg, and ex-antagonist Boss Moon to track down and bring in his ill-doing mother.   

While we were queasy at the prospect of a potentially sentimental backstory for Mal, his relationship with Ma Reynolds is complex, sometimes touching and, as it intersects with the present day, also quite funny. In fact, it is the neat grasp of the moments of heart combined with zingy dialogue and overall humour, which are what make Firefly the series work so well, that transcends this story above being what it kind of is, a vehicle to carry us into a new arc for Mal in the main series (which we won’t spoiler here). 

This story is fun enough, and it is surprisingly nice to see young Mal and his hardscrabble upbringing, dragged up by a redoubtable frontierswoman mother, and there are also some nice comic moments, but you won’t miss much in plot terms if you just skip to issue 13, which is a teeny bit of a shame.