Joss’s bro, Zack, on fleshing out the The Shepard’s Tale in the first Serenity hardback graphic novel
“It explores Book’s backstory,” says Zack, “which in the show is very mysterious. You get little indications that his life is much more interesting than you think, but you never really know what it is. This story goes all the way back to his childhood, to see how he ended up the man in the show. It’s very much a character story. It’s very human. I had a lot of fun with it. It’s really charting his emotional and psychological life, and it was really interesting. I was working from an outline by Joss, and he had this really complicated, rich history imagined for Book. Then I scripted it. It was a lot of fun, and it was nerve-wracking because I know that people really care about this character and that universe. And I care about it too. I’m a huge fan of the show and the movie and everything. But I know that we did it justice in the comic. His life took a lot of very interesting turns, and I think that people will be really surprised to see some of the places that he came from.”
