Action!  Action action action action action!  For all the set-up in Serenity #4, Serenity #5 is all action, and yes, you will need to go back and read the previous issue to catch up and understand exactly what is happening in this issue, because there is so much action switching between enough perspectives that it takes a read or two to figure things out.

Basically, though, this is where the excrement meets the cooling machinery.  The crew (plus the Operative) has gone to rescue the other River-like girls, only to discover that they’ve been completely brainwashed, leaving River to fight them.  And everything goes nuts here, until the end, when there’s a horrible realization that what’s left of the Browncoat resistance are those left on Serenity–because the Alliance has used all of this as a trap.

But Malcolm Reynolds has one thing he has left to do–and that’s to save Zoe.  And he’s going to do whatever it takes.

Art – cue my normal complaints and my normal WOW about the cover.  Writing – not up to its usual standards here, but that’s because this is action action OMG all the action.  Still, comic writers are responsible, in part, for laying out the pages and the panels and what’s happening in them, and this was the first time I really wasn’t all that impressed.  Still, overall, it’s a good story, and I’m not sure how all the ends are going to get tied up in one issue next month.