Worlds of the Alliance was created by designer Geoffrey Mandel for the classroom scene in the movie Serenity, but was never used because the final set for that scene had no walls. However, before the location was settled on, Mr. Mandel created a poster featuring planets of the Alliance, which was reviewed and approved by production designer Barry Chusid. Limited edition of 1,000. Printed on 100-pound stock and hand-signed and numbered by Geoffrey Mandel.THE BACK STORY: The Worlds of the Alliance was one of the first things I did when I started work on Serenity. I was still trying to find the right graphic look for the new, improved movie version of the Verse, and I was picturing a classroom chart like those pull-down maps of the United States (this was before they decided to film the classroom scene at the Huntington Gardens near Pasadena, where there was no obvious place to hang a wall chart). Although I counted myself a Firefly fan, I didn't know all the planets mentioned on the show by heart, so I found a handy planetary lexicon at www.fireflyfans.net. Particularly interesting to me was the idea, suggested by the shows creators but not really fleshed out on the series, that the two core worlds of the Alliance were Sihnon and Londinium, a Chinese planet and an Anglo-American planet (hence the prominent place of these two worlds in the chart). I created the planetary artwork using the LunarCell Photoshop filter, and since I was short a couple of planets, I came up with a few of my own (hint: this was 2004, an election year). Of course, at that point I had no idea that anyone would ever see this chart, let alone study it for clues, so the Chinese characters were more or less gibberish...or to put it another way, by the year 2500, the meaning of many Chinese characters will have changed quite a bit. According to Serenity Production Designer Barry Chusid, when Joss Whedon saw the Worlds of the Alliance chart he knew exactly where each planet fit in the Firefly/Serenity Verse, and even pointed out Shadow as the home of Mal, so its a good thing I did my homework! Geoffrey Mandel
