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My final paper is finished and so I have some time before the actual exams to bring you some more reviews and news. So let’s get right to it with a review of the latest Buffy and Angel issues.
Buffy’s season eight is still going strong with issue #24. This time the story focuses on Faith, who we last saw early on in the series. She is still with Giles and together they are looking for young slayers in order to train them. When they hear of a slayer sanctuary, they decide to visit an meet one of the few remaining members of the Watchers’ Council Duncan Fillworthe (allthough he seems familiar, he was never introduced to the Buffyverse before). It is said that a group of slayers are hiding out in Hanselstadt, a small town in the mountains and they are at a stalemate with the vampires. What Giles and Faith don’t know however is that nothing is as it seems and the real reason why the vampires won’t attack the town lies hidden under a wall of silence. That’s all I can say here without giving away too much. All in all the issue had the right feel. Faith was spot on, sporting a few typical one-liners, we all love so much (for example when she helps a slayer the girl cries out: “You’re her… You’re BUFFY!!!”, and Faith replies, “She’s calling me names, G.” Classic!) and the action is not too over the top. #24 was a good one, but I am starting to miss the main storyline about Twilight and his goons. The strongest point of the issue however is the way it establishes Giles and Faith as the new slayer-watcher dreamteam. Writer Jim Krueger and artist Cliff Richards also seem to be such a team, so I would love to see more of them.
Story 8, Art 8, Re-read 7, Overall Rating 8
Let’s move on to Angel #19, a series that has turned from a strong challenging comic book to a real train wreck in only 2 issues. First off all, I have to say that I can’t get used to Dave Ross’ Art. The characters don’t look like their human counterparts and the rest of it looks like it’s from an early 90s X-men comic and is overall just bad in my opinion (just look at panel 4 of the uploaded pictures. Angel looks like a dumb brute… horrible). The story of the issue is not even worth mentioning, as it only focuses of Angel and his new “ally” Desdemona, a shapeshifter who can turn into a leopard. The thing that bugs me most is however how callous Kate Lockley has been reintroduced to the continuity. Angel and her were not exactly friends when they parted ways and now she is back, immediately on his team and does the whole “my friend is a vampire and I’m fine with it” routine. I really hope that the team on Angel will soon change direction or I will probably lose interest.
Story 4, Art 3, Re-read 3, Overall Rating 3
I won’t make any excuses for the late post, saying that exams are keeping me busy should be enough. So let’s get to the review of Buffy and Angel’s latest comic books.
Once again (sigh) we get a single issue story in Buffy’s issue #23 and this time our hero slayer gets backup from Andrew, former criminal mastermind and now a watcher for the Council. This means tons of nerd- and geek-speak for the readers and the chance to see Buffy herself have moment of geek weakness. Story wise, Buffy and Angel have to fight an obscure rogue slayer (I think she is mentioned in issue #11) that has gone bad and has taken over an island in Italy as a base of operations. There is not much happening in the issue and I have to say, had it not been for the funny nerd references this issue would have been abysmal. Once again an issue of minor quality, and I’m sadly starting to lose interest in the series. Also check out this other review: click!
Story 5, Art 6, Re-read 4, Overall Rating 5
Much of the same can be said about the last issue of Angel. Since the vampire with a soul has returned L.A. from he has been struggling with his new found celebrity. This first “Aftermath” issue features a new creative team namely artist, Dave Ross and writer Kelley Armstrong and they are doing a decent job, although I think that the art sometimes suffers from Ross’ attempt to capture the former actors’ likeness which makes the characters look stale and undynamic. Concerning the reintroduction of Kate I have to say that I’m still not sure what I should think of this. She had been gone way to long and on a really bad note so that her sudden reappearance is questionable, not to comment on her immediate chumminess with our lead hero. Hopefully the series will soon be back to the initial dense storytelling and maybe Armstrong will get the tone of the story right next time.
Story 6, Art 6, Re-read 5, Overall Rating 6
Here we are again, issue 22 has just been released and I took a quick look for you. Last month we saw a return of Buffy’s long time adversary Harmony (although she is more of a wannabe bad gal) and if you remember I was not at all pleased with the result. Issue 22 attempts to continue the main storyline, but we are still in filler territory.
Story wise, Satsu is visited in Japan by Willow’s ex Kennedy, who is supposed to evaluate Satsu’s performance as a new slayer cell leader. The Japanese slayer is still stricken by her short love affair with Buffy and Kennedy makes it abundantly clear, that she should forget about the vampire killer from Sunnydale. In other words, the writers seem to want to prevent the assumption that Buffy might have turned gay with a big neon NO! sign. Kennedy’s visit to the Asian country is however not without incident, as they are attacked by a small fury kitty doll (yes I know how it sounds), which turns out to be a part of a swarm like creature called Swell, which attempts to infest the human hosts it comes in contact with and in order to control them. The slayers are of course not overwhelmed by this threat and they manage to prevent a major outbreak. Harmony once again uses the destruction of the doll shipment to criminalize the slayer movement in the media.
So the issue has it all: Japan, a giant monster constituted of several minor cute kitty dolls (reminiscent of the Power Rangers type creatures), slayers kicking ass and the mention of lesbianism. Oh, and there’s a submarine too. Still the story was not much more satisfying than last months and I still think the latest issues took the funny premise of the show into a silly direction. Please return to the previous setting before you alienate more of the readers.
Story 6, Art 7, Re-read 5, Overall Rating 6
I have been a fan of Buffy – the Vampire Slayer, since it first came out. Over the course of the years you become attached to the characters of a show, you laugh with them and you even cry with them. Yet there was always one character on Buffy (and later even on Angel), that I was always annoyed with and that was Harmony. So when I heard that this months issue of Season Eight would feature her exclusively, I had a bad feeling to begin with.
Dark Horse brings us another one shot story, in which we follow Harmony as she outs herself to the public and becomes the world’s first Vampire TV star. When she is tackled by a Slayer during one of the shootings for her TV show, the media has a field day by declaring the Slayers as a shadowy organization with an unknown agenda and a threat to the public.
This is by far the worst issue of the series. I have to admit that until now I always liked the work of Jane Espenson, be it on Buffy or Battlestar Galactica. But this issue just doesn’t make sense, not even for a fantasy universe. Who would believe that a Vampire could kill people on regular network television? Not even MTV could pull that off. If they needed a reason to shine another light on the Slayers they could have done it by a million other ways. In my opinion this issue was just plain stupid. Hopefully the one-shot reel will soon end and we can get back to the continuing storyline.
Story 3, Art 6, Re-read 1, Overall Rating 3
With all the recent work for my exams it completely slipped my mind to upload the review of the twentieth issue of Buffy’s season eight. It was kind of a filler episode, a small cool down before a new story arc, but it was fun nonetheless. Remember when they had announced Buffy – The Animated Series? No? Well then you should check out this issue. After battling the hordes of evil (just a normal day for our favorite slayer), Buffy falls into bed and has a dream in which she is send back to Sunnydale (in the golden years), back when she was still a teenager in high school.
In this dream, we get to meet the Scoobies as we loved them, Giles is still the stuffy librarian, Xander and Willow are awkward teens and Angel is the broody loner in the dark. Ah, the good old times. What makes this issue special however, and probably the reason why they did it at all, is the art. The artists recap the style of the animation show that was planned, but never realized and thus resurrect the project, if only for a short time. Jeph Loeb (dedicating the issue to his son Sam’s memory) wrote the script and proves that he is a master of assimilating Whedon’s style and humor.
Although I might have preferred a continuance of the main story I must say that I enjoyed the issue a lot and would probably have loved to see a few episodes of the show, back when it was planned to air.
Story 7, Art 8, Re-read 6, Overall Rating 7
Finally I have time to do a quick review of this issue. Story wise it gives us the ending of the Buffy and Fray crossover. But instead of giving us answers to questions like, what is Willow doing there, we only get a bunch of new ones. Although I am a fan of the series, this constant piling up of new mysteries starts to grow old. Let’s hope the creative team will refocus on the big bad of this series and pushes the main story forward before the audience grows weary of it. Story 6, Art 8, Re-read 6, Overall Rating 6.5
In another hell on earth, Angel is still struggling with his death. While Cordelia tries to convince him to give up and leave this realm in order to prevent his destiny from becoming true, Angel’s allies are fighting their own fights in order to save him. All on all this issue is filled to the top with story and suspense and it will keep you guessing till the end. Still I have to add that the main story starts to get a little bit too twisted to follow it properly on a monthly basis. I’m looking forward to the end so that I can read it all again in one sitting. Story 8, Art 7, Re-read 8, Overall Rating 8
100 posts and 30,000 views in only a few months. We are happy about these numbers and hope to stay with you a long time. Next up will be reviews of the Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe collector’s edition, the newest Buffy and Angel comics (once I get a hold of them), and Batman: The Last Arkham.
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