You probably didn't even know there was an eighth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, did you?
For non-comic book readers: There have been Buffy comics since around the third season of the TV show. A lot of people seemed to like them, but the few I tried reading were pretty forgettable. Then a couple of years ago, Joss Whedon announced a relaunch that would effectively be the eighth season on the television series. He wrote the first story arc, and was followed up by an all-star cast of writers like Brian K. Vaughn, Jane Espenson, and Brad Meltzer.
Some of the story arcs have been better than other. The Faith one? Great. The Japanese vampires one? Really great. But others have meandered along with no apparent point to them other than to pad for time, and the lack of any sort of FX budget means the series has been able to go places where maybe it shouldn't have (Buffy time travels to the future, Buffy gets super powers, etc.).
Overall, though, it's been a pretty successful experiment, and well-worth checking out for any fan of the show.
This week's issue featured the reveal of the identity of this season's "Big Bad" (I loved Buffy, but God, I hate it for popularizing that stupid term, which has spread to pretty much every other genre show). I'm not going to spoil it, but depending on the way it plays out, it could be either a great twist or a really lame one. We'll find out soon, as the series is in the homestretch now, with Whedon returning in a few issues to write the finale.
If you're on the fence (love Buffy, but at the same time, "Ew! Comic books!"), most of the series has been collected into books, so you can go to the graphic novel section of Borders or Barnes & Noble, and flip through them to see if they're for you.
Honestly, though, it's worth reading just for the Andrew scenes alone.
4 comments:
I like how you avoided spoiling the identity of the villain. If only every comic site had been as kind...
I was really into the series when it first began, and I wasn't even the most die-hard Buffy fan. It was good, but I got bored around the time she went to the future, since I'd never read Fray. I finally caught up on that mini last month, but then found that the Buffy-Fray "sequel" wasn't nearly as good. I'll probably give the entire series another shot once he's done, mainly to see if I'm on board for the announced "Season 9"
this post reminded me that i still needed to read the 5th volume before the 6th is released this week, so i cheated and went to barnes & noble. the andrew/buffy comic was by far my favorite, as andrew is awesome.
so yeah. thanks for keeping me on buffy track.
I tried, but after seeing that Dawn was a giant teenager who couldn't get a boyfriend, the "really, Joss, really?" thoughts prevented me from getting into the comics.
Yeah, I also thought Dawn as a giant was pretty dumb. But it results in a great sequence in that Japanese vampires arc I mentioned, and a few issues later, she's no longer a giant.
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