A typical TV show season in the U.S. is around eight months. The "eighth season" of Buffy The Vampire Slayer lasted almost four years. It was an interesting experiment, but I think it proves that comic books aren't the ideal medium to continue a TV show. Even in comics, where storylines often last for months, four years is an awfully long time.
Additionally, you really have to question whether or not TV shows should be continued. Most quality shows have definitive endings. Buffy's was pretty good. Why keep going? (Aside from money, I mean.) I guess I could maybe see doing a film, since that's a chance to do a bigger, more elaborate version of the TV show. But a comic?
I get why a writer/producer might want to turn to comics in order to provide closure for a prematurely cancelled series. That's what Bryan Fuller is doing with Pushing Daisies. But resurrecting a series that enjoyed a long run just seems like a way to delay the inevitable, which is that all stories have to end at some point. Dark Horse and Joss Whedon have already announced a ninth season, and there'll likely be a tenth one after that. At what point can this just be considered an ongoing Buffy series?
Spoilers for Buffy The Vampire Slayer #40, and the series as a whole...
The TV series ended on a high note. The Hellmouth was destroyed, there were a ton of new Slayers to handle some of the load, Xander was surprisingly okay with Anya's death, and it seemed like Buffy was in a pretty good place.
Let's look at how the comic ends: Giles is dead. There's no more magic in the world (which, in the context of the Buffy universe, doesn't sound all that bad, but Willow says it is, so I guess we have to believe her), all those new Slayers hate Buffy, and Xander and Dawn are sleeping together, which just kind of seems wrong. And I'm not even sure what's up with Angel. It's a safe bet that some or all of these things will be resolved in the next series, but for now, it's a bit of a bummer.
One advantage of doing a comic instead of a TV show or movie is that there is no budget to worry about. So when Buffy and Angel got their super powers--easily the series' worst idea--the creative team was able to go nuts. Flying. Fighting hordes of demons. Having sex in outer space. And so on. Not much of this seemed to fit in with the tone of the TV show. For some reason, Spike had a flying ship. Just because a writer can let his imagination run wild doesn't mean he should, especially when he's working in an already established fictional universe.
There were some bright spots. The mystery of Twilight's identity was handled really well right up until the actual revelation, the Japan story-arc was fantastic, and the dialogue was so spot-on, you could easily picture the actors speaking it. But on the whole, the series was too long, too unfocused, and maybe a little too ambitious for its own good. If Whedon and company really want to stick with this "new season" concept, then they should plot the next one more like a TV show and less like a comic book.
1 comments:
A common theme with Whedon's comic work is "It started out really good, but dragged near the end." The second half of his Astonishing X-Men work was so bad that I refuse to believe that he actually wrote it. That's not to say that I'm some Whedonite who holds him in high regard - it just didn't feel like it came from the same guy.
So, I agree with all of what you said. I followed the book until she got to Japan, and then I made peace with the fact that I was never really a Buffy fan. I liked the show well enough, but never joined the ranks of the true Buffy FANS. I think I was only buying the comic because of the hype surrounding it, but I never really found it all that enjoyable.
You make a good point about the lack of budgetary limits experienced when continuing the story as a comic. I forgot where it was posted, but Whedon did an interview timed with the release of issue #40 and even he admitted that the "you could do anything" feeling wasn't necessarily the Buffy Ethos. That's why he's encouraging folks to give Season 9 a chance, because it will be a back-to-basics approach. I guess we'll just have to see.
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