Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight: Wolves at the Gate

By Goddard, Jeanty, Owens, Whedon

Collects Buffy Season Eight #11-15

This is my 18th review and so I've now achieved my Masters!

Finally, I have the third Buffy-collection in my hot little hands!

Xander: “It’s always complicated with girls. That’s why I need a man.”
Buffy: “That would be nice...”
Xander: “I mean a guy. Not a man, but a guy, for the guy bonding.”
Buffy: “Well, Andrew...”
Xander: “Do you really intend to finish that sentence?”

In the first story, “A Beautiful Sunset” the gang is still in the Scottish castle and the story deals with on-going storylines and relationships. The second story is the rest of the trade and deals with newcomer vampires who are Japanese and have a new bag of tricks.

In the first story, we find out who was the girl woke Buffy from the sleeping spell with a kiss, in the previous trade. She and Buffy seem to come an amicable understanding but things aren’t, of course, that easy. Also, a mystery man, who at least seems to be the man behind the whole Twilight –thing, attacks Buffy, flaunts his powers, and sows seeds of uncertainty to her mind.

There’s also a brief mention of a Slayer gone rogue and I presume she will be dealt with in upcoming issues. Buffy and Xander wax philosophic over how all the other Slayers have bonded together but as the leader Buffy must remain outside that connection. A very good issue.

Wolves at the Gate –story deals with a gang of Japanese vampires who have many more powers than usual vampires: the ability to turn to mist, wolves, bats, panthers… They attack the castle and steal Buffy’s scythe. There only one other vampire in the Buffyverse who also has these traditional vampire powers and so they turn to him for help: Dracula.

It turns out that Dracula and Xander have a kind of friendship and they have been keeping in touch over the years. So, Xander is the one who is sent to ask Dracula what he knows about the new vampires. Naturally, the Buffy gang has to go after the scythe into Japan and all kinds of wackiness ensue.

There are some on-going relationship stuff in this arc but otherwise it focuses on the new vampires so to me, it feels a bit unconnected from the rest of the story. (Which is ironic considering the first story’s point.)

I was quite surprised to find out that Xander had been keeping in touch with Dracula. After all, in that the end of the episode Xander was pretty frustrated about being everyone’s butt monkey. But their weird relationship is funny. Xander calling Dracula “master” and Dracula calling Xander “manservant”. Dracula was written very comically here and he almost reminds me of House because he throws around racial slurs a lot. He calls Renee Xander’s moor, for example. In the end, Dracula and the Slayers end up working together in Japan.

It did seem more than a bit weird to me that the Slayers did let Dracula off very easily. He is, after all, a many times multiple murderer, which he freely admits.

Willow is back but she’s shown very little and I miss Giles. I’d also like to know more about the Slayers. Now they are pretty much just a faceless mass following Buffy’s orders in fight scenes.

I didn’t really care for the ending of the trade. Too many things were just tied up neatly instead of continuing with them.

Overall: not quite as good as the previous trades but still very funny and entertaining.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: No Future for you

By Vaughan, Jeanty, Owens. Issue 10 by Whedon and Richards.

The second part of the eight season in comic book form. This trade gathers issues 6 to 10.

This arch brings back Faith and Giles. Giles has found out that one of the girls who got Slayer powers isn’t a good guy but intends to bring about the Apocalypse. Unfortunately, the girl is a rich English heiress so killing her isn’t going to be easy. So, Giles drafts Faith. He promises that after Faith kills Lady Genevieve, she can go to an early retirement away from Slaying and her criminal record. Faith agrees reluctantly and Giles starts to train her to be an English lady so that she can infiltrate into Genevieve’s social circle and strike unexpectedly.

Lady Genevieve Savidge, or Gigi, is a spoiled young aristocrat who wants to rule the world. Her trainer and bodyguard is Roden who is quite a powerful warlock. He can summon gargoyles out the air to defend Gigi. In order to prepare herself for the coming battle Gigi fights and kills other Slayers. She also seems to have an interesting ability to sense when another Slayer is near. Gigi and Roden are quite a formidable pair.

We also get some glimpses of the Scottish castle where Buffy and the gang have their base. Willow is trying to cure Dawn’s gigantism and Buffy is seeing terrifying dreams.

Both Faith and Giles are the same as in the show. In fact, I heard their dialogue in my head with the actors' voices. I love the dialogue and the art is okay. I didn't expect Giles to resort to assassination which seem a bit too dark for the Buffy gang to do.

In issue 10, "Anywhere but here", Buffy and Willow are trying to find out more about the mysterious Twilight-group. Willow flies them to the lair of Sephrillian who minds an unstable reality field. There Willow and Buffy hope to be able to find some answers. But first, they see glimpses of past and future and eventually have to face some ugly truths in the finest Buffy fashion.

I liked both stories and I'm really interested to see how the story continues.

My blog.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home

By Whedon and Jeanty

I’m a huge Buffy fan but I prefer seasons 1 through 3 instead of the subsequent seasons. I find this a bit puzzling because I tend to like books and movies with adult protagonists more than teenagers. And yet the case of Buffy is clearly very young during the seasons 1-3. Then again, I’m of the opinion that the first three season are hold together far better plotwise and thematically than the later ones. (I especially disliked witchcraft as symbol for two different things which aren’t related to each other.) Still, there are episodes in the later seasons which I just love.

Anyway, I was thrilled to hear that Buffy would continue in comic book form. Was a bit less thrilled when I realized that I had to wait for them to come out in trade paperback form. I did manage to get in English before but now it has been published in Finnish, too! I was a bit worried about the translation since even the quality of the subtitles, er, varied a lot. This translator seems to know something about the Buffyverse although, alas, not quite enough. (For example, “Bored now” was translated into “Are you still bored”…)

The story starts a couple of years after the end of the TV-series and the world has changed. There are many Slayers now and Buffy and the gang are trying to mold them into a fighting force against the (supernatural) evils in the world. Buffy and Xander are in Scotland leading and teaching a strike team of Slayers while Andrew is in Italy and Giles is in some Islamic country. Willow is doing her own thing with Kennedy.

Buffy and a strike team take out a nest of demons. There they find out that the demons’ victim has a strange marking on his chest. Meanwhile, General Voll and his men are watching the Slayers. The General is convinced that Buffy and the Slayers are a threat to society or at the very least to the General’s own plans. His people have been investigating the remains of Sunnydale and have found two survivors there. One of them is Amy who really wants to kill Buffy.

Meanwhile in Scotland Dawn has grown into a giant. She refuses to tell how (or doesn’t know) and only wants to talk to Willow. Rumor has it that she dated a triple witch and he transformed her. Xander is leading the operations center while Buffy goes out as the leader of the strike team. Soon, Amy attacks. She puts Buffy under a sleeping spell and has an army of undead attacking the Scottish castle where the team is staying.

It’s nice to see that much of the charm of the Buffy –series is still here: humor, pop culture references, witty dialogue, plot twists. The basic situation is, of course, rather different; instead of a small group of (teenaged) friends who try to save the world and keep the police in the dark, the Slayers are a big group with all sorts of technology and apparently even a team of witches working for them. Still, many of the new characters remain faces in the crowd and the focus is on the old gang. There are also lots of references to characters and the events in the series. Even Ethan Rayne makes a guest appearance.

The last story is about a Buffy look alike who gets a very dangerous assignment.

If you’ve never watched Buffy, I would definitely recommend starting with the TV-show and not with this comic.

Art: Art gets just a 'meh' from me. I didn’t hate it which is always a positive sign but I didn’t love it either. The characters don’t really look like the actors although getting that right would have been very difficult anyway. I really liked the covers, though.

Overall: There is enough of a mix of old and new to make me a happy old Buffy fan!