Buffy Season 8 reveiw
To start out I have to let everyone know that I am a bit of a Joss Whedon whore. I watched almost all of Buffy; up until the switch to UPN or the dark seasons as I like to refer to them, caught all of Angel, and am slowly being schooled on the ways of Firefly. So you got to figure I might be a little bit bias about my reviews of the comics, but hey it’s my site so deal.
So for the first review I’m going to cover a past issue of Buffy Season 8 since hell we’re already on issue #12 which is due out March 5, 2008. Fair warning this might contain spoilers so if you haven’t read the comic yet; and really you should be if you have any common since at all, don’t read ahead. I’ll try not to ruin too much but there’s a lot to talk about.
While I was thrilled to have the whole Scooby gang back the beginning of the series seemed to start off a little slow for me. It still felt more complete than the show had the last few seasons while it was on UPN though. The concept of what to do now that there is a large population of Slayers out and about I think is going to lead to a lot of interesting story lines.
Already that’s happened with one of the best stories yet in issue #5 The Chain. The story was one of the first not centered on Buffy. It’s about one of the decoy “Buffy” slayers. Basic jist of things is that now that Buffy is the leader in this powerful group they’d sent out different girls to play Buffy all over the world. The tie in to the Angel episode was great.
In the story one of the decoys is telling her story while she’s basically waiting to die. She tells of when she first became a slayer. It follows the fight that gave her the scares that would make her look similar to Buffy and as a reward for all her hard work she’s sent underground to monitor things as Buffy.
What she finds is the demon Yamanh stirring up trouble and ends up standing as a figurehead of a different nature trying to unite different groups of faeries, slimefolk, the ravenclan, and as the book puts it that thing that looks like a leaf-blower, to stand against him and his minions. It has the voice we’re all used to in an episode of Buffy which could have been hard to pull off under less talented hands.
The blending of the past flashback scenes and what’s going on currently is very reminiscent of what would think someone who’s dieing would feel. The story in it’s self is quite powerful. All in all a terrific book and as any Whedonite would tell you I can’t wait for more.