War of the Realms, Buffy, Calexit, Childhood's End

Last new comic for the week:

War of the Realms 4

The heroes of Earth gather allies from the other realms.  Of note is She-Hulk’s recruitment speech to the dwarves of Snidavellir:

Odin and Freyja appear to come to a glorious last stand end, but no bodies, no death.  

I miss the days of Secret Wars, where epic crossovers read more like a single, cohesive story rather than a collection of connected vignettes.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1

I reviewed this as a new comic just four months ago.  My opinion stands - It’s fun, but not enough for me continue getting.  Dan Mora’s art comes as such a breath of fresh air after Georges Jeanty.  How much better would Season Eight have been if Mora had been the artist instead?  I would have liked to see that very much.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Nice

Calexit 1

The concept, of course, is enough to get me on board: Huge chunks of California attempt to breakaway from the United States after the President announces plans to deport all non-US citizens.  

The result from writer Matteo Pizzolo doesn’t match up with what I was looking for.  I was hoping for an examination of what a successfully seceded region would be like - What would a state with no right wing look like?  What would fill the vacuum left by the conservatives? (Maybe I’ll write it myself someday.)

Instead, Pizzolo gives us a DMZ-type scenario, where the government is running a military occupation of California.  It’s certainly a plausible depiction of what would really happen, but it’s not something that I’m that interested in reading about.  I’ve seen stories about the gritty rebel fighting against The Man plenty of times, and this doesn’t add anything that I haven’t read before.  I’m still keeping it, because the idea alone is still worth keeping around.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: No

Rating: Fine

Childhood’s End 1

Children are cruel, mean, little assholes.  That’s the story Dr. Malcolm Bourne, child psychologist, tells in this issue, showing all the mental and physical trauma kids can go through from just an everyday outing at the playground.  (At least the shittiest bully gets his comeuppance.)

This was the only issue of a planned five issues to come out, which is a shame.  This might be a hard read, but the truth of all the situations makes it an important one.  I would have liked to see how this played out.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Nice

Buffy: Season Eight

Buffy 31-40

Willow Special

Riley Special

By this point, momentum is the only thing carrying me through to the end of the series.  The plot gets crazy cosmic, and Joss Whedon can’t help himself by killing off another core character.  Summary as far as I can tell: Twilight kills hundreds of Slayers, and Buffy absorbs all of their strength, which grants her superpowers.  Twilight turns out to be Angel, by the way. He needs Buffy to match his mysteriously granted level of power so that they can have super orbiting-the-earth sex, which creates a brand new universe where they’re meant to be the god-parents.  This unleashes a bunch of demons on Earth. Buffy ditches her destiny to save her home planet, and Angel, after spending all this time to create this baby universe, joins her. (His motivations are mercurial at best. I’m getting more and more pissed off as I write this.  I’d originally rated this at Fine, and it’s plummeted to Hated in the last 2 minutes.)

Angel and Buffy fight side by side, then find the magic MacGuffin that’s causing all of this.  They can either destroy it, remove it, or protect it, and I have zero idea as to who wants to do what with it.  Angel kills Giles over it, Spike shows up, Buffy shatters the crystal, magic disappears from Earth, and the good guys win, I think.  

I’m so mad right now.  This was so very bad. Why can’t I bring myself to get rid of it?  Basically, the first half or so of Season Eight was decent, and the completionist in me can’t bear to break up the run.  For better or so so worse, this exists as one entity.

My daily Georges Jeanty hate:

It is completely unreasonable to expect me to go from this on the cover...

...to this on the interior.

So what didn't I hate?

'Magick' with a K is not to be trifled with.

Belongs in a museum.

What makes all this worse is that I watched the last few scenes from season three’s prom episode today.  Buffy at its best, and these comics are nowhere close to it in quality.

This is the stuff that makes me cry.  So good.

I'll pretend this was meant for season 3, not season 8.

Regret buying: Yes (No for the specials)

Would buy again: No

Would read again: No (Yes for the specials)

Rating: Hated (Fine for the specials)

Buffy: Season 8

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight 12-30

Things improve with the next arc, written by Drew Goddard.  It’s entirely possible that I liked this more because I wasn’t as tired when I read it.  I’m somewhat tempted to start recording my state of sleepiness as I go through my collection - I wouldn’t be surprised to see some correlation between my wakefulness and ratings.  

Anyway.  Goddard brings a focus and coherence to this story that’s lacking in the rest.  A vampire clan steals Buffy’s scythe. Their unconventional powers lead the Scoobies to temporarily enlist Dracula to their cause.  The vampires plan to use the scythe to depower all the Slayers. Big fight ensues. The vampires kill Renee, Xander’s new girlfriend.  Giant Dawn fights Mecha Dawn. Good guys win, Buffy gets her scythe back. Dracula returns to his castle. Xander grieves. Buffy sleeps with Satsu, a lesbian Slayer who’s in love with her.  IRL internet explodes. In character? Out of character? All I can say is that it felt far more natural than Dany’s turn in the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones.  (It just aired last night.)

I found these issues a lot more entertaining.  I laughed a lot more at the funny bits, and Renee’s death was a lot more affecting than I expected for what was essentially a throwaway character.  

Heh.

Not surprised Dracula's got a problem with Asians...

Mecha Dawn's got Dawn's personality down pat.

Then Joss Whedon crosses Buffy over with his characters from Fray, in a muddled mess that involves future Dark Willow.  Meh. At least Dawn turning into a centaur generated some chuckles.  

A bunch of single issue stories follow before the gang seek out Oz, now hiding out in the Tibetan mountains.  The plot demands that the Slayer gang voluntarily give up their powers and magic, leading to their capture by Twilight.  Whatever. If I didn’t love these characters so much, I’d have quit buying this comic around issue twenty. Between his lackluster effort with these comic and the wretched Dr Horrible, where I finally got sick of his penchant for killing characters for nothing more than shock value, I’d completely lost faith in the formerly unassailable Whedon.  (His work on the Avengers movie won him some points, but then came the accusations from his ex-wife, and now I don’t know what to think.)

Georges Jeanty continues to disappoint.  I had no idea that this was Dawn until way later into the issue.  Was it supposed to look like her?

Let’s end today with an always welcome yak joke and more gorgeous Jo Chen covers.

Yaks are bulky yet agile.

Xander and Dawn become a thing, btw.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Fine (Nice for 12-15)

Buffy: Season Eight

Buffy 1-11

I’m not that big a fan of this first batch of Buffy comics.  Joss Whedon quickly establishes the post-season seven world, where Buffy and her buddies establish a global network of Slayers.  Warren, Amy, the US Government, and the mysterious Twilight are set up to be the bads. It’s a lackluster effort, and I didn’t latch on to it in the way that I was hoping for.  

It doesn’t help that Georges Jeanty is a poor choice of artist for this title.  He tries to draw the characters to look like the actors who played them, and he isn’t able to pull it off.  The problem is that he gets close enough to create an uncanny valley that keeps me from successfully immersing myself in the story.  I’d have preferred if he went for a completely different interpretation for their looks. It would have been disappointing at first, but ultimately a better choice for the book as a whole.  

Not a fan.

Even this drastic change by Eric Wight is far less offputting to me.

If only cover artist Jo Chen could do the interiors as well.  Her ability to capture the likenesses of the actors and create stunning scenes wowed me every month.  

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Fine

Buffy

Ah, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I remember the existence of the movie back in high school, knowing only that it had a funny name and Dylan from Beverly Hills 90210.  The next time I heard about it was around second season.  Some of my female friends in college raved about how good it was.  I dismissed it as paranormal romance drivel, especially after I heard that the male vampire lead was named Angel.  

I first gave Buffy a fair shake the year after I graduated, during season five.  I had full time job for the first time, and my evenings had plenty of hours to fill.  The early 2000s are my personal golden age of television. Buffy, early West Wing and Gilmore Girls, Everwood, The OC - I’d record all of them on my VCR and rewatch them over and over.  

I can’t remember the first episode that I watched, but I do know that “The Body” was one of the earliest.  To this day, it’s one of the best episodes of television that I’ve ever seen. I’ve never been as transfixed by anything in the medium as I have by that first act.  Joss Whedon and Sarah Michelle Gellar somehow made me feel every emotion that was coursing through Buffy, especially the shock-induced numbness and dissociative feeling that you’re watching everything happen from outside your body.  

Then there’s the third act with Anya’s heartbreaking monologue and Willow’s desperate need to find just the right outfit.  So powerful.

My chest gets this empty feeling just watching those scenes again.  

Anyway, safe to say that I’d never doubt Buffy again after that episode.  I’d eventually catch up on all the seasons that I had missed. I’d learn why second season was so brutal and why Oz was so cool.  I’d come to see tv shows as the product of visionaries with something to say, not just the discrete packages of entertainment I’d previously thought them to be as a kid.  Buffy and Joss Whedon were obviously linked forever more in my mind.

Buffy dropped in quality for seasons six and seven.  With the exception of the groundbreaking, trendsetting musical episode, those seasons would not be the ones that I’d first revisit for a rewatch.  But I still mourned the end of the show, and when Dark Horse announced that Whedon would be writing a canonical season eight in comic form, I couldn’t wait to start reading.  

Tomorrow I start reviewing the result.

Excalibur, Cover, Buffy

Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1

An interesting but understandable decision for Boom Studios to reboot the series after taking over the license from Dark Horse.  I felt extremely weird the entire time I read this. Jordie Bellaire does a really nice job of writing in each of these characters’ voices.  It wasn’t hard at all for me to hear the voices of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Anthony Stewart Head, Alyson Hannigan, and all the rest in my head.  Dan Mora similarly does the Scooby Gang proud with his renderings of their faces. (Except for Anya. I thought it was her, but needed the script to confirm it.)  

So nice to see the old crew back together!

I can practically taste the dry wit.

Yeah, wouldn't have guessed by looking.

All in all, it was like coming home to old friends.  The problem is that instead of wanting to read the next issue, I want to pop season one into the DVD player and binge the whole thing.  I want the real thing, not a filtered experience. I’ll flip through the next issue, but I think this is going to be as skippable as the previous series.

Cover 5

It’s only been a month, but I felt uncomfortably disoriented for the first ten pages or so of this issue.  I couldn’t tell who was talking to whom, and I had trouble grasping the thread of the conversation.

Things cleared up once David Mack got back to the Ninja Sword art and Julia popped back into the picture.  There’s enough plot advancement and lovely art for this to remain on my good side.

Excalibur: The Sword is Drawn

The origin of Excalibur, told in the aftermath of the “death” of the X-Men in the Fall of the Mutants storyline.  It’s not that interesting.  The various members of the inaugural team come together to fight Technet and Mojo’s Warwolves.  And that’s about it. Shadowcat and Nightcrawler will always be favorites of mine, but Excalibur has forever lacked purpose, a reason for being.  I’m keeping it for the historical significance, nothing more.

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: No

Rating: Boring