Buffy and Angel comic reviews
May. 11th, 2008 05:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatMore or less productive weekend, besides going to a movie, I also made my bi-annual trip to L&T for work clothes. Was in a fairly good humor, having actually gotten eight as opposed to five hours of sleep the night before. Insomina has plagued me this month and it has not been pretty. If you've ever suffered from it, you know whereof I speak. One thing I noticed while shopping - which bugged me - when did they start doing xxs sizes? (As in extra small?) I actually went up to the service rep and asked if I was in the petite department? Irritating. Also I had to hunt for Kate Hill (apparently Ralph Lauren, Context, Tommy Bahama (gross clothes), and Jones New York (which is quite nice) took over the floor). Downstairs, I had to deal with Michael Kors (who thinks all women look like clothes hangers) and Ann Taylor who designs for people who are 5'2 and 10 pounds. What happened to Liz Claiborn? Gianni? This in a nutshell is why I don't go shopping very often. Miraculously, I did find several cool items. Enough to get me by for a while. I'm thinking of trying somewhere else next time.
Also picked up two comics - Buffy and Angel. Made certain that I would get my Dresden comic (it had sold out but he promised that he could get me one), and Spike:After the Fall, which I actually care more about.
The Buffy comic - Season 8, issue...13? I don't know, I've lost count and it's in my binder, so can't look at it at the moment. It's probably 15?
Was actually pretty good, if you ignore the odd and strangely out-of-character banter with Dracula, which I did. I've more less decided the only wayyou I can read these things is if you I decide they have zip to do with the tv series. The gaps in continuity would drive me nuts otherwise, and I'm not usually anal about that sort of stuff, so I guess that's saying something.
Still not clear why they had Xander go find Dracula. Or why Xander of all people would even know where Dracula was. Granted the whole Dracula bit never made much sense in the series. It sort of felt like one of those episodes in which everyone leaps out of character has a bit of fun, then the next week we are back in the story and the previous episode? More or less never happened. Maybe Dracula is really the main villian and doing some sort of hypnotic thing? Possible.
Was pleasantly surprised by the Satsu/Buffy relationship. That is in character, well assuming of course you think Buffy would suddenly become gay, which I don't quite buy, she struck me as pretty much heterosexual. But what do I know? Anywho...I like the fact that they are actually developing this story a bit and that they have not killed off Satsu yet. Half expected Satsu to be the one who got it at the end of this issue. I also like Satsu, when I can tell her apart from the other characters - Jeanty needs to work on his women, they still look far too much alike at times.
Speaking of relationships? In case you were confused about why Willow has hidden Kennedy from Buffy, this issue should have resolved that question. If I were Xander, I would not date anyone in Buffy's team or if I were dating them, I'd take a page from Willow's book, and send them far far away from Buffy.
Poor Xander. I liked Renee, she was starting to grow on me. Why do writers always decide to kill off peripheral supporting characters just when they begin to get interesting? And more to the point, why won't they kill off annoying peripherial supporting characters who have worn out their welcome? (I'm looking at you Robin Wood and Andrew...ugh. The worst thing about Season 7 was these two weren't killed by the vampires in the finale, no, they had to kill Anya instead. Wankers. Yes, I know, I'm in the minority of fans who absolutely detested Robin Wood from the moment he appeared on the screen in Lessons, this had a lot to do with the actor playing him - I've seen him on three different tv shows and he always, regardless of the role, comes across as a smug asshole who thinks he's better than everyone else to me. I always want to punch that grin of his smug face which unfortunately reminded me far too much of an abusive and somewhat sociopathic boss I once had, who was white and did not resemble DB in anyway except for that expression. And yes, I'd feel the same way if DB Woodside/Robin Wood were white, purple, pumperknickle, or orange. I think I may have liked the character better if he had been played by Terrence Howard, J. August, or even Isiah Washington, anyone but smug I'm All that and then some, DB Woodside, who comes across even worse in the commentary. It's amongst the few times, I took an instantanous dislike to an actor. I cringed whenever he was onscreen. And cheered when Spike beat the crap out of him. But, loads of people loved him, I have no idea why. Go figure. That's thing about life, no matter how much you hate or love something, there's bound to be someone out there who feels the exact opposite. Passionately so. Worse - people inevitably feel the need to argue with you about it, rub your face in it, and make you feel bad about it. You wouldn't believe the hate emails I used to get on this baby, because I made the error of telling people I despised the character pretty much for the reasons stated above, on a fanboard (it was either ATPO or BC&S, can't remember which, probably the former - I had a tendency to be a little too honest for my own good on ATPO - bad idea. Really bad idea. Worse, if people knew you happened to like Spike. That was tantamount to well...you know. Why people feel the need to do this, I have no idea. Some things aren't up for debate, guys. They just are. It's like what Clint Eastwood once said - I don't know why I like this or hate it. I just do.)
Well, uhm...okay then, now that I got that off my chest.
The other thing I hated about the issue? The letter's page. Ugh. Scott Allie annoys me. Even when I agree with him, he annoys me, which I did regarding his response to Shawler, who is a fan that I think I had the misfortune to tangle with on one of the boards, he sounds familar.
Outside of that? Fun issue. Enjoyed it more than I expected. Looking forward to the next issue.
The other comic, I picked up was Angel After the Fall - issue 7. Which was also quite good.
I'm on the fence about the new artist, Frank Runge? His art's not as fluid as Urru's. It has more lines, more cross stitching or hedging as we used to call it in art class, and the characters feel sort of stiff to me. But the style is interesting and somewhat haunting. So we'll see. I do like him more than Tim Kane who is bit too abstract for my taste. I tend to prefer semi-realism, with color, and cinemagraphic style in comics, abstract not so much.
The "Kate" reveal surprised me. I'd forgotten about Kate. And it is a bit ironic, if you know that Kate had originally had Justin's arc, but when the actress left the show, they had to go a different direction. I love the fact that neither Connor nor Kate realize that their connection is in fact Angel. Or that Connor once again hits on a former girlfriend of his father's without quite realizing it, only to be told he's too young and she likes them older.
Kate was always one of my favorite characters and I really liked what they did with her here.Lynch shows a real love and understanding for this universe and all the characters within it, that's rare. Most people play favorites.
The other reveal that caught me by surprise was the fact that Gunn is using slayers to train his vampires. That's actually somewhat disturbing. Whedon is really playing around with this theme of how men handle and view strong women in our society. His depiction is at times very difficult to ignore or handle. But not untrue. The temptation of course is to criticize the books and Whedon as being chauvinistic or borderline misogynistic, when what they are really doing is showing how our own society views and handles powerful women. It's like racism in television and movie casting - it is tempting to blame the writers/directors for this - when it truth it would be like blaming a sneeze for the cold. It's a symptom. You don't treat the symptom, you treat the cause. The cause is a system that puts the majority opinion above all else. That's difficult to combat, but there are ways. Affirmative Action, an at times annoying and fallible one, is just one of them. Sometimes the only way to get people to act is to show them the cause of their actions, after all you aren't going to treat your cold if you don't sneeze are you? The sneeze is your body's way of getting your attention to do something. Same thing here - the images you see, are the writers way of getting your attention. All in the Family - got people's attention, by showing that Archie Bunker's brand of bigotry wasn't necessarily harmless and hurt both Archie and those around him. I think Whedon is doing the same thing here - showing that women are strong, and how wonderful that is, and that the way we are dealing with it is not necessarily constructive and often damaging.
I could be wrong about that. Haven't really felt the desire to go into an in depth analysis.
Don't have the energy. Let alone the time. This is just a gut reaction to it. I've only read the thing once.
Also loved the Wesely bit. Is that supposed to be Eve posing as Fred? OR is it someone else? Would be cool if it had been Lilah. The artist did make her look a lot like Fred though and did a great job with Wes, that smile was perfect. Wes continues to be amongst my all time favorite characters.
I like the Buffy comics, but I must confess, once again, I'm in love with the Angel ones.
Also picked up two comics - Buffy and Angel. Made certain that I would get my Dresden comic (it had sold out but he promised that he could get me one), and Spike:After the Fall, which I actually care more about.
The Buffy comic - Season 8, issue...13? I don't know, I've lost count and it's in my binder, so can't look at it at the moment. It's probably 15?
Was actually pretty good, if you ignore the odd and strangely out-of-character banter with Dracula, which I did. I've more less decided the only way
Still not clear why they had Xander go find Dracula. Or why Xander of all people would even know where Dracula was. Granted the whole Dracula bit never made much sense in the series. It sort of felt like one of those episodes in which everyone leaps out of character has a bit of fun, then the next week we are back in the story and the previous episode? More or less never happened. Maybe Dracula is really the main villian and doing some sort of hypnotic thing? Possible.
Was pleasantly surprised by the Satsu/Buffy relationship. That is in character, well assuming of course you think Buffy would suddenly become gay, which I don't quite buy, she struck me as pretty much heterosexual. But what do I know? Anywho...I like the fact that they are actually developing this story a bit and that they have not killed off Satsu yet. Half expected Satsu to be the one who got it at the end of this issue. I also like Satsu, when I can tell her apart from the other characters - Jeanty needs to work on his women, they still look far too much alike at times.
Speaking of relationships? In case you were confused about why Willow has hidden Kennedy from Buffy, this issue should have resolved that question. If I were Xander, I would not date anyone in Buffy's team or if I were dating them, I'd take a page from Willow's book, and send them far far away from Buffy.
Poor Xander. I liked Renee, she was starting to grow on me. Why do writers always decide to kill off peripheral supporting characters just when they begin to get interesting? And more to the point, why won't they kill off annoying peripherial supporting characters who have worn out their welcome? (I'm looking at you Robin Wood and Andrew...ugh. The worst thing about Season 7 was these two weren't killed by the vampires in the finale, no, they had to kill Anya instead. Wankers. Yes, I know, I'm in the minority of fans who absolutely detested Robin Wood from the moment he appeared on the screen in Lessons, this had a lot to do with the actor playing him - I've seen him on three different tv shows and he always, regardless of the role, comes across as a smug asshole who thinks he's better than everyone else to me. I always want to punch that grin of his smug face which unfortunately reminded me far too much of an abusive and somewhat sociopathic boss I once had, who was white and did not resemble DB in anyway except for that expression. And yes, I'd feel the same way if DB Woodside/Robin Wood were white, purple, pumperknickle, or orange. I think I may have liked the character better if he had been played by Terrence Howard, J. August, or even Isiah Washington, anyone but smug I'm All that and then some, DB Woodside, who comes across even worse in the commentary. It's amongst the few times, I took an instantanous dislike to an actor. I cringed whenever he was onscreen. And cheered when Spike beat the crap out of him. But, loads of people loved him, I have no idea why. Go figure. That's thing about life, no matter how much you hate or love something, there's bound to be someone out there who feels the exact opposite. Passionately so. Worse - people inevitably feel the need to argue with you about it, rub your face in it, and make you feel bad about it. You wouldn't believe the hate emails I used to get on this baby, because I made the error of telling people I despised the character pretty much for the reasons stated above, on a fanboard (it was either ATPO or BC&S, can't remember which, probably the former - I had a tendency to be a little too honest for my own good on ATPO - bad idea. Really bad idea. Worse, if people knew you happened to like Spike. That was tantamount to well...you know. Why people feel the need to do this, I have no idea. Some things aren't up for debate, guys. They just are. It's like what Clint Eastwood once said - I don't know why I like this or hate it. I just do.)
Well, uhm...okay then, now that I got that off my chest.
The other thing I hated about the issue? The letter's page. Ugh. Scott Allie annoys me. Even when I agree with him, he annoys me, which I did regarding his response to Shawler, who is a fan that I think I had the misfortune to tangle with on one of the boards, he sounds familar.
Outside of that? Fun issue. Enjoyed it more than I expected. Looking forward to the next issue.
The other comic, I picked up was Angel After the Fall - issue 7. Which was also quite good.
I'm on the fence about the new artist, Frank Runge? His art's not as fluid as Urru's. It has more lines, more cross stitching or hedging as we used to call it in art class, and the characters feel sort of stiff to me. But the style is interesting and somewhat haunting. So we'll see. I do like him more than Tim Kane who is bit too abstract for my taste. I tend to prefer semi-realism, with color, and cinemagraphic style in comics, abstract not so much.
The "Kate" reveal surprised me. I'd forgotten about Kate. And it is a bit ironic, if you know that Kate had originally had Justin's arc, but when the actress left the show, they had to go a different direction. I love the fact that neither Connor nor Kate realize that their connection is in fact Angel. Or that Connor once again hits on a former girlfriend of his father's without quite realizing it, only to be told he's too young and she likes them older.
Kate was always one of my favorite characters and I really liked what they did with her here.Lynch shows a real love and understanding for this universe and all the characters within it, that's rare. Most people play favorites.
The other reveal that caught me by surprise was the fact that Gunn is using slayers to train his vampires. That's actually somewhat disturbing. Whedon is really playing around with this theme of how men handle and view strong women in our society. His depiction is at times very difficult to ignore or handle. But not untrue. The temptation of course is to criticize the books and Whedon as being chauvinistic or borderline misogynistic, when what they are really doing is showing how our own society views and handles powerful women. It's like racism in television and movie casting - it is tempting to blame the writers/directors for this - when it truth it would be like blaming a sneeze for the cold. It's a symptom. You don't treat the symptom, you treat the cause. The cause is a system that puts the majority opinion above all else. That's difficult to combat, but there are ways. Affirmative Action, an at times annoying and fallible one, is just one of them. Sometimes the only way to get people to act is to show them the cause of their actions, after all you aren't going to treat your cold if you don't sneeze are you? The sneeze is your body's way of getting your attention to do something. Same thing here - the images you see, are the writers way of getting your attention. All in the Family - got people's attention, by showing that Archie Bunker's brand of bigotry wasn't necessarily harmless and hurt both Archie and those around him. I think Whedon is doing the same thing here - showing that women are strong, and how wonderful that is, and that the way we are dealing with it is not necessarily constructive and often damaging.
I could be wrong about that. Haven't really felt the desire to go into an in depth analysis.
Don't have the energy. Let alone the time. This is just a gut reaction to it. I've only read the thing once.
Also loved the Wesely bit. Is that supposed to be Eve posing as Fred? OR is it someone else? Would be cool if it had been Lilah. The artist did make her look a lot like Fred though and did a great job with Wes, that smile was perfect. Wes continues to be amongst my all time favorite characters.
I like the Buffy comics, but I must confess, once again, I'm in love with the Angel ones.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-05-12 12:15 am (UTC)Between you and me: I was hoping that Robin Wood and Spike would kill each other during Lies Joss Whedon Told Me because by that point I wanted them both off my TV screen.
Then again, by that point, I was watching BtVS on the ever-fading hope that, y'know, Xander might get a whisp of a storyline. Even then, I'm pretty sure I would've just given up on the show if I thought it had gotten renewed for another season.
Anyway, you know that I'm not a Spike fan (to say the least), but I wanted to say that I also detested Robin Wood as a character (I know nothing about DB Woodside...and suddenly I'm glad I've never listened to his commentaries on the DVDs if he comes across as smug an asshole as Robin Wood did).
Spike, I merely disliked, but Robin Wood I detested, and I detested him for the same reason I detested most of the Potentials and Andrew.
He. Ate. Up. Screen. Time. Screen time, I might add, that would be better spent on the original cast members.
Whenever people complain about how "the Scoobies" were phoning it in that last season, I always feel the need to point out how the writing for "the Scoobies" sucked beyond the telling of it. When anyone bothered to give NB, SMG, EC, and MT shit to do that wasn't a retread of the same-old-same-old crap they'd been doing since mid-S6, they freakin' shined like crazy diamonds. (I definitely think ASH was phoning it in, although he tended to look pissed off through most of S7, not surprising that the writing for Giles sucked even more than the others. And AH was so awful and so hiding behind her cutsey tics that half the time I was wondering if she was reading stuff off of cue-cards).
But here's the thing: I could've gotten on board with most of the additions...well okay, not Andrew. Andrew's presence pretty much comes down to: "Production likes the actor," and for no other reason. I think that reasoning definitely showed because they never did satisfactorily explain why the Scoobies didn't turn his ass over to the police. His continued (useless) presence in the comics remains an enduring mystery. Unless he turns out to be the traitor in Buffy's camp, I still don't get Andrew's continued presence at all.
BUT...what was I saying...oh yeah:
I could've gotten on board with the Potentials if they had fewer Potentials in the house. Say, just three or four instead of a buttload of faceless ones. Their presence were not helped by the fact that we later find out that, contrary to what everyone had been saying all season, not all of the Potentials were hiding in Sunnydale either. This leaves aside the complete insanity of bringing the Potentials to Sunnydale where the First Evil actually had a presence...the same First Evil that was so gung ho on wiping them out.
As for Robin Wood...gah! You can tell that they had no clue what to do with the character from the start with the is he/or isn't he evil. Then they shoehorn a storyline onto him. (Hello! No coherent storyline for the Scoobs yet! Or they get the start of a storyline that immediately gets forgotten forever by the next episode.) Then they Mary Sue'd him! Rogue Demon Hunter! Experienced demon killer! Skilled in every kind of fighting there is! High School Principal! Slayer romantic interest! Son of a Slayer! And he's hot! And he totally understands poor l'il troubled Faith! YOU MUST LOVE HIM!
Gaaaaaaah!
Ahem. Sorry. You hit one of my sore points with Season 7.
Robin Wood, along with Andrew and 99% of the Potentials, had no business being tacked onto Season 7. Especially since it's come out that almost everyone knew going into Season 7 that it was the last season (although no one was publicly admitting it at the time). It was a clear cut case of trying to come up with spin-off bait and throwing everything against the wall to see what would stick with audiences.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-12 01:03 am (UTC)I had much the same problems. And I think one of my major problems with Wood was that he did eat up so much screen time. They clearly did not know what to do with him. He was originally intended, from interviews and other set insiders - to be Buffy's love interest - who would get killed. But Gellar argued against it. Then they played around with the idea of him being a villian. Then around the episode First Night - Jane Espenson came up with the brilliant idea of making him Nikki's son (they'd originally planned to make one of the potentials' Nikki's kid or bring in an outside character as a foil for Spike). This would have worked a lot better if they'd come up with the idea sooner, not two episodes before LTMP. So that Wood didn't suddenly come across as a Mary Sue. And a smug one at that.
If I wasn't such an admittedly huge Spike fan, I don't think I'd have enjoyed Season 7 as much as I did. The only character that had a good, consistent arc and had much to do was Spike. Anya had a mini-arc, that ended abruptly in Selfless. And unfortunately Xander's arc ended with her.
And what they did with Willow's arc was criminal.
They had too many people and as a result didn't have much time for the main players.
Faith got barely any screen time. Instead of exploring her relationship with Willow, Xander, Dawn, or Giles - we got scenes with her and Wood - because they were trying to come up with a spin-off featuring Faith, Wood and Spike. As a result, we got a Faith/Spike and Faith/Wood scene that didn't really go anywhere. Also that episode where they voted Faith to take over - made no sense, because they never showed us how the others had dealt with her past. They told us.
Andrew - same problem. The writers found him funny. I found him annoying. I hated Storyteller. And LMTP - well, at least ASH finally had something to do. Whedon hadn't given him much for a long time.
The problem with 7, was the best part of the season was the first six-eight episodes, which focused on the core characters, before Wood, Andrew, and the slayeretts really got involved. After that point, it got a bit crowded.
One of my close friends at the time, was a huge Xander fan, still is as far as I know, and I remember him telling me that he sort of wished they'd made Xander a vampire or killed him and made him the first - as had been rumored - because at least he'd have a storyline. He told me that the entire focus seemed to be on Spike, and even that was less than stellar - Spike's arc was predictable, we knew he was going to die to save the world, it was almost as if the writers were killing time to get there.
Whenever I watch S7, I find myself dissatisfied. With a sour tast in my mouth. As if there's something missing. I should care in Chosen. But I don't. By the time Chosen airs, I feel as if I've lost touch with some of the characters...the only one I felt anything for was Spike, and that's because he's the only one they gave me much story for. Everyone else got short shrift in comparison.
They are doing much the same thing in the comics. Focusing far too much on the slayer mythos and slayerettes, and not enough on the main characters for my taste. I miss Xander and Willow, who were two of my favorite characters way before Spike ever appeared on the series. The writers just for reasons that never made much sense to me, seemed to lose interest in them.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-12 05:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-12 05:36 am (UTC)Oz and Tara made her slightly more tolerable, but whenever she opened her mouth, I just feel this huge need to turn down the sound, cause to me AH's voice is like nails on chalk board.
Combine that with her cutesiness, which is not the same as cuteness, since it's a million times more annoying, and Hannigan's lack of acting skills and well... by the end of s6 I just wanted to see Buffy kill her once and for all.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-12 04:54 pm (UTC)Seriously, though. I thought AH was okay (but not stand-out fantastic) up until mid-S3. Then she started with the "cutesiness" tics instead of trying to, y'know, act. I've yet to see her do a decent job in anything (I can't even watch HIMYM because I find her to be horribly grating.)
AH reminds me so much of Meg Ryan Lite: everyone thinks she's fantastic until she hits something like mid-40s and the "cute-girl-next-door" aspect of her looks start to go away. That's about when people are going to notice the "little man behind the curtain" (so to speak — Wizard of Oz reference).
Just trying saying AH ain't all that, though. You'll find yourself at the wrong end of a number of flames.