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.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 12:09 am (UTC)And it makes sense that Dracula wants to help so that he can get his mojo back.
But maybe I'm still misunderstanding all of this, I should really go back and reread a number of issues. A month apart makes it hard for me to remember and follow everything.
Thank you for telling me that that Xander story was in Tales of the Vampires, I have that and I'll go check it out.
I definitely agree that Lynch's story seems much more tight/carefully plotted and flows from some really dire situations (seems like every single character is going through really powerful life changing events!), while the BtVS story line still seems weak:
The Government & some Twilight Guy are mad at her for bank robbing and want to bring down all the new slayers? How dire is this? I'm not sure I'm feeling that deeply invested, even Dawn's situation as a giant seems more like a joke than a real character changing story arc. But I guess I shouldn't get you started on that one! LOL
no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 02:22 am (UTC)I think the main goal is to somehow show the fruitation of Fray's Universe from Buffy's or the role Buffy played in that.
Not sure how he's going to make it work plot wise - the scythe was a bit deux ex machina all by itself. Never made a lot of sense how or why Buffy got it - except that it connected her to Fray. And the rest of this story feels very cobbled together from a logic/plot standpoint. But this being a comic book taken from a tv series, a serial gothic horror genre tv series on broadcast tv no less...it's a bit much to expect it to be well more than it is.
I've yet to find a comic series or television series for that matter that has a plot that doesn't go all over the place, isn't filled with holes, retcons, jokes at the expense of their characters, and weird out of character moments to fit the writers inspirations and elevate their boredom...LOL! (Granted some of those weird out of character moments/experimental episodes make truly great tv - but they don't always make sense from a plot/story-telling pov.)
Best to just go along for the ride, methinks, and not analyze it too much. I think those that do, are going to be a bit disappointed in the outcome, much the same way they were with the final season of the tv series. Unlike Dickens, Whedon doesn't have the luxury to go back and tweak his rough draft before it airs - after all. There's bound to be all sorts of errors. Writing comics isn't much different than writing a tv show - you throw stuff at a wall half the time, just to see what sticks. ;-)
(I expect I'm preaching to the choir here, but what the hell...doped up on melatonin and quality sleep tea...)
no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 03:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 11:57 pm (UTC)I like your icon by the way. Quite sexy.
The difference between the Angel/Spike and Serenity books and Whedon's Buffy is well..not to sure if I can find the right words to explain it properly. I used to write stories like the one Whedon is attempting in Buffy, ambitious tales, with lots of mythos, lots of characters, and very complicated. I had the end in my head, but wasn't quite sure how to get there and often got bored in the process, taking off on tangents. And lost the plot thread and my characters in the process.
Whenever I attempted a sci-fantasy tale this happened, because I'd often get overwhelmed by the world I was attempting to build, or I would lose track of things, the small details, too busy looking at the big picture.
I see Whedon making some of the same mistakes I did, heck most writers do. They are attempting to write a whole mythos. One of the problems I had with the end of Season 7, was it became clear to me that Whedon was more interested in his slayer mythology, much the same way Lucas was interested in his Jedi mythology - than he's interested in the story or individual characters. It's not that he doesn't care about them or love them, he does, but he's well, he's more interested in the forest, not the trees.
Lynch is the opposite. Lynch is a minimalist.
He is focusing on the journey of each character. How they interact with one another. And what their background is. His main goal is to stay true to the nature of the characters, continue to explore them, and show us their journey. Lynch could care less about mythology, and he's not that concerned with theme, not like Whedon. He doesn't necessarily want to teach us something or create a world, he's in someone else's world and just wants to find out more about these characters he loves.
Very different approach. It's the difference between writing a story that has say four characters, one mystery, and one main puzzel, and well an epic serial.
Lynch's tales are sort of like short novellas,
compact. With a clearly plotted arc. Or in tv terms - little mini-series or films. While Whedons are on-going daytime serials or multi-book fantasy epics a la George RR Martin or Terry Brooks.
Both have their pluses and minuses, but like you, I'm finding it difficult to get that emotionally invested in the Buffy books, while I am emotionally invested in Angel After the Fall and can't wait for Spike After the Fall to start. I'm having much the same reaction to the three issue Serenity story.
The Buffy arc...reminds me a great deal of a daytime serial, all over the place, with amazing bits of brilliance here and there, but lots of annoying bits in between.