Angel Season 6: After the Fall Review
Jan. 25th, 2009 04:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatA couple of posts ago, my friend MASQ, asked us if she should read or would like Angel After the Fall. I responded, ask me after this arc is over. Partly because my friend is a huge Connor fan and I wasn't entirely sure what the writer was doing with the character.
Now that the arc is almost over, with one more issue to go, I'd say, sure read them but keep in mind that this is a graphic novel and while it is plotted by one of the original creators of the series, it is written by an outsider - who is a huge fan of the series but may not view it the same way you did.
Brian Lynch is an interesting writer - but limited. He's not into the layered moralistic and philosophical themes that Whedon and Minear were. And he gets a bit lost when he has one too many characters to juggle. Also comics by the very nature - aren't that detailed. We don't have a bunch of actors, we have one artist. And if you don't like the artist or find the art vague, too abstract, or disorienting, you won't be able to read the comic. I loved the art, but that does not mean you will. Frank Urru doesn't draw so much as paint his comics. His style is almost impressionistic. It's not as lined and detailed as the artists on the Buffy comics. And there's a lot going on - sometimes too much to be able to tell what it is.
Also, I do not envy Brian Lynch's task nor his soon to be successor Kelly Armstrong. Sure it sounds like a great gig, but the fandom is a diverse and vocal bunch, with polarizing views on how the characters should evolve and proceed. When you write these stories, you tread a delicate line - sure you will piss people off - that's inevitable. The trick is not to piss the majority off. Scott Allie on the Buffy comics appears to be doing that all by himself.
Luckily no one seems to pay the "editor" of the work much attention.
Speaking for myself, I've found the Angel comics an interesting and enjoyable read. Often more enjoyable than the Buffy comics. For a lot of reasons, not the least of which being the small fact that I'm still somewhat fascinated by the character of Spike. We all have characters that grab us, some more than others and some longer than others. Spike was mine. The other reasons I enjoyed it - is that it moved quickly, the dialogue was snarky and tongue-in-cheek - often making fun of itself, and Lynch delivered on emotional moments and brought back characters I liked and was interested in seeing again. I also enjoyed his take on the character of Spike - while not perfect, was satisfying enough to keep me entertained.
As for Angel - the title character - Lynch tread a delicate line - having finished all 16 issues, I do not believe that Lynch or Whedon meant us to see Angel as a straight up-hero, so much as a tragic anti-hero who desperately wants to be a hero, the chosen one, who is still after all this time - striving for approval and some eternal award. some redeemption or sign of redeemption - except when he gets it, whether it be a shanshue or adorations, he is miserable and upset about it.
Angel - the character - from my perspective is a metaphor for the human condition. We are selfish beings, ruthless survivors, but at the same time, beautiful souls who want to do good and obtain respect and approval. As well as leave our mark on society. Yet, are not quite sure we deserve any of the accolades or approval we achieve. Is there a higher being? Is there any meaning to this world? Does it matter? And if it does, if that is so, am I good? Am I forgiven? Can I be redeemed?? And what is my role or place in it?
The story is told in Angel's pov, and Angel sees the world after the fall of LA as being his fault.
Angel is the center of that world, it's raison d'etre. It would not exist without him.
It really is all about him. Except for one small thing - the world he's entered is rather small, just spans the length and breadth of downtown LA. Santa Monica is not within its orbit. No one outside this world even knows it went to hell. Or knows what Angel did. Or about Angel's apocalpyse or his shanshue. This is limited to the people in LA. Angel is the big fish in the lake - so to speak, but not the ocean.
Angel shanshues in the story - but it is not a good thing. It's the old be careful what you wish for. All it does is make him weak. And he finds himself envying Spike for being the special one - who he fantasizes fighting alongside Connor in a superhero comic strip, while he, an old man, lurks in the background. The shanshue also serves to be a reminder that Angelus and Angel are one in the same. The demon hunger and cravings may be gone, but the flaw is not. Angel still has a bit of a god complex, which brings me to the villian...
The villian of the peice - is once again, one of Angel's comrades. Once again someone close to Angel has turned into a monster with a bit of a god complex - someone who thinks it is all about them and they alone can save the world. Yet another mirror to hold up to Angel.
This time it is Gunn. A vampire hunter before Angel met him. A leader. The head-honcho of his gang. With Angel's team he'd been little more than the muscel - something that began to grate on him - to such an extent that he sold his soul for an upgrade. As a result he's super-smart, but filled to the brim with regret. That's when he dies and is turned into his worst nightmare - a vampire. Gunn decides much like Angel did, that he is best vampire out there. He now has the visions and they tell him that he will save the world. And he is willing to do so by any means necessarily - just as Angel did in S5.
I've always wondered about the source of the visions - were they really from the PTB? Maybe at first, when Doyle had them. But later? Or were they from hell? Here they are definitely from hell in the form of Wolf Ram and Hart. And Gunn like Cordy in S4, has decided it's all about him - he can save the world or rather LA.
What I love about these delusions is they don't go past LA. They are limited to LA or one small part of the globe. When they go elsewhere, like Sunnydale or Italy - the Angel gang is no longer in control, no longer important.
The story proceeds to show us how myopic Angel and Gunn's views are. Angel of course thinks he has to save everyone by himself, regardless of the fact that he's shanshued and is human now. A punishment not necessarily an award. Wolf Ram and Hart in this series basically gives Angel what he wants but with a twist. He gets the well-adjusted son, but that's just a facade. Connor is like any young man, green around the edges. He's not a trained fighter. He's not sure about romance. And his talks with his father when they occur are awkward and center on Angel, not Connor. He actually has a better relationship with Spike - who's training him and does provide romantic advice, since Angel is not available to do so. Angel is jealous, but Angel never offers. He has bigger problems. He always does.
Same deal with Wes. He has Wes in the form of a friendly ghost. But Wes is intangible and appears to be working for WRH. Wes like all the others Angel convinced to join the company in exchange for his son's life - is under contract to WRH for life. To be fair, Wes chose it.
It's unclear the degree to which it is Angel's fault. Angel perceives it as his fault, but that doesn't mean it is. "OH that's right," more than one character tells Angel, "this is always all about you."
Then there is Spike and Illyria. Watching Spike's relationship with Illyria reminded me a little of Buffy's with Angel and Spike. How Spike is different due to a soul is explored in more depth. He is shown taking a group of people under his wing to save them. But he fails, they are sucked by a demon who takes him and his friends captive (this is depicted in Spike After the Fall not Angel After the Fall) and they are kept alive in their rotting corpses to torment him. Screaming Spike, Spike, Spike, as he sits chained watching. Powerless to stop it.
The only one left alive is a young human male that Spike has an uneasy friendship with - named Jeremy. In the end, Jeremy is grabbed by the demon as leverage against Spike, Spike asks Illyria to help, Illyria chooses to kill Jeremy not try to save him -destroying the leverage. Spike looks on horrified.
Once he defeats the demon, saves Connor (who comes to assist) and with Illyria's help - he takes over the demon's female band of fighters - trains them and Connor, and tells Connor that everyone they save from now on must live with Connor - they are not to live with him. He can't live with humans. And he works to keep Illyria - in her demonic state, not as Fred, who she keeps shifting back too - for fear she'll get damaged in that form. When Spike decides to help Angel - at Lorne's request, he asks Angel for help with Illyria, but Angel is still focused on the big picture. Leaving Spike and Wes to watch her, while he goes after the villain and nearly dies in the process.
Three times in the series - Angel dies or tries to die. First time - he is healed by WRH when he breaks his back. The second - by WRH when Gunn kills him. The third - WRH takes him back to the beginning of the time line - at the fight in the alley - before he shanshued and he is a vampire again. Each time - he does it for a different reason. The first was jumping off a rooftop to save someone (rather stupid and a bit of a show-off - he could have taken the stairs or elevator, but you know Angel), the second - in a fight with Gunn and to walk into the light in order to stop himself from becoming evil, he changes his mind when his son shows up, and the third - when his son dies and Wes and Spike make clear to him that he can't die here. WRH won't let him. The rest of them sort of can, but only at WRH's whim. So he gets the reset...but it's not a true reset, everything that happened still happened, the characters remember it.
It is the opposite of the mindwipe in Season 4 - where it all happened, but they all forgot and think it didn't. Here, they all remember, even if it never did. The writers are playing with memory. If we remember it - is it real? If we don't - does it matter? Buffy played with this as well with Dawn. Does Dawn exist because we remember her? If we had no memory of her, would she not exist? In Angel S5 - Connor is wiped from all their memories but Angel's - yet he exists, he's just not Connor. His identity has changed due to the wipe. Here - the memories remain, but the events are changed. To what degree does the memory of something that didn't happen effect us?
Connor is not the same person at the end as he was at the beginning or is he? It's not clear.
Illyria certainly isn't - she's more human, Fred is in her head, along with Wes, along with guilt and something she hasn't felt before remorse and self-loathing for what she did to Fred.
Spike is not the same - he is more wounded, more aware of his limitations. He does not feel like a hero. And Gunn is overwhelmed with self-loathing. Angel..I don't know about Angel. The choices he made did not change. He only saved Gunn's life in the reset, but he did not stop Gunn from becoming what he became.
I wish I could say that Angel is made self-aware by the end, but he's not. He's Angel. Adorably clueless to his own flaws. Except for one thing, he is being treated like a hero, a legend, his son even tells him he deserves it - but he doesn't feel it and if anything is disturbed and creeped out by the reaction as well as the sudden disappearence of WRH as if it never existed. The world has changed while he was in hell, something has changed, and he's not sure for the better. Did he change it or did something else?
That's how I read the story, not everyone read it this way. Because the way it is written, you can read it much as you may have read the series - that Angel is a big damn hero and not a tragic one. It can be read more than one way, I imagine. But it needs to be. Frustrating as that sounds, it is true - for it to appeal to an universal audience.
Now that the arc is almost over, with one more issue to go, I'd say, sure read them but keep in mind that this is a graphic novel and while it is plotted by one of the original creators of the series, it is written by an outsider - who is a huge fan of the series but may not view it the same way you did.
Brian Lynch is an interesting writer - but limited. He's not into the layered moralistic and philosophical themes that Whedon and Minear were. And he gets a bit lost when he has one too many characters to juggle. Also comics by the very nature - aren't that detailed. We don't have a bunch of actors, we have one artist. And if you don't like the artist or find the art vague, too abstract, or disorienting, you won't be able to read the comic. I loved the art, but that does not mean you will. Frank Urru doesn't draw so much as paint his comics. His style is almost impressionistic. It's not as lined and detailed as the artists on the Buffy comics. And there's a lot going on - sometimes too much to be able to tell what it is.
Also, I do not envy Brian Lynch's task nor his soon to be successor Kelly Armstrong. Sure it sounds like a great gig, but the fandom is a diverse and vocal bunch, with polarizing views on how the characters should evolve and proceed. When you write these stories, you tread a delicate line - sure you will piss people off - that's inevitable. The trick is not to piss the majority off. Scott Allie on the Buffy comics appears to be doing that all by himself.
Luckily no one seems to pay the "editor" of the work much attention.
Speaking for myself, I've found the Angel comics an interesting and enjoyable read. Often more enjoyable than the Buffy comics. For a lot of reasons, not the least of which being the small fact that I'm still somewhat fascinated by the character of Spike. We all have characters that grab us, some more than others and some longer than others. Spike was mine. The other reasons I enjoyed it - is that it moved quickly, the dialogue was snarky and tongue-in-cheek - often making fun of itself, and Lynch delivered on emotional moments and brought back characters I liked and was interested in seeing again. I also enjoyed his take on the character of Spike - while not perfect, was satisfying enough to keep me entertained.
As for Angel - the title character - Lynch tread a delicate line - having finished all 16 issues, I do not believe that Lynch or Whedon meant us to see Angel as a straight up-hero, so much as a tragic anti-hero who desperately wants to be a hero, the chosen one, who is still after all this time - striving for approval and some eternal award. some redeemption or sign of redeemption - except when he gets it, whether it be a shanshue or adorations, he is miserable and upset about it.
Angel - the character - from my perspective is a metaphor for the human condition. We are selfish beings, ruthless survivors, but at the same time, beautiful souls who want to do good and obtain respect and approval. As well as leave our mark on society. Yet, are not quite sure we deserve any of the accolades or approval we achieve. Is there a higher being? Is there any meaning to this world? Does it matter? And if it does, if that is so, am I good? Am I forgiven? Can I be redeemed?? And what is my role or place in it?
The story is told in Angel's pov, and Angel sees the world after the fall of LA as being his fault.
Angel is the center of that world, it's raison d'etre. It would not exist without him.
It really is all about him. Except for one small thing - the world he's entered is rather small, just spans the length and breadth of downtown LA. Santa Monica is not within its orbit. No one outside this world even knows it went to hell. Or knows what Angel did. Or about Angel's apocalpyse or his shanshue. This is limited to the people in LA. Angel is the big fish in the lake - so to speak, but not the ocean.
Angel shanshues in the story - but it is not a good thing. It's the old be careful what you wish for. All it does is make him weak. And he finds himself envying Spike for being the special one - who he fantasizes fighting alongside Connor in a superhero comic strip, while he, an old man, lurks in the background. The shanshue also serves to be a reminder that Angelus and Angel are one in the same. The demon hunger and cravings may be gone, but the flaw is not. Angel still has a bit of a god complex, which brings me to the villian...
The villian of the peice - is once again, one of Angel's comrades. Once again someone close to Angel has turned into a monster with a bit of a god complex - someone who thinks it is all about them and they alone can save the world. Yet another mirror to hold up to Angel.
This time it is Gunn. A vampire hunter before Angel met him. A leader. The head-honcho of his gang. With Angel's team he'd been little more than the muscel - something that began to grate on him - to such an extent that he sold his soul for an upgrade. As a result he's super-smart, but filled to the brim with regret. That's when he dies and is turned into his worst nightmare - a vampire. Gunn decides much like Angel did, that he is best vampire out there. He now has the visions and they tell him that he will save the world. And he is willing to do so by any means necessarily - just as Angel did in S5.
I've always wondered about the source of the visions - were they really from the PTB? Maybe at first, when Doyle had them. But later? Or were they from hell? Here they are definitely from hell in the form of Wolf Ram and Hart. And Gunn like Cordy in S4, has decided it's all about him - he can save the world or rather LA.
What I love about these delusions is they don't go past LA. They are limited to LA or one small part of the globe. When they go elsewhere, like Sunnydale or Italy - the Angel gang is no longer in control, no longer important.
The story proceeds to show us how myopic Angel and Gunn's views are. Angel of course thinks he has to save everyone by himself, regardless of the fact that he's shanshued and is human now. A punishment not necessarily an award. Wolf Ram and Hart in this series basically gives Angel what he wants but with a twist. He gets the well-adjusted son, but that's just a facade. Connor is like any young man, green around the edges. He's not a trained fighter. He's not sure about romance. And his talks with his father when they occur are awkward and center on Angel, not Connor. He actually has a better relationship with Spike - who's training him and does provide romantic advice, since Angel is not available to do so. Angel is jealous, but Angel never offers. He has bigger problems. He always does.
Same deal with Wes. He has Wes in the form of a friendly ghost. But Wes is intangible and appears to be working for WRH. Wes like all the others Angel convinced to join the company in exchange for his son's life - is under contract to WRH for life. To be fair, Wes chose it.
It's unclear the degree to which it is Angel's fault. Angel perceives it as his fault, but that doesn't mean it is. "OH that's right," more than one character tells Angel, "this is always all about you."
Then there is Spike and Illyria. Watching Spike's relationship with Illyria reminded me a little of Buffy's with Angel and Spike. How Spike is different due to a soul is explored in more depth. He is shown taking a group of people under his wing to save them. But he fails, they are sucked by a demon who takes him and his friends captive (this is depicted in Spike After the Fall not Angel After the Fall) and they are kept alive in their rotting corpses to torment him. Screaming Spike, Spike, Spike, as he sits chained watching. Powerless to stop it.
The only one left alive is a young human male that Spike has an uneasy friendship with - named Jeremy. In the end, Jeremy is grabbed by the demon as leverage against Spike, Spike asks Illyria to help, Illyria chooses to kill Jeremy not try to save him -destroying the leverage. Spike looks on horrified.
Once he defeats the demon, saves Connor (who comes to assist) and with Illyria's help - he takes over the demon's female band of fighters - trains them and Connor, and tells Connor that everyone they save from now on must live with Connor - they are not to live with him. He can't live with humans. And he works to keep Illyria - in her demonic state, not as Fred, who she keeps shifting back too - for fear she'll get damaged in that form. When Spike decides to help Angel - at Lorne's request, he asks Angel for help with Illyria, but Angel is still focused on the big picture. Leaving Spike and Wes to watch her, while he goes after the villain and nearly dies in the process.
Three times in the series - Angel dies or tries to die. First time - he is healed by WRH when he breaks his back. The second - by WRH when Gunn kills him. The third - WRH takes him back to the beginning of the time line - at the fight in the alley - before he shanshued and he is a vampire again. Each time - he does it for a different reason. The first was jumping off a rooftop to save someone (rather stupid and a bit of a show-off - he could have taken the stairs or elevator, but you know Angel), the second - in a fight with Gunn and to walk into the light in order to stop himself from becoming evil, he changes his mind when his son shows up, and the third - when his son dies and Wes and Spike make clear to him that he can't die here. WRH won't let him. The rest of them sort of can, but only at WRH's whim. So he gets the reset...but it's not a true reset, everything that happened still happened, the characters remember it.
It is the opposite of the mindwipe in Season 4 - where it all happened, but they all forgot and think it didn't. Here, they all remember, even if it never did. The writers are playing with memory. If we remember it - is it real? If we don't - does it matter? Buffy played with this as well with Dawn. Does Dawn exist because we remember her? If we had no memory of her, would she not exist? In Angel S5 - Connor is wiped from all their memories but Angel's - yet he exists, he's just not Connor. His identity has changed due to the wipe. Here - the memories remain, but the events are changed. To what degree does the memory of something that didn't happen effect us?
Connor is not the same person at the end as he was at the beginning or is he? It's not clear.
Illyria certainly isn't - she's more human, Fred is in her head, along with Wes, along with guilt and something she hasn't felt before remorse and self-loathing for what she did to Fred.
Spike is not the same - he is more wounded, more aware of his limitations. He does not feel like a hero. And Gunn is overwhelmed with self-loathing. Angel..I don't know about Angel. The choices he made did not change. He only saved Gunn's life in the reset, but he did not stop Gunn from becoming what he became.
I wish I could say that Angel is made self-aware by the end, but he's not. He's Angel. Adorably clueless to his own flaws. Except for one thing, he is being treated like a hero, a legend, his son even tells him he deserves it - but he doesn't feel it and if anything is disturbed and creeped out by the reaction as well as the sudden disappearence of WRH as if it never existed. The world has changed while he was in hell, something has changed, and he's not sure for the better. Did he change it or did something else?
That's how I read the story, not everyone read it this way. Because the way it is written, you can read it much as you may have read the series - that Angel is a big damn hero and not a tragic one. It can be read more than one way, I imagine. But it needs to be. Frustrating as that sounds, it is true - for it to appeal to an universal audience.
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Date: 2009-01-26 03:28 pm (UTC)