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beer_good_foamyRetreat (n.)
1. the forced or strategic withdrawal of an army or an armed force before an enemy, or the withdrawing of a naval force from action.
2. the act of withdrawing, as into safety or privacy; retirement; seclusion.
3. a place of refuge, seclusion, or privacy: The library was his retreat.
4. an asylum, as for the insane.
5. a retirement or a period of retirement for religious exercises and meditation.
6. Brave Sir Robin ran away.
Bravely ran away, away!
When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
Bravely taking to his feet
He beat a very brave retreat,
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin!
Another pretty solid issue. Certainly slower-paced than the last one, which is a good thing in this case since it gives the story a chance to solidify and get inside a few characters we haven't really met before/in a long time/in this guise. (The fact that there's nothing about the "Vamps yay!" storyline helps too). Buffy & Co go to Tibet, they chat with Oz about controlling magic since he's the big expert on this while Giles and Willow just mope, we briefly get to meet the arc's little bad wolf (with obvious parallels to the Slayer story, as pointed out by Dawn - jeez, they even give him black fur, wanna bet he's the bad guy?), and they decide (or rather, Buffy decides for them) to all spend their lives, or at least a long time, in quiet meditation communing with the soil. Meanwhile, Twilight and his wacky gang of sidekicks start hunting them down, confident that like the Beatles, their Maharishi phase won't last and eventually they'll start fighting amongst themselves. (If it's Adam, he may have studied up on his pop history.)
We do get something that completely violates the rules of Season 8, namely backstory on what a character has been up to since the last time we saw them - what the hell is Jane thinking? But in this case I'm more than willing to overlook this obvious blooper because Oz' backstory really is nicely done, with no big drama, even if it must be the most Oz has ever talked in an official Buffy story. The other characters get to play second fiddle for most of the issue, which works fine since Oz' story is more or less commentary on Buffy's story.
Oz' girlfriend Bay is a nice character, close to earth with a sharp sense of humour (I like her line about watching the whole thing on TV. Clearly in the Season 8-verse, Tibet got all the hi-tech that Germany has in our world), not to mention that she seems to be the fighter of the two. Also, Oz is a daddy, leading to several rather cute Giles-with-baby scenes. Of course, asTorchwood viewers anyone remotely familiar with popular drama will know, Sudden Cute Big-Eyed Children From Nowhere are plot points, and not usually for comedy. I hope I'm wrong about that.
Jeanty's art improved after the first few arcs, but now seems to be getting downright lazy; at this rate, Season 9 might as well be drawn by Randall Munroe. (Seriously, he's a Whedon fan, he'd take the job.) I'm assuming that's Amy with the bowl in the opening pages, and I'm going to make an educated guess that the big one who looks a bit like Leo DiCaprio could feasibly be Riley, in which case he's still either being a not very useful triple agent or a not very useful double one since he neither helps Twilight find Buffy nor stops him from doing so. Also, I think that's supposed to be Tara in the flashback. Yay, even if it's just a flashback to a scene we already know and doesn't really add much. Clearly, this is foreshadowing that she's Twilight. Either her or Spike, who also gets mentioned in a very very meaningful way. *nods*
Yay also for the big Willow/Oz reunion! Which, like many things in Season 8, we have to assume took place at some point between the panels. I expect it was both moving, awkward, and dryly funny. We do get one very good scene between Willow and Oz, though. Whether Willow's comment about being jealous of Oz having a baby and a life is a comment on Kennedy's (or Saga Vasuki's) marriageability, or on Willow's crazy demon-fighting life, or even on the relative unlikelihood of she herself as a gay woman being a mother... who knows. But I'm going to go with the second interpretation, since it ties nicely into Oz' and Bay's speech: "Don't be a lake, be a river." "Have a life" - which Dawn then specifically asks Willow if she can.
As always in Joss' stories, we work with mirror images. Oz' story mirrors Buffy's, or at least appears to (she certainly seems to see the similarity) and he's found a way to deal with his own demon - granted, he has an easier time of it since his is restricted to three nights a month, he doesn't actively fight the forces of evil on a daily basis, and he hasn't (as far as we know) made thousands of new werewolves that he has to take care of. On the other hand, his demon is a lot trickier to control once it's out than Buffy's is. Again, as a metaphor, it works great; Oz has grown up, found peace, built his own world and is happy – hence no need to battle apocalypses and save the world etc. Unfortunately, given their many differences, we can be reasonably sure that his way cannot work for Buffy - and some of the comments and looks from the others seem to indicate that they don't think so either.
They continue to show Xander and Dawn together while still not making a big deal of it. Either they're just being as friendly as they always were in the TV show, which is a bizarre idea, or they're going for some big shocking tangled-sheets reveal again. (Which of course may also make one of them ripe for Sudden Dramatic Death Syndrome - given Xander's track record, they may not even have time to kiss before the 16-ton weight drops. And speaking of foreshadowed deaths, we even get Willow saying that she doesn't have a future...)
So far, so good; great character interaction, funny and serious dialogue both work, interesting parallels, nothing that spooks the yak. OK, so to the Plan, of which I'll be more critical since I still don't see where it makes a smidge of sense. I still don't get what Buffy hopes to achieve here; if it's to simply turn them all into ordinary girls and give up, they've already been shown a way to do that. If it's just to mask what they are while keeping the power, what good is that power going to do if they're all stuck in acastle in Scotland monastery in Tibet for at least a year? It's like "Anne" or even "Helpless" on a global scale. (Though we still don't know if that's indeed all the active Slayers in the world or just the ones who happened to be in Scotland, and if so what's happening to the rest, or... whatever.) There has to be a choice between "Sit tight and get slaughtered" and "grow turnips for the rest of your life." Because again, while giving up on saving the world and becoming a nun (see, another of Buffy's teenage fantasies that turned out to be foreshadowing) may work on one metaphorical level, it completely ignores the bit where they're supposed to save the world from monsters. And why does Oz go along with it, given that he also points out some very real problems with the plan – he says that it took him over a year, then says that it better work because...
BUFFY: We need to learn to not be magical.
BAY: Not teleporting submarines is a good first step.
OZ: You just made my home into a very big target.
Unsurprisingly, given that both we and Buffy et al know that Twilight can track them by magic, using magic to get where they're going will lead Twilight directly to them (or not directly, as it happens, but you know they won't have a year). The question, since this is so very obvious that it's pointed out by every character who's not part of Buffy's organisation, is if it will turn out some other way?
Though having seen the blurbs and covers for the next couple of issues it doesn't look likely, and a) it shouldn't be surprising to anyone who knows Joss' work in general and Serenity in particular that running and hiding (and leading your enemy to your friends) is a Bad Idea, and b) it would be nice if we had just one storyline for Buffy in the comic that didn't get me thinking ”yeah, we know, Buffy's current plan is a Bad Idea, let's wait 5 more issues for her to realise that.” Sure, some of the ways she's screwed up in Season 8 are more or less in character for her, but that alone doesn't make for good fiction, especially when we know roughly where those screwups usually lead in the Jossverse. At some point, I'd like to be able to cheer for Buffy, go ”Attagirl!” By all means, have it turn out badly, but make it look like a reasonable idea.
That said, I'll say this for Season 8; it's nice that it's messing with the "torture works" angle that the series often used a little too carelessly – this is now the second time that using information gained through torture has led them into trouble; first the trap in "Wolves At The Gate", now a dead end. (Though arguably, their error this time is simply not realising the ramifications of the information they got.)
Anyway, enough whining about what is, as I said, a pretty good issue. There are villains too. Monroe does indeed seem like Veruca 2.0, so I don't expect much development there; at least they didn't just forget that Veruca is dead (though there's more leeway there unless Oz has silver fillings). Our main villain, however, finally gets into the story properly. Twilight gets to be all mwah-ha-ha-I'm-eeeeeevil and order minions who fail (or rather, minions who point out why he failed) to be executed in his most substantial appearance yet. (Is "I know Buffy too well to believe she'll be silent when she dies!" the hokiest Big Bad line since The Master's heyday or what?) But now we've heard from his own mouth that he knows Buffy, which is obviously a surprise to Warren, if not to Probably!Riley - and probably means he at least knows of Oz as well, so... yeah. Interestingly, all the major "in-house" candidates for Twilight - Xander, Giles, Andrew, Oz - appear in Tibet (granted, Andrew isn't in it much, probably since Jeanty draws him and Oz almost exactly the same), so if he's either of them there must be some sort of time-travel-alternate-evil-twin-thing going on. Or they're a robot, which would actually explain why Warren needs to be back. For instance, Giles' last few appearances could probably have been played by a robot, even if he probably had a slight software upgrade between #24 and #26. Come to think of it, given Kelden's attention to Giles, it would be a nice Terminator shout-out if the child of two werewolves can spot a robot...
One last thing: Oz makes a point of Monroe not attacking them until they'd gotten so mellow and peaceful that they could no longer really defend themselves. So I guess we'll see just how far Buffy manages to take this plan before it runs its course and everyone either rebels against her (it'll be really interesting to see how Willow reacts to the news that she's now given up magic forever - "Really? And where was I when I made this life-changing decision?") or Twilight finishes his wild goose chase.
"Goose is dead." (Top Gun)
"How did he die?"
"Clichéd to death. The second his wife and kid showed up, we knew he was done for." (Mad Magazine parody of Top Gun)
A few short points:
- Interesting that one of Twilight's minions (is that supposed to be someone we know?) actually calls him on using magic when he's supposed to be against it. Interesting, too, that Twilight orders him to be executed. Is it possible that Twilight is starting to get frustrated? I don't see why, since everything has worked out perfectly for him so far, but...
- Yay Dawn for pointing out the obvious parallels. Lovely meta moment, and you gotta love it when the characters show some genre savvyness. Like I said in my last review, it feels like they're finally starting to get someplace.
- It's OK to eatfish squirrels 'cause they don't have any feelings souls. Assuming that's what Oz is doing there – it seems kind of random since there's never any mention of squirrels, but hey.
- How funny was that puppy moment?
- So Andrew is Warren's "pet", eh?
- "Find that flea, before I decide it's easier to search a dead dog." Yep, things aren't looking too safe for the occasionally hairy Osborne-Bayarmaa family.
- When Allie chooses to publish a critical letter on the letters page, it's one with some rather off-colour homophobic remarks. See what kind of people dislike Season 8? Oooo, I hate them already.
- Nice to see that Willow managed to rescue her hat from "Earshot" not only from Sunnydale but from the castle as well. (What was Willow's role in "Earshot"? When Buffy zoned out and became useless, Willow stepped in and took over... What happened when they tried to run from the Big Bad in "Spiral"? Buffy zoned out and became useless, Willow stepped in and took over... what's on the next cover?)
1. the forced or strategic withdrawal of an army or an armed force before an enemy, or the withdrawing of a naval force from action.
2. the act of withdrawing, as into safety or privacy; retirement; seclusion.
3. a place of refuge, seclusion, or privacy: The library was his retreat.
4. an asylum, as for the insane.
5. a retirement or a period of retirement for religious exercises and meditation.
6. Brave Sir Robin ran away.
Bravely ran away, away!
When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
Bravely taking to his feet
He beat a very brave retreat,
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin!
Another pretty solid issue. Certainly slower-paced than the last one, which is a good thing in this case since it gives the story a chance to solidify and get inside a few characters we haven't really met before/in a long time/in this guise. (The fact that there's nothing about the "Vamps yay!" storyline helps too). Buffy & Co go to Tibet, they chat with Oz about controlling magic since he's the big expert on this while Giles and Willow just mope, we briefly get to meet the arc's little bad wolf (with obvious parallels to the Slayer story, as pointed out by Dawn - jeez, they even give him black fur, wanna bet he's the bad guy?), and they decide (or rather, Buffy decides for them) to all spend their lives, or at least a long time, in quiet meditation communing with the soil. Meanwhile, Twilight and his wacky gang of sidekicks start hunting them down, confident that like the Beatles, their Maharishi phase won't last and eventually they'll start fighting amongst themselves. (If it's Adam, he may have studied up on his pop history.)
We do get something that completely violates the rules of Season 8, namely backstory on what a character has been up to since the last time we saw them - what the hell is Jane thinking? But in this case I'm more than willing to overlook this obvious blooper because Oz' backstory really is nicely done, with no big drama, even if it must be the most Oz has ever talked in an official Buffy story. The other characters get to play second fiddle for most of the issue, which works fine since Oz' story is more or less commentary on Buffy's story.
Oz' girlfriend Bay is a nice character, close to earth with a sharp sense of humour (I like her line about watching the whole thing on TV. Clearly in the Season 8-verse, Tibet got all the hi-tech that Germany has in our world), not to mention that she seems to be the fighter of the two. Also, Oz is a daddy, leading to several rather cute Giles-with-baby scenes. Of course, as
Jeanty's art improved after the first few arcs, but now seems to be getting downright lazy; at this rate, Season 9 might as well be drawn by Randall Munroe. (Seriously, he's a Whedon fan, he'd take the job.) I'm assuming that's Amy with the bowl in the opening pages, and I'm going to make an educated guess that the big one who looks a bit like Leo DiCaprio could feasibly be Riley, in which case he's still either being a not very useful triple agent or a not very useful double one since he neither helps Twilight find Buffy nor stops him from doing so. Also, I think that's supposed to be Tara in the flashback. Yay, even if it's just a flashback to a scene we already know and doesn't really add much. Clearly, this is foreshadowing that she's Twilight. Either her or Spike, who also gets mentioned in a very very meaningful way. *nods*
Yay also for the big Willow/Oz reunion! Which, like many things in Season 8, we have to assume took place at some point between the panels. I expect it was both moving, awkward, and dryly funny. We do get one very good scene between Willow and Oz, though. Whether Willow's comment about being jealous of Oz having a baby and a life is a comment on Kennedy's (or Saga Vasuki's) marriageability, or on Willow's crazy demon-fighting life, or even on the relative unlikelihood of she herself as a gay woman being a mother... who knows. But I'm going to go with the second interpretation, since it ties nicely into Oz' and Bay's speech: "Don't be a lake, be a river." "Have a life" - which Dawn then specifically asks Willow if she can.
As always in Joss' stories, we work with mirror images. Oz' story mirrors Buffy's, or at least appears to (she certainly seems to see the similarity) and he's found a way to deal with his own demon - granted, he has an easier time of it since his is restricted to three nights a month, he doesn't actively fight the forces of evil on a daily basis, and he hasn't (as far as we know) made thousands of new werewolves that he has to take care of. On the other hand, his demon is a lot trickier to control once it's out than Buffy's is. Again, as a metaphor, it works great; Oz has grown up, found peace, built his own world and is happy – hence no need to battle apocalypses and save the world etc. Unfortunately, given their many differences, we can be reasonably sure that his way cannot work for Buffy - and some of the comments and looks from the others seem to indicate that they don't think so either.
They continue to show Xander and Dawn together while still not making a big deal of it. Either they're just being as friendly as they always were in the TV show, which is a bizarre idea, or they're going for some big shocking tangled-sheets reveal again. (Which of course may also make one of them ripe for Sudden Dramatic Death Syndrome - given Xander's track record, they may not even have time to kiss before the 16-ton weight drops. And speaking of foreshadowed deaths, we even get Willow saying that she doesn't have a future...)
So far, so good; great character interaction, funny and serious dialogue both work, interesting parallels, nothing that spooks the yak. OK, so to the Plan, of which I'll be more critical since I still don't see where it makes a smidge of sense. I still don't get what Buffy hopes to achieve here; if it's to simply turn them all into ordinary girls and give up, they've already been shown a way to do that. If it's just to mask what they are while keeping the power, what good is that power going to do if they're all stuck in a
BUFFY: We need to learn to not be magical.
BAY: Not teleporting submarines is a good first step.
OZ: You just made my home into a very big target.
Unsurprisingly, given that both we and Buffy et al know that Twilight can track them by magic, using magic to get where they're going will lead Twilight directly to them (or not directly, as it happens, but you know they won't have a year). The question, since this is so very obvious that it's pointed out by every character who's not part of Buffy's organisation, is if it will turn out some other way?
Though having seen the blurbs and covers for the next couple of issues it doesn't look likely, and a) it shouldn't be surprising to anyone who knows Joss' work in general and Serenity in particular that running and hiding (and leading your enemy to your friends) is a Bad Idea, and b) it would be nice if we had just one storyline for Buffy in the comic that didn't get me thinking ”yeah, we know, Buffy's current plan is a Bad Idea, let's wait 5 more issues for her to realise that.” Sure, some of the ways she's screwed up in Season 8 are more or less in character for her, but that alone doesn't make for good fiction, especially when we know roughly where those screwups usually lead in the Jossverse. At some point, I'd like to be able to cheer for Buffy, go ”Attagirl!” By all means, have it turn out badly, but make it look like a reasonable idea.
That said, I'll say this for Season 8; it's nice that it's messing with the "torture works" angle that the series often used a little too carelessly – this is now the second time that using information gained through torture has led them into trouble; first the trap in "Wolves At The Gate", now a dead end. (Though arguably, their error this time is simply not realising the ramifications of the information they got.)
Anyway, enough whining about what is, as I said, a pretty good issue. There are villains too. Monroe does indeed seem like Veruca 2.0, so I don't expect much development there; at least they didn't just forget that Veruca is dead (though there's more leeway there unless Oz has silver fillings). Our main villain, however, finally gets into the story properly. Twilight gets to be all mwah-ha-ha-I'm-eeeeeevil and order minions who fail (or rather, minions who point out why he failed) to be executed in his most substantial appearance yet. (Is "I know Buffy too well to believe she'll be silent when she dies!" the hokiest Big Bad line since The Master's heyday or what?) But now we've heard from his own mouth that he knows Buffy, which is obviously a surprise to Warren, if not to Probably!Riley - and probably means he at least knows of Oz as well, so... yeah. Interestingly, all the major "in-house" candidates for Twilight - Xander, Giles, Andrew, Oz - appear in Tibet (granted, Andrew isn't in it much, probably since Jeanty draws him and Oz almost exactly the same), so if he's either of them there must be some sort of time-travel-alternate-evil-twin-thing going on. Or they're a robot, which would actually explain why Warren needs to be back. For instance, Giles' last few appearances could probably have been played by a robot, even if he probably had a slight software upgrade between #24 and #26. Come to think of it, given Kelden's attention to Giles, it would be a nice Terminator shout-out if the child of two werewolves can spot a robot...
One last thing: Oz makes a point of Monroe not attacking them until they'd gotten so mellow and peaceful that they could no longer really defend themselves. So I guess we'll see just how far Buffy manages to take this plan before it runs its course and everyone either rebels against her (it'll be really interesting to see how Willow reacts to the news that she's now given up magic forever - "Really? And where was I when I made this life-changing decision?") or Twilight finishes his wild goose chase.
"Goose is dead." (Top Gun)
"How did he die?"
"Clichéd to death. The second his wife and kid showed up, we knew he was done for." (Mad Magazine parody of Top Gun)
A few short points:
- Interesting that one of Twilight's minions (is that supposed to be someone we know?) actually calls him on using magic when he's supposed to be against it. Interesting, too, that Twilight orders him to be executed. Is it possible that Twilight is starting to get frustrated? I don't see why, since everything has worked out perfectly for him so far, but...
- Yay Dawn for pointing out the obvious parallels. Lovely meta moment, and you gotta love it when the characters show some genre savvyness. Like I said in my last review, it feels like they're finally starting to get someplace.
- It's OK to eat
- How funny was that puppy moment?
- So Andrew is Warren's "pet", eh?
- "Find that flea, before I decide it's easier to search a dead dog." Yep, things aren't looking too safe for the occasionally hairy Osborne-Bayarmaa family.
- When Allie chooses to publish a critical letter on the letters page, it's one with some rather off-colour homophobic remarks. See what kind of people dislike Season 8? Oooo, I hate them already.
- Nice to see that Willow managed to rescue her hat from "Earshot" not only from Sunnydale but from the castle as well. (What was Willow's role in "Earshot"? When Buffy zoned out and became useless, Willow stepped in and took over... What happened when they tried to run from the Big Bad in "Spiral"? Buffy zoned out and became useless, Willow stepped in and took over... what's on the next cover?)
