Comics post, part 1
Jul. 7th, 2009 03:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beer_good_foamyI haven't written anything about the comics in a while, so I might as well do a roundup of the latest couple of Season 8 installments. But since #26 is taking its sweet time getting here so I haven't actually read it yet, I'll do it in two parts.
Tales of the Vampires. Now, this wasn't bad in any way, in fact it was pretty damn good as a stand-alone original fic, but just a bit frustrating. It was hinted that this one-shot would finally address the alleged paradigm shift in the Buffyverse - that billions of people now love vampires unconditionally while those fighting them are hated and feared. You know, the thing that's been mentioned 3 or 4 times in passing in the last 5 issues of the comics.
When toothsome vampire Harmony Kendall landed her own reality show the world changed for everyone – humans, demons and Slayers alike. Quite seemlessly, humanity accepted – no, welcomed the existence of supernatural beings in their midst. (...) No one saw this coming.
No one? Funny, considering that the basic plot boils down to a repeat of something that was already firmly established in the TV series years ago ("Lie To Me", "Into The Woods", "Salvage", Gunn's entire pre-s3 arc, etc): that there are outsider groups who are well aware of vampires, that there are bored emo kids on the fringes of society who think vampires are cool and like to get their blood sucked, and that once you're turned into a vampire you basically become an asshole who's usually better off dust lest you kill (and metaphorically rape) your friends and family. There's one or two comments about vampires and humans having become "symbiotic", but it never moves beyond the settings or interactions that we already knew from the TV shows – certainly nothing trying to explain how the overwhelming majority of this not just fairly intelligent, but also inherently suspicious and rather xenophobic race we call humans supposedly immediately accepted one of the most well-known fictional monsters to their collective bosom based only on an MTV reality show. No one saw it coming? It's supposedly here, and I still don't see it. It's nice that the comics use some of the storylines from the TV series, I guess, but it's a weird setup; we're not supposed to wonder too much about the bits where the comics differ quite a lot from the TV series, but we're supposed to believe that some other aspects of the story make up huge "game changers" despite looking remarkably like business as usual. But I suppose we'll just have to accept Allie's comment that "magic of some kind" is involved (does this story make any sense at all to those who don't read blurbs, letter columns and Q&As? Do those readers even know that all of humanity supposedly "welcomed" vampires?) and eventually Willow will do a counterspell and that'll be that.
That said, it was pretty well-written and made good use of the idea - the TV series rarely showed us the voluntary victims' and subsequent vampires' POV, so that was nice even if it's rather bleak. Strip it of its supernatural trappings and the setting is really Clerks (or possibly SubUrbia) with the original ending, where Dante gets shot and killed for no good reason, and without the humour. Even if I'm left wondering (much like the Kenny thing) if we're really supposed to sympathise with this particular monster. Because, y'know, I really don't. As far as I can tell, the message here is "Jay was an idiot, vampires are still as bad as they ever were, and anyone with half a brain should be able to see that." If any vampires at all, anywhere in the world, are indeed following Harmony's party line that they don't kill people (which Jay buys into even as he's killing his best friend – self-delusion is an important part of any Jossverse), they seem to be in the minority. We're certainly yet to see any of them trying to go the straight and narrow for real, and this issue makes a pretty big point of why they neither will nor can; as both Jay and May show quite clearly, they don't even understand what it means to not kill people. It's not so much a continued muddling of the post-Spike waters as a return to showing them as monsters - not because they're necessarily evil, but because they cannot tell the difference.
Alex is an interesting, if not very developed character, stressing again (far better than in the dismal #24) that Slayers don't really get to not be Slayers even if they don't want to; and I really don't think it's coincidental that the whole thing ends with her, once again, being turned into something else without getting a say-so. If this were headed towards a conclusion in which Buffy takes back the "Chosen" spell, which I don't for a second think it is, then this comic would seem to be a pretty big indication that that would be a good thing. But of course, as many people pointed out after Scott Allie's recent "what if" scenario, TV!Buffy's strength was always that when faced with the two crappy alternatives A and B, she usually managed to find a C.
The message so far seems to be: no, Slayers don't draw strength from each other. But as we already know from the show, and as this shows, they don't survive in complete isolation either. So what's path C here?
The Dark HorseMyspace Presents was hysterically fun, even if the wedding scene was weird with no groom present. As one of the very few peeks into Buffy's head we've had throughout Season 8, it's definitely interesting. Even if it's mostly played for laughs, it's got some interesting darker themes woven in. Buffy, once again, is disconnected from everything, doesn't draw strength from her army, yada yada yada. Her lovers hook up with each other rather than her (a pretty strong indication that she knows Spike joined the cast of Angel, perhaps), and none of her actual family show up at her dream wedding – not Dawn, not Joyce, not Hank, not Giles; Xander is standing best man for Warren, Willow is being held by Dark Willow, and Tara blames Buffy for being dead. And both the bride's and the groom's sides are full of monsters. Apparently there's some debate as to whether this is a Slayer dream or just a normal dream – who cares? All Jossverse dreams are prophetic to some degree, all of them contain a lot of sneaky character study, and they usually have a dream character who guides and narrates the story for the dreamer. Here, the role previously filled by Tara, or the First Slayer, or Cordelia, or Ethan, is played by... Caleb. Who essentially tells her that she belongs here in the dark dirt, with him. Yeah, Buffy really needs a vacation. Nice to finally see the characters looking like themselves, too. Plus, hey, Buffy knows Angel and Spike better than just about anybody, so her opinion has to count for something, right? ;-)
Still... it's been about a year since we had any advancement of the semi-titular Twilight plot, and it's been about 6 months since we had any overarching plot involving a major character to speak of at all (and we don't even know the significance of that plot yet). Fortunately, the upcoming arc seems to promise something along those lines, even if the Slayers messing with South Korea's ability to defend itself has some unfortunate RL connotations. Maybe Satsu turns out to be one of Kim Jong Il's spies? Maybe Oz has gone evil along with Riley? Maybe Willow, taking a tip from Dawn, asks Warren's forgiveness? Well, I'm sure most of you already know, but for now I'll have to wait to find out. But Part II of this post will be around eventually.
Tales of the Vampires. Now, this wasn't bad in any way, in fact it was pretty damn good as a stand-alone original fic, but just a bit frustrating. It was hinted that this one-shot would finally address the alleged paradigm shift in the Buffyverse - that billions of people now love vampires unconditionally while those fighting them are hated and feared. You know, the thing that's been mentioned 3 or 4 times in passing in the last 5 issues of the comics.
When toothsome vampire Harmony Kendall landed her own reality show the world changed for everyone – humans, demons and Slayers alike. Quite seemlessly, humanity accepted – no, welcomed the existence of supernatural beings in their midst. (...) No one saw this coming.
No one? Funny, considering that the basic plot boils down to a repeat of something that was already firmly established in the TV series years ago ("Lie To Me", "Into The Woods", "Salvage", Gunn's entire pre-s3 arc, etc): that there are outsider groups who are well aware of vampires, that there are bored emo kids on the fringes of society who think vampires are cool and like to get their blood sucked, and that once you're turned into a vampire you basically become an asshole who's usually better off dust lest you kill (and metaphorically rape) your friends and family. There's one or two comments about vampires and humans having become "symbiotic", but it never moves beyond the settings or interactions that we already knew from the TV shows – certainly nothing trying to explain how the overwhelming majority of this not just fairly intelligent, but also inherently suspicious and rather xenophobic race we call humans supposedly immediately accepted one of the most well-known fictional monsters to their collective bosom based only on an MTV reality show. No one saw it coming? It's supposedly here, and I still don't see it. It's nice that the comics use some of the storylines from the TV series, I guess, but it's a weird setup; we're not supposed to wonder too much about the bits where the comics differ quite a lot from the TV series, but we're supposed to believe that some other aspects of the story make up huge "game changers" despite looking remarkably like business as usual. But I suppose we'll just have to accept Allie's comment that "magic of some kind" is involved (does this story make any sense at all to those who don't read blurbs, letter columns and Q&As? Do those readers even know that all of humanity supposedly "welcomed" vampires?) and eventually Willow will do a counterspell and that'll be that.
That said, it was pretty well-written and made good use of the idea - the TV series rarely showed us the voluntary victims' and subsequent vampires' POV, so that was nice even if it's rather bleak. Strip it of its supernatural trappings and the setting is really Clerks (or possibly SubUrbia) with the original ending, where Dante gets shot and killed for no good reason, and without the humour. Even if I'm left wondering (much like the Kenny thing) if we're really supposed to sympathise with this particular monster. Because, y'know, I really don't. As far as I can tell, the message here is "Jay was an idiot, vampires are still as bad as they ever were, and anyone with half a brain should be able to see that." If any vampires at all, anywhere in the world, are indeed following Harmony's party line that they don't kill people (which Jay buys into even as he's killing his best friend – self-delusion is an important part of any Jossverse), they seem to be in the minority. We're certainly yet to see any of them trying to go the straight and narrow for real, and this issue makes a pretty big point of why they neither will nor can; as both Jay and May show quite clearly, they don't even understand what it means to not kill people. It's not so much a continued muddling of the post-Spike waters as a return to showing them as monsters - not because they're necessarily evil, but because they cannot tell the difference.
Alex is an interesting, if not very developed character, stressing again (far better than in the dismal #24) that Slayers don't really get to not be Slayers even if they don't want to; and I really don't think it's coincidental that the whole thing ends with her, once again, being turned into something else without getting a say-so. If this were headed towards a conclusion in which Buffy takes back the "Chosen" spell, which I don't for a second think it is, then this comic would seem to be a pretty big indication that that would be a good thing. But of course, as many people pointed out after Scott Allie's recent "what if" scenario, TV!Buffy's strength was always that when faced with the two crappy alternatives A and B, she usually managed to find a C.
The message so far seems to be: no, Slayers don't draw strength from each other. But as we already know from the show, and as this shows, they don't survive in complete isolation either. So what's path C here?
The Dark Horse
Still... it's been about a year since we had any advancement of the semi-titular Twilight plot, and it's been about 6 months since we had any overarching plot involving a major character to speak of at all (and we don't even know the significance of that plot yet). Fortunately, the upcoming arc seems to promise something along those lines, even if the Slayers messing with South Korea's ability to defend itself has some unfortunate RL connotations. Maybe Satsu turns out to be one of Kim Jong Il's spies? Maybe Oz has gone evil along with Riley? Maybe Willow, taking a tip from Dawn, asks Warren's forgiveness? Well, I'm sure most of you already know, but for now I'll have to wait to find out. But Part II of this post will be around eventually.
