The Amazing AU Adventures of Joss: 8.04

[beer_good_foamy]

OK, so I'm not overly impressed by #4. Weakest so far, I think, a few really good bits notwithstanding.

What we did get:
- I really like Xander's reaction to Willow being kidnapped - he's ALL business, realizes where his strengths lie and sends the girls off to do the heavy lifting.
- I kinda like Dawn's reaction, too. OK, the "like a mother to me" thing is stupid - it would work better both with continuity and with the plot of separating Buffy from humanity if she'd said "sister" - but... for a giant (which is still silly, but not as silly as some other things) she's starting to grow on me. People complain that she's being written "too young", but let's face it, if you get turned into a giant, you have a certain right to whine about it.
- I like the final scene. I might even grow to like it a lot, depending on where it goes. As much as I hate that Ethan is dead and a waste like Warren gets to live, it's an excellent scene - all the more because it's so unfair, after we just saw Ethan joking and snarking and being his usual obnoxious self, and then WHAM - and the General-or-whatever-he-is's reveal of just what Buffy is up against. Could, in theory, be a very interesting arc - not Buffy vs the military (done that) or patriarchy vs female empowerment (done that) but humanity vs demons - and our heroes on the "wrong" side. OK, not extremely original (*cough*X-Men*cough*) but still.
- And we got the reveal of who kissed Buffy. Still too early to say if it was all just a fake-out or if there's actually going to be any advancement on it, but let's just say bakatulip wasn't far off in her characterization of Satsu... *grin*
- Some good dialogue bits. "Healthy moss", hehe.

What we didn't get:
- A credible explanation for Warren being back. 'Nuff said. He just is, and he's like evil and stuff, deal with it.
- Any sort of closure whatsoever to the Warren/Amy storyline. They're going to keep popping up whenever a villain is needed, and Joss seems to think this is a good idea. Ya-fricking-wn.
- A credible explanation for Willow being tortured to death one second and perfectly fine the next. OK, healing powers, but... dramatically, it sucks. "Willow's dying, Willow's dying... no, wait, she's A-OK." I still hope that grin (and those blue eyes?) signify that there is something going on with Willow that we don't know about yet; remember Warren saying he wants to see if he can make her go dark, her comments about evil "fading" and her off-hand dismissal of Kennedy dying for a while, but... even if that's the case, we'll have to wait a few months to get another 2 minutes worth of story.
- Any sort of explanation of what the point of Warren/Amy/Willow was, apart from getting the reveal out of the General guy, if it didn't do something to Willow. If you're going to fuck with continuity, at least have a good reason for doing so.
- A convincing fight scene. I'm sure it would have been awesome on the TV series, but squeezed together as it is in the comic, I had to read and re-read to make sense of it. There's no flow, no explanation of what happens from frame to frame.

There's potential here, but I still see Joss struggling with the format - which is surprising, considering the praise heaped on X-Men and Runaways. He's telling the story as if it were the usual 4-act 40-minute TV episode with the next episode due in a week, but with a month or more between installments, it just gets disjointed and, frankly, hard to care what happens. Especially since it's so hard to tell what's actual plot twists and what's just Joss ignoring what happened on the show.

OK, I'm gonna quit whining now. Sing it with me:
Frère Jacques,
Frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous?
Dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines!
Sonnez les matines!
Din, dan, don.
Din, dan, don.

Comments

[mouthmount.livejournal.com]

I missed the reveal of Satsu as the one who kissed Buffy, but having looked back at the last issue, got it. I wonder how many people missed that, considering it's pretty subtle.

I'm hanging on to my hope that Joss hasn't gone insane and that's not actually Warren. Amy talking about how Buffy had a major history with him felt to me like they were saying that we still didn't know who he was.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Well, that IS one thing to hope for, certainly, and I'll gladly hang on to it. Though... OK, it's tricky with the narrative shift there, but as I understood it, the "history" does indeed refer to Willow.

AMY: You just have that big atomo-phallic thing pointed at the portal and you'll get your slayer. She'll come after this witch like dog after dogshit, I swear to God. But the witch belongs to my boyfriend. They have a history. She's kind of a history major.

Now that last line COULD be someone saying it about Buffy, since the picture shifts to her, but... who would it be that says it? Especially since we then cut to the mini-slayers, who presumably know nothing about Buffy's history with Warren or indeed that it is Warren (or that history was always Buffy's WORST subject in high school). In my opinion (and it's not a good reflection on the comics that I'm not sure about this) that's still Amy talking, and the comment refers to Willow.