Nominations! Oh, and the comics thing.

[beer_good_foamy]

"Mission Accomplished" has gotten a bunch of nominations! I'm really happy and grateful for that. So from the bottom of my heart - as dark and evil as it may be - thank you to the people who nominated me.





Also, some quick'n'dirty thoughts on that Angel "After the Fall" comic thingy.

- Interesting setup, with Angel still working for W&H in hell. I have no idea where that could be going, or why he went along with it, and apparently he doesn't know either ("The punishment would be worse. Not sure how")... I'll just stick with "interesting" for now, see where it goes. And we get right down to business with Angel turning it around in the last few pages, which is good even though we barely get to know where he is before he starts trying to get out of it. So how does all of this fit in with the shanshu thingamabob? I'll reserve all judgment until the end of the arc.

- I like Angel here. Seems like a pretty good continuation of his s5 self. And I like that he knows that he's the one who started all this and he's the one in the thick of it – obviously, Angel has experience in guilt-tripping. And the first few pages are basically the teaser from "City Of" plus dragon. Though wait a minute... W&H killed Cordy? Since when? Or was it Fred that W&H killed in this verse? The only girlfriend of Angel's that W&H killed, AFAIR, is Darla – but surely Angel's not THAT slow on the uptake?

- Good dialogue throughout, especially for Angel and Wesley. Also, unlike certain other comics I could mention, we do get a decent amount of backstory on how they got from the TV show to here. Kudos.

- I know everyone is squeeing about this, but I'm less than thrilled about Wesley being back; I thought he got a good arc, a good death, and I sort of wish they'd let him stay dead – wasn't it enough that his life sucked, you gotta screw up his afterlife too? But hey, at least they didn't bring him back to life and claim that some witch had 4 seconds to save him; apparently he's under the same sort of deal as Holland and Lilah were, which makes sense, except he's incorporeal, which... doesn't, so much. (And raises the question why the hell a ghost needs glasses.) Also, he's now evil, or at least the mouthpiece of evil, and seems to have had a bit of a character reset in more than just dress sense. Huh. But of course, his name is also misspelt, so possibly it's not supposed to be Wesley at all.

- Gunn is alive! Yay! And he's a giant perv! Huh? Oh, wait, he's a vampire. OK, I'd heard that they had planned for that, and so no huge surprise, but... makes sense, I suppose he must have been turned in the battle. Great reveal, btw.

- Nice to see Gwen back. Kinda indifferent about Nina, especially since judging from her brief scene, she seems to have been given a complete personality transplant. Apocalypse can do that to you, I guess. Connor? That's supposed to be Connor?

- No sign of Spike (except in the preview for #2). No sign of Illyria. No sign of Lorne. No sign of Anne. No sign of... well, you get the picture.

- Fun villain. Kr'Ph, I mean. I want a fish like that.

- Art: apparently, people are very excited about this Urru guy. *shrugs* I dunno. The style takes some getting used to; very dark, a bit confusing in the action scenes, and while he captures the way people look, they don't look very... alive. (Of course most of them are dead in some way, but you know what I mean.) Every panel looks like a posed portrait to me. Might be more my unused-to-comics-ness, though.

- So since when is the Buffyverse all about showing large-breasted women in tight (or non-existant) outfits, hmmm? Sure, I can buy that Kr'Ph would want naked human women around, and it IS Los Angeles, but that powershot with Nina, Gwen and Connor... come ON. According to Brian Lynch, "the artist is from somewhere called 'Italy' and claims all women look like that." Oh well.

- So if this is somehow roughly the same timeframe as "Season 8", and both claim to be canon... how come nobody in the Slayer camp (or, for that matter, Twilight) seems to have noticed that most of LA and neighbouring towns have disappeared into Hell? You'd think that would be the sort of thing they would be interested in...? What do you say, comics fans, which canon is canonier right now?

- On a whole... *shrugs* As someone who considers "Not Fade Away" one of the best series finales ever shown on a TV screen, I'm kinda cold about this epilogue; it's going to take one HELL (pardon the pun) of a comic to sell me on this as a continuation of the TV series, and so far it's not really ringing any bells. Nice to have it, and there's some good stuff here that makes me curious to see where it's going, but based on the first issue I won't go out of my way to be excited over it (or shell out hard-earned cash for the TPBs) unless something truly spectacular happens.

Comments

[shapinglight]

and the only way it could be any clearer would be if, say, Joss had spent 3 years repeating that it's NOT a cliffhanger meant to be continued. ;-)

I agree it's not a cliffhanger. NFA can perfectly well stand as an ending and, if there'd never been any more, I would've been happy with it. It was a symbolic moment and what happened next - whether they all died or not - didn't strictly matter.

However, if you re-watch the whole of season 5, it's chockful of moral ambiguities and those continue right into this last episode so I think it's a pretty ambiguous symbolic moment.

Erm, hope that makes sense.

I'm pretty sure it is Wesley. And he isn't really back. I mean, he's still dead.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not saying there aren't moral gray scales and ambiguities in s5. It's what the entire show is about, after all. And one could argue endlessly about the morality of the ending. But the thing is, that's what makes it a good ending; it's got ambiguities in it and raises a lot of questions, but the ending ITSELF isn't in the least bit ambiguous: "In terms of a plan? We fight." All stories end at some point, and any good ending always leaves you with more questions than answers. I guess that's what bugs me about this: they left us on that whopper of a mission statement, and then they go back on it (I'd say cheapen it if I thought the comics could in any way measure up to the series) by, if you'll pardon the somewhat overused simile, opening Schrödinger's box (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat) and telling us exactly which cats lived or died, and what they did afterwards.

And he isn't really back. I mean, he's still dead.

He might not be back as a human - and like I said above, thank the Joss for small mercies that we didn't get another "Oh, he didn't actually die" - but he's undeniably back as a character. Being a fictional character, it adds up to pretty much the same in terms of the story; he can still interact with the others in the same way, still contribute to the story, still be recognizable as (s2) Wesley, etc.

[shapinglight]

He might not be back as a human - and like I said above, thank the Joss for small mercies that we didn't get another "Oh, he didn't actually die" - but he's undeniably back as a character. Being a fictional character, it adds up to pretty much the same in terms of the story; he can still interact with the others in the same way, still contribute to the story, still be recognizable as (s2) Wesley, etc.

This is true. However, I simply can't imagine AtS without Wesley so I'm very glad to see him, even in this reduced capacity - and if a sequel is to be written (even if it's not needed - because I agree, it's not, it's just that I'm glad to have it) I want all the characters in it, in a way that fits the rules of the 'verse, which this does, unlike the Warren/Amy thing.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

However, I simply can't imagine AtS without Wesley

Agreed. Though personally speaking, that's one of the reasons I'm not really too concerned with "season 6"; Wesley's death in NFA pretty much sealed it for me, that was The End. Besides, I'm not sure an evil Wesley (if that is indeed Wesley and if he is indeed working for the senior partners) is much better than no Wesley... it was bad enough that they screwed up Cordy in s4, I really hope they're not going to repeat the experiment. But we'll see.

[shapinglight]

Well, it's too early to say whether Wesley's evil or not. Of course, we may have to wait a whole year to find out but at least we know it won't be longer than that because the series is only 12 issues.