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beer_good_foamyAnd the comics continue to pick up; after the occasionally bewildering but mostly good #10, we now get #11 - in which Joss graciously gives us a little bit of backstory on where people are at, pick up one or two of the threads left dangling earlier in the comics, and then of course there's the reveal...
...sort of.
The big news, of course, is that Buffy Summers finally makes an appearance. I really liked the whole conversation with Satsu (which also manages to give Satsu some character depth - not by giving us her story, but by showing us a little of who she is). I still don't believe for a second that we'll be getting actual Buffy/Satsu, but the conversation went pretty much like you would have expected it to go - Buffy being flattered but very clear about Satsu's chances - and of Satsu's two possible reactions, she seems to have chosen "loyal lover-from-afar" over "jilted and furious if-I-can't-have-her-nobody-will". This, of course, may prove to be very bad news for Satsu since it sets her up as Good Guy Who's Interesting Enough To Be Killed For Effect... then again, that's exactly what Buffy tells her, so maybe she'll be OK. Until we start thinking that maybe she'll be OK.
There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
So Buffy doesn't know that Spike is/was alive. (Which, again, begs the question of what the hell Andrew is up to.) We still don't know what she knows about LA - which is interesting, given Scott Allie's admission that this IS pretty much 12 months after "Chosen" - why she's in Scotland, how she decided to become a bankrobber, or indeed a lot of things, but... again, character depth is about more than just character history; that Buffy is cold and distant because she's repressing grief and is afraid to let anyone get close feels right, and this issue goes some way towards actually making her... well, Buffy. That's not to say I'm completely happy with it, but it's a huge improvement. And also, the vampire fight was vintage Buffy; quipping, kicking ass, snarking off the vampires trying to butt in on the conversation... aaah, good times. That's my girl. Interesting "Restless" callback, too.
And speaking of hugeimprovements, everyone now seems to have decided that Dawn gets to stay a giant and having gotten her supremely non-interesting boyfriend story off her considerable chest, she now even seems to be enjoying it. So YAAAAAAAAAAAAWN but what the hell, obviously Joss thinks it's the funniest idea he's ever had... I hate to say it, but at this point I'm almost wishing he'd just either write her out or kill her off; if he can't be bothered to make up an interesting storyline for Giant!Dawn, aside from the one-year-long teasing and joking with little-to-no payoff in sight, I think it's a crap way to treat one of the more interesting regular characters. It's starting to make Spike's ghostiness arc in s5 of Angel look intriguing - at least he actually wanted to be fixed and worked for it himself, and at least Angel had a sensible reason not to want to fix him.
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
Then there's the villain. And Twilight here is both intriguing and ridiculous. His speech (since it seems safe to say now that he is indeed male) is mostly one of the worst examples of Evil Overlord Speech 1A ever in the Buffyverse - I was reminded of The Master in s1 at times - but at least we got a few scraps of info about him.
1) He all but admits that he's an old villain who's returned to fight Buffy again. Which, yawn-ish, but it might still be interesting depending on who he is.
2) While we don't actually get to see his face, at least we get to see part of it (in one of the funniest visual gags of the entire comic so far) and we can rule out some of the contenders. It's probably not Adam, The Master, Mr Trick, The Mayor, The "Lineage" cyborgs, Warren, or... well, anyone who's not an athletic white non-disfigured male. He's also not a vampire since the sun doesn't seem to hurt him. Which I suppose leaves Caleb as the one with the best odds right now... especially as he's both in this issue in a flashback, and Twilight's speech sounds a bit like him. But then again, for all I know it could be Ben. Or Lindsey. Or Ford. (Yes, all of these served out their arcs and died, obviously; but we already know that matters not one jot.)
3) The fight is actually pretty good, Twilight's dialogue aside (Buffy's "church me", though - hee.)
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
Which brings us to an interesting point: what the hell is the Big Bad doing turning up in the middle of what's supposed to be a fairly routine vampire slaying - especially since it's Buffy's first in "ages"? Isn't that very convenient? Let's see... Who sent them to that particular spot, hmmm? Also, notice how the only thing we see of Twilight is his chin - and the following panels of Xander all conveniently hide his chin. Which, again, might simply be Jeanty being a less-than-great artist, but... so far, Xander remains a mystery; what little we see of him seems carefree and Xander-ish enough, but what's going on underneath is anybody's guess.
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
So a lot of interesting stuff. On the other hand, and possibly the thing I liked least about the issue, is that after the moral grey zone Buffy seemed to be heading into in 8.06-8.10 now seems to suddenly be very black and white again; Buffy, whose intentions are obviously the best (I never thought they weren't, but the road to hell yada yada) gets a very obvious pointer that Willow was right and she was wrong about the bankrobbing being "the first domino", and Twilight shows himself to be EV0L beyond a shadow of a doubt. Which is a bit of a shame as it would have been a lot more interesting to explore that line of questioning further, but I suppose it's better to have it this way with a Buffy that actually resembles her canonical self than to have an interesting story populated by characters I don't care about. So, well done Joss; there's still a lot to fix, but it's heading in the right direction.
Stop, hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's goin' down...
...sort of.
The big news, of course, is that Buffy Summers finally makes an appearance. I really liked the whole conversation with Satsu (which also manages to give Satsu some character depth - not by giving us her story, but by showing us a little of who she is). I still don't believe for a second that we'll be getting actual Buffy/Satsu, but the conversation went pretty much like you would have expected it to go - Buffy being flattered but very clear about Satsu's chances - and of Satsu's two possible reactions, she seems to have chosen "loyal lover-from-afar" over "jilted and furious if-I-can't-have-her-nobody-will". This, of course, may prove to be very bad news for Satsu since it sets her up as Good Guy Who's Interesting Enough To Be Killed For Effect... then again, that's exactly what Buffy tells her, so maybe she'll be OK. Until we start thinking that maybe she'll be OK.
There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
So Buffy doesn't know that Spike is/was alive. (Which, again, begs the question of what the hell Andrew is up to.) We still don't know what she knows about LA - which is interesting, given Scott Allie's admission that this IS pretty much 12 months after "Chosen" - why she's in Scotland, how she decided to become a bankrobber, or indeed a lot of things, but... again, character depth is about more than just character history; that Buffy is cold and distant because she's repressing grief and is afraid to let anyone get close feels right, and this issue goes some way towards actually making her... well, Buffy. That's not to say I'm completely happy with it, but it's a huge improvement. And also, the vampire fight was vintage Buffy; quipping, kicking ass, snarking off the vampires trying to butt in on the conversation... aaah, good times. That's my girl. Interesting "Restless" callback, too.
And speaking of huge
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
Then there's the villain. And Twilight here is both intriguing and ridiculous. His speech (since it seems safe to say now that he is indeed male) is mostly one of the worst examples of Evil Overlord Speech 1A ever in the Buffyverse - I was reminded of The Master in s1 at times - but at least we got a few scraps of info about him.
1) He all but admits that he's an old villain who's returned to fight Buffy again. Which, yawn-ish, but it might still be interesting depending on who he is.
2) While we don't actually get to see his face, at least we get to see part of it (in one of the funniest visual gags of the entire comic so far) and we can rule out some of the contenders. It's probably not Adam, The Master, Mr Trick, The Mayor, The "Lineage" cyborgs, Warren, or... well, anyone who's not an athletic white non-disfigured male. He's also not a vampire since the sun doesn't seem to hurt him. Which I suppose leaves Caleb as the one with the best odds right now... especially as he's both in this issue in a flashback, and Twilight's speech sounds a bit like him. But then again, for all I know it could be Ben. Or Lindsey. Or Ford. (Yes, all of these served out their arcs and died, obviously; but we already know that matters not one jot.)
3) The fight is actually pretty good, Twilight's dialogue aside (Buffy's "church me", though - hee.)
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
Which brings us to an interesting point: what the hell is the Big Bad doing turning up in the middle of what's supposed to be a fairly routine vampire slaying - especially since it's Buffy's first in "ages"? Isn't that very convenient? Let's see... Who sent them to that particular spot, hmmm? Also, notice how the only thing we see of Twilight is his chin - and the following panels of Xander all conveniently hide his chin. Which, again, might simply be Jeanty being a less-than-great artist, but... so far, Xander remains a mystery; what little we see of him seems carefree and Xander-ish enough, but what's going on underneath is anybody's guess.
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
So a lot of interesting stuff. On the other hand, and possibly the thing I liked least about the issue, is that after the moral grey zone Buffy seemed to be heading into in 8.06-8.10 now seems to suddenly be very black and white again; Buffy, whose intentions are obviously the best (I never thought they weren't, but the road to hell yada yada) gets a very obvious pointer that Willow was right and she was wrong about the bankrobbing being "the first domino", and Twilight shows himself to be EV0L beyond a shadow of a doubt. Which is a bit of a shame as it would have been a lot more interesting to explore that line of questioning further, but I suppose it's better to have it this way with a Buffy that actually resembles her canonical self than to have an interesting story populated by characters I don't care about. So, well done Joss; there's still a lot to fix, but it's heading in the right direction.
Stop, hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's goin' down...
