Franny glassy miraculously …

Also: badass Willow is HOT.

As for Season 8, I’m not to impressed with the setting, but I enjoy the fan service. I’m just happy for more stories to be told in the Buffyverse and for more Whedon and Whedonesque dialogue. To be honest, though, I’d rather he turned Sugarshock into a full series. That comic rocked.

Season six is the Empire Strikes Back of the show, the nadir for all our characters, where their values are tested and really awful things happen to them, and I love it for the same reason I love Empire, it’s a lot more emotionally engaging when you feel your characters are threatened, not only their lives, but their values. Buffy may have died in season five, but her relationship with Spike took her further into the darkness than any foe before. I loved seeing the layers the season added to the characters.

And, I just don’t get this notion that because people didn’t like what season six did with the story the creators automatically didn’t know what to do, or had stopped caring about the show. Look at the whole seven years, there’s a very clear arc, and the darkness of year six is integral to it.

First of all, let´s keep in mind that the first four issues together really make up only the first episode of the new ´season´. Let´s be honest: the first episodes of the tv seasons were never amongst the strongest. Buffy vs Dracula felt like the show had nothing new to offer and was a dash too schmaltzy. The season 6 double episode opener was stretched out far too long for the amount of plot it had. Anne from season 3 was half awesome (the bits at school) and half dull (the bits with Buffy). So I think coming down on Season 8 based on the first ´episode´ is harsh if understandable (because it has taken 4 months to come out rather than seeing it in one sitting)

You criticise the comics for reliving their past … and I think to an extent you have a fair point. I don´t think it was a great writing move reintroducing both Amy and Warren in the first ´episode´. That said, it doesn´t kill it for me. It seems designed to reassure old fans that this is still the show. But now that it´s done we can move on – there have been no more surprise reintroductions since then. And it´s also worth noting that there´s a whole lot that´s new to Buffy in The Long Way Home. An army of slayers. A potential battle with humans. Giant Dawn.

For me, The Long Way Home had strengths and weaknesses but the latest issue (Anywhere But Here) was not only the best issue so far but the one where it really seemed like this season is beginning to fall into place. A lot of interesting plotting seeds were planted in that issue that makes me truly excited to see what happens. And the issue felt like something genuinely new in Buffy. That dialogue was brilliant and reminded me of the absurd nonsense of Alice in Wonderland.

A few other points:
- Season 2 is often massively overrated based on its truly brilliant second half. Episodes like Passion and Becoming Part 2 are extraordinary … but think back to some of those earlier episodes like Reptile Boy. The Long Way Home is a thing of genius in comparison. Again, give season 8 some time
- Season 6 is my favourite season. I fully understand people not liking it; it was very dark. But, like it or not, it´s not something to be dismissed out of hand. At very least, it achieved what it set out to do. There was never lazy writing; if you didn´t like it you didn´t like – unlike MANY others – what the writers wanted to do. And to the poster above who says that Buffy should have stayed in school – that´s curious because one of my absolute favourite things about the shows was its refusal to just stick to its formula. The changes from season to season taking these characters through school, college, crappy jobs, leadership roles, teh death of parents make it a truly extraordinary achievement

The comic book opens up with 50 slayers repelling down from a helicopter! This would have looked terrible if done with special effects on a budget, but as it is it works perfectly.

Giant Dawn! Also would have looked bad on a TV. Although, I’m not quite sure where they’re going with this one.

Faith with an accent! I don’t think that any tv audience would have bought whatever British accent Eliza Dushku could present, but in a comic book form, it’s easy to accept that she’s somehow trained herself to fool British nobility.

Basically I feel like they’re having a lot of fun exploring the comic book format, and using the freedom of the medium to take on all the storylines they might have passed up during the show’s run because of budget or other constraints.

That said, while I have no appetite for an eighth season at all, I…kinda like the comic? I do think it’s the best work Whedon has done in the medium, though that (sadly) could be saying more. And I was stunned by how good the one-off mentioned above was. But overall…man, it’s seriously time to let this thing go already.

Particularly in year six, there are no bad guys, there’s ‘the trio,’ but they’re treated as comedy most of the time. It’s more a general feeling of malaise and sadness at realizing life isn’t turning out quite like you want it to, and I think that’s a lot more relatable and emotionally powerful than the swim team is a bunch of fish creatures

Yeah. I don’t think that worked.

I generally liked season six, but I thought it was overreaching. The characters that were created in the first few seasons were quirky charicatures, or even platforms for metaphors. I didn’t see them as having the depth or breadth to carry out the new status quo.

So give me fish people any day. It was a story that knew EXACTLY what it was trying to say, and maintained a consistent tone that both didn’t take itself TOO seriously but hinted at real under-the-surface tragedy.

What makes the fifth and sixth season so effective is the increased moral ambiguity. Particularly in year six, there are no bad guys, there’s ‘the trio,’ but they’re treated as comedy most of the time. It’s more a general feeling of malaise and sadness at realizing life isn’t turning out quite like you want it to, and I think that’s a lot more relatable and emotionally powerful than the swim team is a bunch of fish creatures. The high school metaphors worked in their time, but even for a high school audience, I think the whole world is hell is a powerful, relatable idea. And, it nicely confonts that old cliche that everything will be okay once you graduate high school, then you’ll be the boss of the guys making fun of you! It’s not quite true, as the sad tale of Warren, Jonathan and Andrew shows.

And, it really bothers me to see season six and seven grouped together because they’re as radically different as any two seasons of the show are. Six is intensely character focused, dark and confined while seven basically abandons our core characters for a huge action story. Seven’s got its moments, but after the season six finale, we only really needed seven episodes or so to wrap everything up. The potentials didn’t work on the show and they don’t work in the comic.

Ultimately, all I really want from Buffy is just an hour of the characters catching up, I don’t want the new status quo stories of the comic, I’d like something where they just talk, or maybe a dream sequence ‘Restless’ kind of thing. But, the story itself has been told, and I don’t think we really need more.

There’s a pretty decent shop in Marion called Alter Ego. You may want to try there, they have a nice trade selection.

M Bloom
Buffy is running an international vampire-killing army from her secret fortress headquarters? No. No, thank you. This isn’t what Buffy the Vampire Slayer is to me.

I don’t think in terms of “to me” so much, but it does seem like a strange choice. Horror is generally more intimate, and this feels like a deliberate shift in genre. I would’ve at least used one of the new slayers as a Point Of View cog-in-the-machine.

John Seavey
I’m getting very tempted to do a “Storytelling Engines” entry on ‘Buffy’, focusing on the way that telling the story in real time forced them to abandon a very good engine (”high school is hell”) and continually reinvent the series every year (”college is…um…less like hell?”

That kind of thing seems to happen to TV shows a LOT, huh. “Oh Crap! Our kid isn’t cute anymore! We need another kid!”

Tom Russell
Matthew’s right– that structure dates back at least to the Victorian Era. Dickens used it, to some extent, but it was closer to the format we know and love today in Trollope’s work, particularly the Palliser novels.

Huh. Thanks, guys. I briefly wondered about radio drama but I never thought of serial prose as the…

Shoot! What’s the word! I keep wanting to see “Ancedent,” but that doesn’t sound right.

I’m still a little curious whether TV or Comics peached this structure from Victorian novels FIRST, though.

Erin
I’m wondering why Whedon’s best comic, as well as the best comic to spin off of the Buffyverse, Fray wasn’t mentioned.

It sort of was. I read it when the trade came out and don’t remember anything about it. (My memory: Not so good.) I couldn’t scrounge up a copy in the Iowa City area, so I left it out.