Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 #21

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 #21 (written by Andrew Chambliss, illustrated by Georges Jeanty) is the first issue in the final arc of Season Nine, “The Core”. If you’ve read my review of Buffy Season Nine Volume 3, you’ll know that I don’t have the same unbridled enthusiasm for the main series that I do for the Angel & Faith series. While I still have my reservations, this issue is a step forward and gives me hope that the end of the season might be able to redeem this otherwise lackluster season.

The art in this issue is good, for the same reasons I mentioned in my review of Angel & Faith #21. Like I said there, the characters are just slightly abstracted from the actors who played them. This can be slightly confusing, but only to people who haven’t already been following the comics, and if you haven’t, don’t try to jump in at issue #21. The specific thing that jumps out to me in this issue is Dawn. As the storyline of her fading from existence continues, she’s drawn in grayscale instead of full color, reminding the reader what is happening and reiterating how high the stakes are. For this, I have to credit Michelle Madsen, who did colors in this issue and whose work probably does unnoticed most of the time.

As of this issue, the main three characters are finally reunited, explaining the name of this arc, “The Core”. This is important, as these characters were the main reason that people were so invested in the TV show during its run. While the comics aren’t the show, that dynamic was very important for seven seasons of TV. Obviously, something about it worked, and seeing that restored in the comics gives me some hope.

More importantly from a story standpoint, this issue has finally brought together each of the different storylines in the season. The Big Bads have now been firmly established and are moving forward with their plan from the previous issue. We know what the stakes are, and for the first time this season, we know exactly where the story is going without all of the confusing diversions and side plots that felt like pointless wandering to kill time until the end of the season.

Georges Jeanty Variant Cover

Something else of note is the continuing trend established earlier in the season of finally implementing parts of the Angel series into the main Buffy series. Though I can’t say what, something very important to the Angel series appears is this issue and becomes a major plot point. This helps make the world feel more cohesive, something which was often lacking both in the TV series and the Season Eight comics.

Speaking of crossovers and cohesion, this episode has a mild crossover with Angel & Faith #21. It’s not something you need to have read that book to understand (but you should because it’s awesome), but it’s there if you need everything to be explained.

On the execution side, I need to bring up Willow. In her miniseries, she struck me as boring and badly written. In this issue, she’s starting to sound like Willow again. While the miniseries focused a bit too much on her otherworldly side, she still grew up in California in the ’90s, and she has the speech patterns to match. This issue restores that second bit to her character, which was sorely missing in that series.

I’ll give this a tentative recommendation and say that this issue is worth the $2.99 cover price. They’re moving in the right direction again, which is nice to see. This is a good issue and a good start to the last arc of the season, but I can’t make any guarantees that the rest of the arc will live up to the promise with which it starts, hence the tentative recommendation.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) really wants this to get better, but knows much better than to get his hopes up. Follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings to read his other thoughts in bite-sized pieces when he actually has any worth sharing.