Review: Willow Wonderland TPB

After Buffy Season Eight took four years to end, Season Nine took a different approach, being made up of multiple miniseries running concurrently. In theory, this was a great idea, allowing them to cover more ground in a shorter amount of time, allowing each series to feel more focused than the sometimes schizophrenic Season Eight, and giving nostalgic fans a sense of similarity to Buffy and Angel airing concurrently on TV. Of course, this idea only works as well as the individual series themselves, so how exactly does Willow-Wonderland (written by Jeff Parker and Christos Gage, illustrated by Brian Ching) stand up on its own merits?

I previously mentioned my general dislike for this miniseries, though I didn’t go into much detail and was slightly off on how I remembered it (in my defense, it had been a little while since I’d read it). The biggest thing that I mentioned was the problem with the way that Willow talked; she’s not just an incredibly powerful, mystical witch, she’s also a woman in her mid-20s who grew up in California in the late 1990s. I’d said that second element was missing from her character, but it wasn’t entirely accurate to say that. Both of those elements are there – except that they’re separate. She seems to go back and forth between mystical goddess and Season One Willow (remember that, from all that time ago?) without any real in between. It seems to get better as the series progresses, coinciding with, no surprise, when Christos Gage joins in the third issue. It causes the story to get off on a bad foot and leaves a bad impression that lasts the rest of the series.

The next problem, however, cannot be fixed by better dialogue or characterization. The story, while not as bad as I remembered (and plugging a couple of plot holes in the last issues of Season Nine), is chaotic and has almost no attention span. Willow goes from being focused on bringing magic back to Earth to joining some magical lesbian orgy coven, to trying to deal with her dark side (which I thought she dealt with between Seasons Six and Seven, when she was reunited with everyone early in Season Seven, again at the end of Season Seven, and probably even more times), and it just keeps on going in what feels more like a series of events than a really cohesive story. Willow on a quest to bring back magic could’ve easily been the only story going on here with everything serving that purpose, but it seems to get lost in the chaotic events surrounding her and the supporting characters.

Let’s talk about those supporting characters, starting with Aluwyn, Willow’s love interest. Willow’s love interests have had a track record of not being liked when they’re introduced, mostly because they weren’t the character people wanted to Willow to be with, but Aluwyn really takes the cake with this. She’s a trickster demon witch who pretended to be Willow’s spiritual guide during astral projection, then later sent Buffy to the far future where she was forced to kill future Dark Willow, and told Willow that she could bring her back but couldn’t look at what was going on in the future, probably making sure that Willow wouldn’t realize how badly she could go dark and ensuring that she would, causing the bad future. While Willow doesn’t realize all of this, she knows most of it and should know that Aluwyn shouldn’t be trusted, yet we’re supposed to believe that the two of them are deeply in love and that we should want them to be together. Aluwyn continues to deceive Willow openly in this series, and yet that never really changes. We’re supposed to be supportive of a relationship that is absolutely terrible for Willow, yet she never realizes it? It’s like the writers never learned anything from Kennedy in Season Seven, since they keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

The other supporting character to focus on is Marrak. I’m going to overlook the fact that he is rather single-minded in his search for power, since while it takes away some of the possible layers to his character, he’s supposed to serve as a foil to Willow. Having a simpler character serve as a foil is actually a help over the short term, so I don’t mind that he’s like that. The problem is that he’s a character that we already know (spoiler warning): Rack, Willow’s magic drug dealer. It’s not just the fact that this is reminding me of one of the more clumsily handled storylines from the show, but it’s a continuing trend that points towards a much larger problem. By bringing this character back, we’re washing away the tangible consequences of Willow’s rampage at the end of Season Six. It almost feels like they’re trying to protect Willow from herself, which brings up the ultimate problem with this series.

Willow Wonderland #1 Variant Cover

This story is absolutely in love with Willow. It’s not that I don’t like Willow or think that she’s a good character. I like Willow, but they’re presenting her as some sort of perfect human being. The best part of Willow’s character is that she’s extremely flawed — her girlfriend’s death caused her to go on a rampage where she killed two people rather gruesomely and attempted to destroy the entire world before she was stopped by a yellow crayon, all of this coming from the rather naive wallflower we were introduced to in Season One. She’s so interesting because of that, not because she’s some sort of really powerful, perfect witch. It’s like the worst kind of fanfiction white-washing of a character, taking an interesting, complex, and flawed character and reducing her to a caricature of the “cool” part of her character (incredibly powerful witch, sexy lesbian). Even in its attempt to try and point out that her dark side is just a part of her and not a separate persona, they end up making her seem a little too perfect and like that’s a phase that’s behind her now.

For a complete sense of whiplash, I absolutely love the art, both interior and cover. There are a lot of new characters with interesting designs, all of which were designed to be as strange and different from each other as possible. Plus, almost the entire series is set in alternate dimensions meaning that there are many interesting looking locations. Then there’s the cover art. Megan Lara drew the variant covers, which tended to be less stylized and closer to reality (her issue #1 cover looks almost like a photograph of Alyson Hannigan), but everyone pays attention to David Mack‘s covers. Honestly, they’re the best thing about this series. They’re highly stylized but focus on Willow’s mystical side, and there’s nothing more I can say about them, you just need to see them to get what’s so special about them. Unfortunately, outside of his cover for issue #5, they’re all buried in the book, so if you want to see and display the covers, you’ll want to find the single issues more than the trade paperback.

I also need to mention the “special features”, one of the main things that draws me into trade paperbacks. There are a ton of sketches and concept art, showing the evolution of the new designs and the thinking that went into them. There was obviously a lot of work that went into developing the design of everything from Willow’s clothing (which I wasn’t a huge fan of, but that’s a small thing) to the witches in the supercoven. I honestly feel a little bad for Brian Ching having put all this work into the design of characters that weren’t served well by the story and characterization.

Ultimately, I don’t think that this is worth paying $17.99 for. If you really like the art, then buy the single issues so the cover art can actually be displayed. The story does plug some of the plot holes in the end of the Buffy series, but unfortunately the rest of the plot doesn’t really hold itself together as a standalone series.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) is demoralized by this and the imminent end of Angel & Faith with no news about Season Ten in sight. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.