Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Nine Vol. 3 Guarded

Guarded, the third volume of Season Nine of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, collects two separate story arcs: Guarded (written by Andrew Chambliss, illustrated by Georges Jeanty) and Billy the Vampire Slayer (written by Jane Espenson and Drew Z. Greenberg, illustrated by Karl Moline and Ben Dewey). These are two very different storylines, only included in the same book because they add up to five issues. They even have different writers and artists, so there’s even less cohesion between the two stories. Sadly, this is only really an issue because one story is so much better than the other.

Guarded (the story arc) follows Buffy working with Kennedy’s bodyguard service, trying to protect a social networking mogul who’s being threatened by Wolfram and Hart. He’s managed to keep a link to their dimension alive through technology, which is my only major issue with the story. Since the loss of magic, the writers have gone to great lengths to write magic-based stories without using magic instead of embracing such a fundamental change to the universe and using it to tell some really different stories. The constant handwaving and general confusion over what the loss of magic really means is a particular pet peeve of mine, so it might not bother others as much as it bothers me. It’s also not unique to this arc, so I try not to hold it against this arc compared to the good that it does.

What really sticks out here is Kennedy. It’s not at all a stretch to say that Kennedy is the most hated character from the TV series. She’s so reviled by the fans that general fan opinion on episode quality is inversely related to how many lines she has (no, really — people have done the math). The main complaint is that Kennedy is very one-dimensional, something this arc fixes by giving her actual character traits. On the show, she was just Willow’s girlfriend, but since they broke up near the end of Season Eight, she has to define herself in some other way. She’s still a lesbian, but that’s no longer her only defining trait — she’s now trying to help other Slayers who feel lost in a world without magic, including Buffy. And even though her relationship with Willow is over, she shows an actual attachment to her and still cares for her, even though she knows the relationship is done for good. This character development is far and away the most noteworthy part of this arc, since it made me actually like a character I used to hate — and even if you still don’t like her, she does get punched in the face at one point, so there is that.

Billy the Vampire Slayer follows Billy, a boy from a small, unnamed California town, who wants to do something about the zompire problem despite having no supernatural powers or abilities. His friend, Devon, serves as his watcher in an attempt to emulate being a Slayer as they actively try to fight zompires the town.

Taken from http://www.darkhorse.com

I really want to like this storyline, but there are multiple reasons why this just doesn’t work. The first and simplest reason is, in the middle of the main Buffy series, we’re suddenly taken away and thrown into another story. If that was the only problem, I’d suggest just expanding the story and making it a mini-series, similar to the Willow and Spike miniseries. This type of plotline even has some precedent — Robin Wood was a demon hunter with no supernatural powers, so it can work.

The real problem comes from something that I haven’t yet mentioned: Billy is gay. That’s not the problem. The problem is that it’s his only defining characteristic. In case you were hoping for subtlety, he’s wearing a “No H8” shirt in the first panel, and that’s just the beginning. Every interaction he has with anyone is either him being bullied for being gay or trying to hide his obvious crush on Devon, who (spoilers) becomes his boyfriend by the end of the story. It feels like the writers are trying harder to make a statement than to tell a good story, and it doesn’t even do a good job at that. I don’t even know how to appraise the story since it’s barely anything more than a few events in the background of a public service announcement.

This confuses me to no end. The writers seemed to figure out that was the problem with Kennedy, and fixed that in the previous story arc. Having Billy’s storyline fall into the same trap right afterwards makes it seem like no one was paying attention. Given that it had different writers, they might not have been paying attention, or just missed the point completely. It’s a really jarring shift in tone that happens when so many different writers tackle a comic series, which doesn’t work in that way like a TV series does.

Related to the shift in tone is a shift in the art. There are different artists for each arc in this book, which isn’t that noticeable right away, due to the shift in characters and location. In a way, the change is fitting, since it’s obvious that they wanted a different feel for that storyline. It’s a little disconcerting at the end, however, when they tie Billy’s story back into the main story and Buffy suddenly looks different than she did earlier in the book. This may be making a big deal about nothing, but it’s really jarring when the main character suddenly looks different. This isn’t a reason not to buy given how insignificant it is (and how big the other problems are), but this is just a warning for when you get to that point yourself.

The extras in the back of the book are fairly standard: all of the variant covers (interestingly, all drawn by Georges Jeanty, even though he wasn’t the artist on #14 and #15), along with some rough sketches to show how they evolved. The most interesting cover to me is #11, which is designed like the old Star Wars posters, and is given a prominent position at the front of the book instead of the back, with all the pencils and rough sketches in the back. My favorite, though, is a script page from issue #12, along with rough sketches of the layout and the final version, showing the process of going from script to finished page — I’m a sucker for features about the processes of making things. Noticeably absent is a small extra story like was included in both volumes 1 and 2.

Overall, unless you’re a completionist, I’m really not going to recommend this book, especially since it’s releasing for $18. I might be able to recommend it for around $10, but it’s just cheaper to buy the individual issues for Guarded ($3 each for issues 11, 12, and 13 physical, $2 each digital) and skip the Billy story — you won’t miss much, as it’s barely relevant to the rest of the season, and also isn’t good.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) is amazed that he suddenly likes Kennedy now, and also hates that this story forced him into an awkward, almost political situation. Follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings to read his thoughts in bite-sized pieces when he actually has any worth sharing.