Review: Angel & Faith Volume 4: Death and Consequences

Just a note upfront – shortly after issue #18 was published, Robin Sachs, the actor who played Ethan Rayne, died of a heart attack. That made this story arc slightly awkward to read, especially since it involved his dead body being reanimated by a demon.

Postmortem awkwardness aside, this story arc returns to the resurrection storyline after the minor distraction that was Angel visiting his son’s wonderful childhood home. In Death and Consequences (written by Christos Gage, illustrated by Rebekah Isaacs), Angel sets out to finish collecting Giles’s soul in his enchanted nipple ring after discovering where the rest of his soul would be located.

Something that strikes me is that a lot of this arc is a retcon of things that happened as far back as Season Two of the series. In some places, it does slow the story down a bit in order to explain away how things happened before, but it does that for the sake of actually improving that old story and opening up possibilities. I was always bothered by the way that the show handled Eyghon all the way back in Season Two – for a demon that was supposedly so powerful and spent twenty years tracking down Giles and his cohorts, he sure went down easily. No, there wasn’t really a flaw in the logic that the demon in Angel managed to kick Eyghon out, but the idea that he was so much more powerful as to kill him felt wrong, so I was glad to see this retcon, especially with the story possibilities that it opened up.

Nadira is also a major character in this arc, and she’s one of the few good characters created specifically for the comics (interestingly, they’re almost all in this series), showing that they can actually make characters for the comics that people will like (unlike, say, Billy). When I first read this, I had almost forgotten that she learned about Angel working with Faith before the previous arc, and I didn’t really know how she was going to handle it. From the beginning, they made it obvious that she wasn’t exactly going to be forgiving towards Angel for what he’d done as Twilight (if it was him, or not, or whoever he was – it’s really confusing, and they lampshade that here), but I expected the conflict to bubble over at a later point inthe series, not this early. Even though it’s obvious given the context (especially the name of the series) that he wasn’t going to die this early, it still felt like she was actually going to kill him if he didn’t cooperate.

There’s also Spike, who comes into the series here for a short time. Throughout the entire run of Buffy and Angel, Spike’s banter and general disdain for Angel was great to watch, and it continues here. Until now, there’d never been any on-screen interaction between Spike, Angel, and Faith at the same time (this is technically on a page, not a screen, but my point is the same), and they all have a wonderful chemistry together. As I’ve said before for Christos Gage, I can hear the actors saying his dialogue for the characters, and Spike is no different. His introductory line to Angel is, well, perfect for Spike, and if you don’t read it in James Marsters’s voice, then something is wrong with you.

For the first time in this series, Rebekah Isaacs illustrated one of the issues that’s a multiple of five, and I’m glad she did. Even though they tend to be one-shot issues (#25 wasn’t, but the others were), the change in art was jarring and distracting more than anything else. For this one, we finally have continuity and the characters look like I’m used to them looking by now, which make a contribution to that issue, Spike and Faith. Now, a lot of people have big problems with this issue, and while I agree that it’s not one of the stronger ones in the series, I don’t think it really deserves that hatred. The story was a little thin for an issue and it’s obvious that they were waiting for the beginning of the next arc, but the characters sound like themselves and it has some really fun banter between them so, even though I’m not going to say it’s one of the better issues, I don’t think it’s the character derailment a lot of fans treat it as. Taking it apart and going into why would take a whole other article that I’m not going to write, so don’t bother holding your breath.

Best cover in the series.

On the subject of extra features, I think I want to see all of Rebekah Isaacs’s sketchbooks. This isn’t as robust as some extra features I’ve seen in other trades, but the thing I love is that it allows you to really get inside her head. She explains a lot about what she draws and why she made the decisions that she did, including showing older design sketches and telling us exactly why they didn’t work (for example, her first sketch of Eyghon looked too much like “guy in a suit”, so she made it more grotesque and demonic), which manages to take what would otherwise be just a series of pictures and manage to tell a story out of the making of the story. I love these extra features, but best of all, it ends on the variant cover for issue #20, which is easily my favorite cover in the series.

Overall, another good story that I recommend, even if the last part is a little bit shaky. It’s worth the $17.99 cover price, though if you don’t care about the special features or don’t need the nice looking trade paperback, you can always buy the individual issues in physical or digital form, but I really think it’s worth it to get the trade.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) wishes this arc was called “Angel extracts a man’s soul from his enchanted nipple ring”. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

Review: Dream Thief #5

I always have trouble assessing endings, which is probably related to the difficulty of writing endings. Trying to take something that otherwise had momentum from one installment to another and ending it in a satisfying way is really difficult, and I don’t begrudge anyone the difficulty in doing so. Unfortunately, for something that I’ve been so enthusiastic about so far, Dream Thief #5 (written by Jai Nitz, illustrated by Greg Smallwood) leaves me a little mixed with how it wraps the series up.

Like I said with the end of the last issue, they changed the way that the issues had typically ended up to that point. We’d always seen John right after he wakes up from a murderous rampage, but in that issue, it ended right before he was knocked unconscious and went on one of said rampages. I really liked the change of pace, and this picks up logically from that point. The problem is, it gets confusing rather quickly, and I had some difficulty with following exactly what was going on and why. Part of this is directly caused by that change of pace – while it was a welcome change, it also completely threw me off and I spent a lot of the issue trying to catch up with what was happening.

You’re definitely going to want to reread the previous issues before picking this up. So much from the early issues is referenced, so once I went back and read those, everything came together and clicked in such a way that wrapping up the story actually became pretty satisfying, if still somewhat disjointed. My one problem, and maybe it’s just me, comes from one element of the story that wasn’t set up well and always feels like a cheap way to tell a story. It doesn’t ruin it and I don’t want to spoil it, but it has nagged at me consistently since I read it.

Greg Smallwood continues to be really good, but I don’t want to talk about his art here. Instead, I’m going to talk about the last few pages of the issue, after the editorial page. For each issue (and these better be compiled for the trade), they include other artists’ interpretations of the characters and various scenes at the very end. I’ve quite enjoyed seeing those, especially since you often get locked into a specific look and feel for a character during a specific artist’s run on a comic, and seeing all of these reminds me of how much of an impact the artist and their style has on a character – it isn’t quite the John Lincoln I’m familiar with, and getting that reminder when I’m such a writing-oriented reader is something I need, along with a really interesting extra feature that most comics would never really feature.

Overall, my recommendation is simple. If you liked the previous issues, you’ll want to see the end and it’ll be worth your $3.99 to get there, even though it doesn’t quite feel like the rest. If you haven’t been interested, there’s nothing groundbreaking here that’ll bring you in. If you’re on the fence, you might want to wait for the trade to come out (they announce on the editorial page that it’s coming out March 12, 2014, though I’ve seen no official confirmation from Dark Horse). Regardless of that, I’m a little mixed, but I think I need to give it some time to sink in before I really pass judgment on how it ends (maybe I’ll revisit it when the trade comes out).

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) wants to like endings, but finds that he oddly likes the perpetual middle. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Nine #25

It shouldn’t be a secret that I’ve not been a fan of this series. Quite recently, I said that I just wanted it to end so I could see if Season Ten would be an improvement. Having just finished Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Nine #25 (written by Andrew Chambliss, illustrated by Georges Jeanty) I don’t even have that optimism anymore. No, it’s not completely dead in the water and it would be possible for them to right the ship again, as shown by the awesome series that was Angel & Faith, but they don’t leave me with much confidence.

The problem is, I can’t tell you why I’m so frustrated with this issue. It’s the polar opposite of Angel & Faith #22 in that, while everything that affected me is a spoiler, they’re all in a bad way. Like that issue, I’m going to have to be very oblique here – I may do something like I did there and spoil the hell out of it in a later article because, well, this kind of needs it. It makes almost all the mistakes that Angel & Faith avoided, and I know I’m spending a lot of time comparing the two, but they set themselves up for it by publishing the two concurrently and putting out the finale of one before the other.

When I got to the end of this issue, I felt like the majority of the season was wasting time, which I already suspected but hoped they’d be better than. With one huge exception, which has a laundry list of its own problems, things haven’t really changed from the status quo at the beginning of the season. I can’t even say that it’s needed for the sake of continuity, so there’s not even that going for it.

That big exception? Can’t talk about it here, and all I do is shake my head at how dumb it is. More on that some other time.

One of the reasons that I hate how badly this book affects me is the art. I quite enjoy Georges Jeanty’s art, and it’s not at fault for what’s wrong with the series. He’s been drawing this series and these characters since 2007 now, and it shows. There’s really nothing new here anymore, so if you liked his art earlier in this series or even in Season Eight (he didn’t draw all of it, but a lot of it), you’ve already seen just about everything and it’s only improved since.

I wish I liked this more. I wish I could recommend this issue at all, but unless you’re a completionist who was already going to buy this anyway, don’t. I love Buffy, kind of obsessed really, and even I’m going to wait until I can get the trade for $10 instead of paying $2.99 for an issue. It’s just not even worth it. I can hope that Season Ten is better and I’m not giving up on that, but I’m glad this is done and afraid of what the future might hold.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) will admit that Christos Gage taking over the main Buffy series in Season Ten would change his mind in a second, but knows better than to hope too much. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts. Occasionally.

Review: The Star Wars #1

Yes, The Star Wars #1 (written by J. W. Rinzler, illustrated by Mike Mayhew) is a Star Wars book. I’m not sure how to fit it into the Expanded Universe canon, if that’s even possible or necessary to. None of that matters, however, and I recommend that anyone who has even a passing interest in the concept pick it up: this is based on the original screenplay that George Lucas wrote in 1974, before many of the changes that made Star Wars what it eventually became.

This is why I say it’s not important to try and figure out how it fits into the canon – call it an alternate universe or something else, just take the concept and run with it. While I’d prefer the franchise in general to completely leave behind the Skywalker family, this is a good way to approach it. A lot of the things that you’re familiar with are gone (and I tried looking for them – they’re either gone or we’re just not there yet), so just take the basic ideas of how the Star Wars Universe works and run with it. It’s difficult to say what’s different because of spoiler limitations, but even knowing that this was based on a completely different version of the movie, I was surprised by how different it was.

A big difference that caught me off-guard was the different entry point into the universe. I expected an opening on Tattooine with Luke, or maybe even the actual opening to the movie with R2-D2 and C-3PO on the Tantive IV. Instead, it starts by going more behind the scenes of the rebellion going on when the original movie started. It serves the purpose of showing the actual events in the opening crawl that Star Wars made famous instead of just using said opening crawl, which may be a rather controversial decision depending on the fans you ask. Don’t worry about its complete absence, though – there is a half-page text crawl setting up the universe at the beginning as if you were completely unfamiliar with it, which applies to very few people but still is a nice touch.

I’m not entirely decided on the art style in this book. As I lack a good art background, I’m not entirely sure how to describe it, but there’s something about the way that faces are drawn that bugs me somewhat. They just look slightly off, but it could just be that it’s a stylistic choice that I won’t even notice after a couple issues have passed, it’s just something worth notice.

Overall, I recommend picking up this book. I know that I haven’t gone into too many specifics, but I don’t think you really need it at this point. It’s a really interesting idea to use the old draft of the script, especially when so many things from that script have been the “what might have been” about the series for decades, that I think just starting to see what it’s becoming is worth the $3.99 cover price. So long as you know that you probably won’t get exactly what you’re expecting, you’ll probably enjoy it.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) now has something else to add to his pull list. Somehow, getting free comics is really expensive. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

Review: Catalyst Comix #3

With Amala’s Blade and Angel & Faith having recently ended, Catalyst Comix is now the Dark Horse comic that I look most forward to each month (well, maybe on par with Dream Thief, which also will end soon), which I consider high praise since about one quarter of it has gone right over my head the entire time. While I have my issues with it, let’s see what Catalyst Comix #3 (written by Joe Casey, illustrated by Dan McDaid, Ulises Farinas, and Paul Maybury) has in store.

When the last issue ended, I had no idea where they were going to take Frank Wells and his story. Things went in a really different direction than I had expected given the rather explosive beginning in the first issue, but now I’m seeing where that actually goes, and I really like it. I’m not going to tell you what it is because it’s something you need to discover as you read. It’s not something new at all to comics, so don’t expect the reinvention of comics as an art form, but it’s a change in direction to almost the polar opposite of how it started that they somehow manage to pull off. They’re not too heavy handed or awkwardly trying to shove a character where they don’t fit – they spent almost two issues making sure this transition happened smoothly. It doesn’t all work perfectly, as there’s a subplot that feels like it should mean something to me but I don’t understand, but it’s only a couple pages in an otherwise really good story.

The Grace storyline is finally starting to click. I’m still not entirely sure I follow all of it, but a new character was introduced that made it feel like things were finally starting to move forward. This character, Seaver, seems like someone of significance to the universe before the recent reboot, but regardless of that, he serves as some form of opposition to Grace. With his presence, there’s finally some sort of conflict which was missing before, and the story feels like it’s finally going somewhere.

Then, on to the section with my favorite name, Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker, more correctly known as Agents of Change (and no, I don’t think I will ever get tired of this gag). For all the improvement to Grace’s storyline, this one is starting to lose me, so apparently there has to be at least one storyline in each issue that I don’t quite get. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting from the end of the previous issue, but they don’t go there and it throws me off badly. It doesn’t ignore the reveal, but it’s much less important than the end of the last issue would make you believe. For that reason, the story ends up being more confusing and disorienting than anything else, which is a disappointment for a segment I’ve loved so much so far.

I continue to really enjoy the art. Frank Wells’s story has a lot of different locations and styles blended together flawlessly, helping greatly to keep the tone from feeling jarring throughout. Grace continues to have really interestingly designed locations, and her adversary Seaver has, while a little cliche, a well-done design that is just mildly off-putting. Nothing jumped out at me in the other series this time, but I still love the design of the characters – while it’s not new, that doesn’t mean it’s not good.

All things said, I still definitely recommend this book. I’ve absolutely loved the Frank Wells story from the beginning and I think that alone is worth $2.99, which I still can’t believe is the price for issues in this series. Grace’s story is starting to pick up, and I haven’t given up on Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker (not after one bad issue, since Grace’s story went through two), so there’s plenty of interesting stuff going on in this series still.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) is mildly disappointed in his buddies with the amazing names. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

Review: Captain Midnight #2

I find it quite difficult to keep reviewing this series. I was hopeful at first that there would be something to make this not feel like Captain America (take a shot), but the more that it goes on, the less hope I have for that. Captain Midnight #2 (written by Joshua Williamson, illustrated by Fernando Dagnino) is making me regret the initial enthusiasm I had for the series, which I want to be good but just isn’t.

This issue starts off with Captain Midnight getting the back story to Fury Shark that we already knew. It’s not the greatest start to an issue – even his reaction to it adds nothing new to anything (pseudo-Captain America (take a shot) thinks that having a Nazi be a prominent figure in the United States is scandalous? You don’t say!), so we start off on a redundant foot already. I almost feel like it’s there to try and introduce the character to people who are just picking up the series in this issue, but that’s not a good enough excuse for it to be so clumsy. It’s a great idea if they pull it off without the clumsiness, since most comics don’t do enough to try and get new readers in without backtracking, but it’s still not well done.

The worst part is that they just end up seeming to copy Captain America (take a shot) in far too many ways. I understood it early on, when it worked as a way to get me into what the character is basically all about, but it’s starting to get ridiculous at this point. Displaced in time from World War II? Okay, sure, you can tell a different enough story from the same premise. He’s not just a soldier, but also somewhat of a technology expert? Interesting and different – they stretch it with him being able to work modern technology in minutes and being able to improve on it, but I can take that. His love interest from the war being an old woman now who still misses him? I’ll take that – unless you want her to have died and cut off story possibilities, you’ll have to do that. Have her remarkably similar looking granddaughter find and befriend him as some sort of government/military agent and hint towards starting some sort of relationship going that way? Take more than just a shot. They’ve gone past just trying to set up the premise – now is the time for you to show me what’s so different from him that I want to read this instead of Captain America, not continue to bring out all those similarities.

The art is, well, the art. I kind of had my expectations set high by the #0 issue, which while not having the most inventive art overall, had a visual gag that I absolutely loved. Somehow, the series has lost the sense of humor already (or it’s just the fact that neither of the artists for that issue continued on to the next issues), and I’m left to just look at the art itself. The thing that sticks out to me is Fury Shark, who is shown in a firefight wearing a leather bodysuit that, while obviously showing off her breasts, makes her stomach look like it was drawn by Rob Liefeld. Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration, but the costume looks like it was designed for a muscular man, then thinned down and had breasts added. Did I mention she had high heels as well? In the middle of a firefight? This is just confusing me at this point. It’s 20 years too late to try and bring back a character in the 1990s style, especially in a way this confusing. It’s not like bringing 1990s characters back in the current style — that’s working pretty well so far elsewhere.

I don’t recommend this issue, in case I left any doubt in your mind. I thought that there was potential back in the #0 issue, but it’s not lived up to it and doesn’t feel like it’s going to any time soon. There are better books out there to spend $2.99 on until and unless this one starts to live up to its potential. It’s not even a spectacular, interesting to tear apart failure – just a mediocre book that doesn’t do anything interesting. I might pick it up again in a while to see if it’s gotten better, but for now, I’m not even interested enough to keep reading for the time being.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) had fun tearing this issue apart, but unless it becomes a different kind of bad soon, there’s nothing left to say. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

Review: Angel & Faith #25

Oh wow, this is going to be difficult. I love this series, and it’s coming to an end. Angel & Faith #25 (written by Christos Gage, illustrated by Rebekah Isaacs), the final issue of the Angel & Faith miniseries and second last issue of Buffy Season Nine. I hate to see it happen because I love the series so much, but since it had to end, I’ll take the one they gave us over any other one I can think of.

There’s not much I can say about the plot, given that it’s the end of the series. There are events in this issue that are going to have a huge impact on Season Ten. There’s no restoring the previous status quo, which was never really a fear of mine but still a possibility. Many important things happened in this series, and they’ll all have an impact on the future. While I don’t want it to end, it is going to have an impact on the future, so while I believe that a good story should be able to stand on its own regardless of how it fits into any kind of continuity, the fact that everything will have a lasting impact can only be a positive for a series this good.

It also wraps up all the different character arcs running throughout the series. It manages to feel like a real ending and not just the point where they decided to stop before telling the next story. In the case of this miniseries, it really does work pretty well as a standalone – while the setup of the universe might require some prior knowledge, that manages to be filled in throughout, and the series as a whole stands up on its own well enough that I could tell anyone, even without knowing the Buffy universe, to read this series, and I trust that they’d be able to get it and get a good, satisfying story out of it.

The art continues to be great, but you knew that already. We’ve seen pretty much everything the book has to offer so far, but one thing that I want to bring up because I never did before was the effects that the magic leaking had on regular civilians. A decent part of this book is spent with people like that visible, and this is one of those areas where the shift to the comic medium has been a help to the series. While these kind of effects were pulled off in the show on a pretty regular basis (the vast majority of the demons were people in prosthetics and makeup), they tended to be either full transformation or just different enough to be unsettling. All of these designs look like just having fun with trying to make humans look fully human while still being quite different – I somehow doubt that the effects of a person having wings would’ve played out well on the show, for example.

At this point, I don’t know what else I’m able to say about this issue without just telling you I definitely recommend you buy it. Don’t expect a revisiting until the trades come out, though – need some real time to digest this series and everything that’s happened in it. Though I’m still getting over the fact that one of my favorite series is ending, it’s the right ending for this series. I’m unable to think of a better way for it to end, so even though I don’t want it to end, they pulled it off. Just go out there and pay $2.99 for it already. I’m already looking forward to when it comes out and I can read the entire series again beginning to end in one sitting. And if you’re obscenely late to the party, there are three trade paperbacks and all the other single issues that you should buy. You can read it even if you don’t know the Buffyverse, and if you like having the entire story all at once, now is the time.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) is now going to spend his time waiting to figure out what exactly Christos Gage is writing in Season Ten, hoping that announcements come soon. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

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.

Review: Dream Thief #4

I’ll start this off by saying that my review of the previous issue of this series was probably a little more enthusiastic than was necessary. I’d read the first three issues in one session and was taken on a bit of a whirlwind of a ride that I’m a little less enthusiastic about now than when I reviewed it earlier. I still really like the series and think it’s good (those two things don’t always go together), but I’m going to be a bit more subdued here when talking about Dream Thief #4 (written by Jai Nitz, illustrated by Greg Smallwood).

Like the previous issues, this one starts with John Lincoln finding himself next to the dead body that he ended the last issue waking up next to. Somehow, I haven’t been able to get over that, and still love how each issue opens up that way. I haven’t noticed until now how episodic that makes the story feel, which does make me wonder how everything is going to wrap up in the next issue.

This actual plot is all over the place with what they want you to expect to happen and what actually happens. There were so many little misdirections, lies, and people trying to play each other so that even though nothing that happened was overly surprising, there were so many directions it could go that I ended up not being able to predict what exactly was going to happen. They keep teasing big revelations and explanations, and whether or not they were genuine was constantly in doubt. Some might interpret it as manipulative, yet I loved it the entire way.

What caught me off-guard was how much more active John is forced to be in this issue. Trying not to spoil anything, he’s been mostly reactionary in the previous issues, trying to figure out what happened and why, occasionally trying to continue carrying out the vengeance that he was possessed for in the first place. In this, however, he’s actively doing something for himself while forcing the people who’ve possessed him to work for him instead of him working solely for them.

Despite all the twists and turns and weirdness, this is probably the most straightforward chain of events leading to the revenge killing. Some of the previous issues had some potentially bad implications (I don’t agree, but see where it’s coming from), so if that was something that put you off in previous issues, it’s not at all the case here.

And finally, the end makes a slight change to the pattern of this series so far. I’m not going to tell you what it is, as that would be spoilers, but they managed to change the format slightly without making it feel like changing it just for the sake of changing things. It’s a reminder that we’re right here at the end, and everything is finally coming full circle.

Again, this gets a definite recommendation if you have $3.99 you don’t desperately need for something else. The only issue is that it’s rather late in the series and you might want to wait for the trade paperback to come out (it technically hasn’t been announced yet, but I’m sure it’s on its way eventually), but whichever way you can get it, I’d definitely recommend that you do so.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) is really interested in being able to read this entire series all the way through once it’s finished. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Nine #24

As you might know from my previous review, I’m ready to write off Season Nine (the Buffy series specifically, Angel & Faith is still good) and see if Season Ten can fix things. It’s devolved into a bit of a mess, and I’m ready to see the future if only I could skip the present. Buffy the Vampire Slayer #24 (written by Andrew Chambliss, illustrated by Georges Jeanty) makes a few improvements, but is just too little too late.

The best thing about this issue is that they mostly avoid the completely broken dynamic between the members of the main trio. That problem came to a head in the previous issue, and while they couldn’t undo it here, going away from it helped quite a bit. It’s easier to ignore that the main trio don’t belong together anymore when they’re not interacting, and as I said before, they don’t have the time to do so with all of the plot going on here at the end.

I wish that the increased focus on the plot was a net positive. They’ve split the party and suddenly there are about four different storylines going on at once. None are given enough time to fully explain what is going on. Things are just happening too quickly for any of them to sink in (outside of the ending, which only has time to sink in by virtue of being the last thing we see for a month), and a few of them have small gaps in logic that could be easily explained, but aren’t. They’re not completely illogical, they’re just asking the readers to do the heavy lifting of explaining what just happened.

I have to talk about Simone now. Namely, the fact that she’s a Slayer who was turned to a vampire. Ever since they flirted with this idea in Season Four of Buffy and later Season Four of Angel, I’ve found it both interesting and somewhat scary. It should be obvious how someone this insane would become a much scarier villain with the added strength (and removal of the soul) of a vampire, and so I don’t need to spend that much time on talking about that. Instead, I want to focus on the design, one of the few things that has been recently added and is worth talking about. I’ve been a little uneven on the design of vampires in the comic, seeing as it’s much more cartoony than the design in the show (though it might just not work in comic form), but Simone is such an irredeemable villain that this kind of design just works.

I want to be intrigued by the ending, which I can’t talk about here. I really want to be interested and use it as a talking point, speculating about what just happened and if they’d actually do what they’re implying, but it’s hard to really care anymore. I can’t even give this series the benefit of the doubt anymore, which is really disappointing, so using a cliffhanger strikes me as just cheap.

Overall, I don’t really recommend this issue. Maybe if you did like the previous issue, you might like this one, but overall I’m not going to recommend it. If you don’t have a particular attachment to this specific series anymore, there are better things to spend $2.99 on. I’m personally waiting until I can get the trade cheap, and even then that’s only because I’m a bit of a completionist.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) is patiently waiting for this series to end while dreading the end of Angel & Faith. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.