Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates, Review | Tagged: buffy, Comics

Wednesday Comics Reviews: Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Eight #40 and Hellblazer #275

Published Wed, 19 Jan 2011 06:10:07 -0600

Last updated Wed, 19 Jan 2011 15:57:39 -0600

I have in my hands the final copy of Buffy Season Eight, issue 40, courtesy of Orbital Comics. This is how the season ends, not with a bang (that was issue 34) but with a whimper. And a whine. And a moan. And a groan. You know that oft-promised comic book lie "this story will change everything forever"? Well this one kinda did, for Buffy and friends at least. And sets up the dystopian slayerless magicless future seen in Fray.

It's been a rough ride, the Buffy comic, with some real problematic moments. The temptation to ue an unlimited budget, no longer hampered by TV special effects, showed that Buffy shone with its limitations, forcing the supernatural story to work, and work better, even without massive dragons or hordes of centaurs. Once Buffy's world expands to cover armies, huge supernatural disasters and massive monsters, something in Buffy seems to break.

But this final issue is the antithesis of this. Written by Joss Whedon, this is a comic of small moments. Buffy and friends (and enemies), working out where she stands with everyone, their feelings about her actions that both saved the world and doomed it. Buffy has never shied away from consequences of actions, in the TV show we saw death and destruction more commonly than a reset button, with the show willing to sacrifice cast members in order to drill that home. And in the comic book, that was followed through. People have suffered, and more importantly people have changed. This is a comic that did not rest on its laurels and if sometimes it faltered, that was never through being lazy and boring.

There have been some issues with the art through the run of the comic, Georges Jeanty seems to have fallen between two stools, never quite getting a consistent photographic likeness of the characters he was portraying, never quite getting a consistent cartoon of the characters from panel to panel either. There's one scene here with Buffy and Willow, and Buffy looks so different to the way she was portrayed a panel ago, that I honestly thought it must have been a different character. And given that issue, the script has seemed shoddy in helping the reader identify the characters. Unnecessary in a TV or movie script, here we could have really done with a few more nomenclatures. This kind of thing really took me out of the comic repeatedly. Jeanty will be drawing Teen Titans 92 (replacing the solicited Nicola Scott) and will probably show a lot more consistency there without having photo models to be dragged back to.

And speaking of the future, as well as an epilogue to the story so far, it's also a prologue to what is to come. The Buffy cast are all proper-grown-up now, yet the world suddenly feels more like Season One/Two Buffy. Less big bads to destroy the world, more vampires to fight. There is one slayer – one who calls herself a slayer at least. And there is the detritus of the comic, strewn far and wide, physically and emotionally. It's an end, but it's a hell of an intriguing beginning too.

It's not the only comic going through momentous changes. John Constantine is getting married in Hellblazer issue 275. And, spoiler alert, he actually does it. Despite being killed and becoming a ghost, despite a demonic entity actually getting to the deconsecrated church on time first, despite every sign that there will be a massive get out clause, they actually tie the knot. Done and dusted.

And all sorts of people from John's history come out of the dark. Some alive, some dead and some much mourned. Including a certain Kit (left).

Because, yes, if John is going to get married, then the greatest love of his life, the one who got away, the one who survived, may have cause to say a thing or two. And she does.

There's an awful lot of good quality fanwank stuff here from Peter Milligan, as well as an emphasis on the present, exactly how John's bride Epiphany copes with his world, and the added complications she brings to John's life, it's clearly not a one way street here.

Given that Simon Bisley has been providing heavily detailed digital pencils of late, it's a oddity for Giuseppe Camuncoli to give us almost a blast to Simon's past, his simpler pen and ink work from his early Lobo days, but it fits the nostalgic feel of the comic, even as it keeps an eye on the future.

And yes, just like Buffy, Hellblazer is all about consequences of being close to John Constantine. And very heavily we're left with the realisation that the couple may be happy, but the people they have left in their wake are as damaged as all hell. Literally.

Will Ephinany survive her marriage to John? She seems to show that she's got a good chance. But if there's one thing John does to women he's close to, it's put them in refrigerators.

Kit doesn't seem to regret her escape that much…

Comics from Orbital Comics of London, England.