Category: comics

Angel: After the Fall, Issues #16-18

Okay, so technically, Issue #18 isn’t “After the Fall” — it’s more like “After After the Fall”.  But more on that later.  First, as usual, I’m overdue to recap the last couple of issues, which in this case were literally the last couple of issues of what we could probably consider Season 6 — the end of Brian Lynch’s “After the Fall” plot arc.  Which I have to say, after some clumsiness in the middle of the arc, wrapped up in what I felt was a fairly clever — and true to the series — way.

RECAP DETAILS AHEAD (don’t read if you haven’t read the issues yet) …

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Buffy Season 8, Issues #21 & 22

“Everybody is curious about us vamps these days. I think I fingered a zeitgeist.” – Harmony, Issue #21

“Let us talk of the Vampyrs.” – Andrew, Issue #21

“My parents bought it for me. Before I destroyed them with my gayness.” – Satsu, Issue #22

“Big buts come with the Slayer territory these days and I probably should have reviewed that sentence before unleashing it on the sensitive womenfolk.” – Xander, Issue #22

Although it may not seem like it, we’re two issues into a five-issue arc right now, called “Predators and Prey”. It’s a looser arc than some of the previous ones, as evidenced by the individual titles. And in the case of these two issues, the focus has been on B-List characters, as a device to make us aware of a growing public awareness of both Vampires and Slayers in the world.

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New York Comic Con 2009 Wrap-Up

Here are 5 things I learned at the New York Comic Con this weekend …

1) The Watchmen movie is going to ROCK! We got to watch the first 18 minutes of the movie, as well as a 30 second scene from somewhere in the middle, and I have to say, any reservations I might have had this time last year were completely dispelled. Just as he did with 300, Zach Snyder has done a fantastic job of making this film look and feel like a comic book brought to life. And in this case, it’s almost as if he’s used the comic pages themselves as the storyboards, duplicating panels down to the last detail. Dave Gibbons himself was there to talk about it, and it was clear that he couldn’t have been more thrilled with what Snyder had done with the material. March 6th can’t come soon enough.

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Space and Time Magazine

A good friend and occasional commenter here, Greater Czarina (a.k.a. Hildy Silverman), happens to own and publish and operate a great quarterly magazine called Space and Time. It’s been around for more than 40 years, and deals in what she calls “strange and unusual fiction, poetry, and art” of the fantasy, horror, and science fiction variety.

As somebody who mostly reads genre fiction these days, when Hildy bought the book a few years ago, I was thrilled by the news. I’ve really enjoyed reading the issues every few months, and really really enjoy knowing somebody WHO OWNS A MAGAZINE. Seriously, how cool is that?

Another personal bonus is that Space and Time gave me the opportunity to live out a lifelong dream — writing a comic book. Well … half a comic book anyway. A 10-page story that has played out over the course of a year, and was illustrated with much brilliance by Jeremy Simser, another good friend of mine who draws storyboards for a living. The final 4-page installment appears in Issue #106, which hits the shelves any day now. So visit the website — which I recently redesigned — and learn how you can subscribe to this magazine, read some great fiction and poetry, and support a fellow gagglefrakker.

(Note to self: “gagglefrakker” sounds like a really nasty word. Never use it again.)

Edited to add: I just added to the site the first 6 pages of the comic story.  Enjoy!

Angel: After the Fall, Issues #13-15

Okay, so I’m long overdue to recap Angel: After the Fall. Three issues overdue, in fact. I’m starting to wonder if I should just buy the trade paperbacks for these. Because read as each issue came out, I’ll admit that I had a hard time getting into the story. But when I read all three in a row last night, I could feel the energy, and had a better sense of what Brian Lynch was aiming for. In hindsight, the TV show was like that too — sometimes it could be more rewarding in reruns than it was as a first run, because the main arc could get so twisty that you’d miss details along the way.

By the way, huge kudos to Alex Garner for the awesome covers he’s been painting for this series (seen above). Just as Jo Chen does for Buffy, Garner’s art really makes this comic jump off the shelf.

Now on with the recaps (here there be spoilers!) …

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Buffy Season 8, #20

Some history: Back in 2002, Joss Whedon and Jeph Loeb got FOX to green light a deal for “Buffy the Animated Series”. It would be kid-friendly, the episodes would take place somewhere in the middle of Season 1, most of the actors from the show would do the voices, and most of the episodes would be written by the writers who were currently working on the show at that time. But, FOX being FOX, the series never happened, and the closest we’ve ever gotten to seeing it is the three and half minute promo that leaked to YouTube this past August.

HERE IS THAT, GO CHECK IT OUT

So there’s your context for this one-shot issue, written by Jeph Loeb, in what I have to figure is a nice bit of closure for him. As well as an appropriate story for the Christmas season. Let’s call it the “Ghosts of Buffy Past” issue — a nice counterpoint to the several issues we just spent in Fray’s dystopian future.

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