“Oh, hi Buffy. Hi nude Asian girl.” – Andrew to Buffy/Satsu
Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Four pages into “Wolves at the Gate, Part 1,” (a.k.a. Issue #12) we find Buffy in bed in with Satsu, both of them naked. And yes, it’s exactly what it looks like. Buffy has entered Willow territory. Which in this case makes her the WORST BOSS EVER. Especially since she spent all of the previous issue insisting to Satsu that she should NOT be in love with her, and that such feelings could only end badly. But if we’ve learned anything about Buffy over the years, it’s that she fully embraces her role as a master of mixed messages and the queen of failing to consider how her actions might adversely affect others, emotionally or physically.
Having said that, it certainly made for a most shocking splash page, no? And in true Whedon fashion, a hilarious turn of events as well. No sooner does Buffy finish telling Satsu that she should exercise discretion, Xander bursts into the room, then his new squeeze (slayerette Renee), then a groggy Andrew. Then Dawn peeks in through the window. Then Willow crashes through the ceiling, finally offering Buffy a needed diversion … Continue reading →
“Go ahead. Church me. Plenty more where I came from.” – Buffy to Twilight
Issue # 11, “A Beautiful Sunset” is another story written by Whedon himself. We finally get confirmation of whose “true love kiss” woke Buffy out of that sleeping spell back in issue #4. And the winner is … Satsu, the Asian slayerette who is currently the strongest of the Scrappy Doo pack. If you were paying attention, of course, you already knew this; there was a whole cinnamon lip gloss detail that kind of gave it away. But as Buffy takes her out for some one-on-one training, she confronts Satsu on the matter, and tries to impress upon her that historically, falling in love with Buffy is a lethal proposition. As if to prove this, while on rounds, they are attacked by this season’s Big Bad himself, Twilight.
Twilight fights well, lifts heavy things, flies, lifts and throws heavy things while flying, and all in all seems to have a Superman level of power. He knocks Satsu out, then toys with Buffy for a while, both physically and mentally. You definitely get the impression that if he wanted to kill Buffy, he could. But as he later points out, “That’s been done. To little effect.” His plan instead is to demoralize her, “to strip her of her greatest armor … her moral certainty,” by convincing her that creating so many new slayers has not improved the world, and is more likely hurting it. It’s a concern that Buffy already has — that for every good slayer they train, the rogue ones create even more problems — so his words end up having exactly the effect he’d hope for, nudging Buffy into a nihilistic funk.
“It’s too dangerous! We can ski down these crazy Alps in the morning, but till then, television’s Tina Fey … we must find a way to keep warm.” – Willow to Tina Fey
Issue #10 is an extra long stand-alone story penned by Whedon himself, titled “Anywhere But Here”. The focus has shifted away from Faith and Giles, and back to the core players. Buffy and Willow are off on a mission to enlist the aid of a powerful demon against the threat of Twilight, while Xander and Dawn have some quiet time back at the castle. The overall theme, as reiterated over and over by Sephrilian — a big wormy-looking Tichajt demon with huge teeth, arms, and four faces, who exists in some kind of warped time/space bubble — is that humans are big fat liars who hide things even from the ones they’re most close to. And the Scooby Gang is no exception.
Willow learns that Buffy and the Slayerettes robbed a Swiss bank to acquire the funds they currently use to keep the world safe from demons, which Willow considers the “first domino” in the New Initiative War. Buffy learns that Willow had sex with a mermaid. Xander learns that Dawn did not actually have sex with her thricewise ex-boyfriend, but rather with his roommate — a broody, cigarette-smoking, guitar-playing “bad boy” — and that this is why she was giant-ized. We see a future glimpse of Buffy beaten and bruised, and are told that somebody close to her will betray her. Continue reading →
