“Great. Fountain of blood is gone. When Fred Sonja is done, I want you to take that thing and get out.” – Spike to Angel
In issue # 3 of “Angel: After the Fall”, we pick up where we left off, with Angel getting attacked by Illyria. We also learn that life in Hell Angeles is proving peculiar not only for the humans, but for the various supernatural inhabitants as well, because the sun and moon are always out at the same time. And for a Primordial demon like Illyria, this has resulted in some time slippage, similar to what happened in the “Time Bomb” episode from Season 5. After some brawling, Illyria gets the upper hand on Angel, then starts fighting with his dragon. Meanwhile, Angel and Spike talk, then Connor shows up, and we find out that Spike has actually been doing the same thing as Angel — saving humans and keeping them safe.
After coming to the realization that he’s been duped by somebody into thinking that Spike and Illyria were his enemies, Angel brings Wesley along to pay a visit to the council of demon bosses who have carved out control of the various sections of Los Angeles. Including Burges, the demon whose son Angel killed in the first issue. Angel throws down the glove, challenging all of the bosses to a fight for control of their territories, and ends up agreeing to fight the champions of their choice in two days time. Which is a bold enough choice in and of itself. But it’s made all the more bold by the voice-over revelation revealed to us in the final panel — ANGEL ISN’T A VAMPIRE ANY MORE. Huh what?
“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.
“I didn’t rise from prisoner to prisoner with benefits to protector back to prisoner with benefits to Lord, just to have you come and muck it up.” – Spike to Angel
In issue #2 of “Angel: After the Fall”, Angel has to deal with the consequences of having just killed the son of Demon Lord Burge at the tail end of the first issue. Namely, he has to find his son, and warn him that the demon’s father might come gunning for him. What he finds is that Connor is more than capable of taking care of himself, as they both deal with the violent power vacuum created by Vampire Gunn’s killing of a demon lord (also in the first issue) — demons falling all over each other to vie for the top spot, putting humans at risk in the process.
As for Gunn, he seems to have a revenge bone to pick with his former employer. He’s holding it against Angel for leaving him on his own at the Big Showdown, which resulted in him being dragged off by vampires and turned into one. Yet he seems to think that even as a vampire without a soul, he is more of a Good Guy than Angel who has one, and has some plan we don’t know about yet to take all the demons down. In the meantime, he takes out his frustrations on Betta George — a giant floating telepathic fish (a character introduced in Lynch’s “Spike: Asylum” series). Continue reading →
“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 →
In issue #1 of “Angel: After the Fall”, we learn what happened after the big showdown at the end of Season 5 … sort of. We’ve jumped ahead a few months, which means that Joss plans to feed us details of the showdown and its immediate aftermath bit by bit. But we do know a few things. For one, Angel still lives (you know what I mean), thanks to the help of a dragon who was also working for Wolfram & Hart and decided to go rogue. Los Angeles is now in Hell, being ruled by assorted demon warlords. Angel’s son Connor and two of Angel’s ex-love interests — Electric Gwen and Werewolf Nina — are running a kind of sanctuary for humans and good demons. Wesley is now a kind of ghost, contractually bound to work for The Senior Partners but helping Angel when he can. And in a hugely ironic move, Gunn the diehard vampire hater is now a vampire himself. No sign yet of Fred/Illyria, Spike, or Lorne, but I’m sure they can’t be far behind.
All in all, I’m really loving this new title. Joss’s plot direction is clear, the storyline is satisfyingly twisty, and the clever dialogue always makes me smile. If Whedon couldn’t do it himself, Brian Lynch was a great choice for the writer here. If you haven’t already, buy the “Spike: Asylum” trade paperback, on the basis of which Joss hand-picked Lynch for this job. I’m eagerly waiting for “Spike: Shadow Puppets” to come out, so I can read that one too.
