Thursday, July 03, 2008

Buffy The Vampire Slayer #16 review



Time of Your Life part one.

Joss Whedon returns to write a four issue arc crossing over with his Buffy-verse creation, Fray the Vampire Slayer.

I never read Fray.

In fact, I didn't start watching Buffy until after the series ended and started watching repeats on FX. Hell, I own season seven and still need to get around to watching it, so I don't recognize the odd character here and there.

But I'll get to the book.

It's fairly typical of a crossover.

The issue starts off with Buffy in the future fighting Fray before immediately flashing back to the present day as Dawn is shown to be in pain and BUffy, Willow and Xander are having a round table disucssing the vision Willow had in the last issue. Seems they have to travel to New York City to follow up. Before that, they ruish out to check on Dawn who has, apparently, transformed from a giantess to a...Centaur. Sweet! A topless centaur. Flashbacks to Fantasia imminent.

Segue to skinless dude (shit, what's his name!), his chick and some dude in a mask scheming with something involving a missile.

So Buffy and Willow take off to New York. They get to New York. They meet up with some girl introduced in season seven which I haven't watched yet...Kennedy according to Wikipedia. Anywho, they meet up with Kennedy and start covering the details of their mission with a squad of New York Slayers. This is when Willow starts discussing the temporal anomoly causing...something. This is where I think the story gets a little confused with itself. In Scotland, Buffy and Willow were talking about finding the source of her Scythe's power and now they're talking temporal anomalies. Like I said, it's fairly typical of a crossover. Forced reasons.

Back to Scotland with Xander and newly centaurified Dawn having a heart to heart. Xander, naturally, manages to upset Dawn and she runs off before the giant missle from earlier completely destroys the castle headquarters.

Back in New York, they're at the high rise location where they think the mystical temporal signature is located when Buffy suddenly disappears, replaced by a giant monster. Buffy, thrown through time, finds herself in the same high rise, far into the future, just before getting put to the ground by Fray.

Well, all told...I don't wanna say I'm cold on this issue. I'm certainly intersted in where they are taking things with Dawn, the destruction of the castle, the conflicts betwwen Buffy and Kennedy and, well, Buffy and Fray. But...maybe since I'm not familiar with Fray at all having never read a single thing with the character, I'm just not that interested in the overall premise of the arc. I'm glad that Whedon is back and all, but I think he could have done a much better job explaining why Buffy and Willow are in New York. Is it to search for the dource of the power behind the scythe, or to examine a temporal vortex? If they're related, how? Maybe the explanation comes later, but it didn't really do anything for me this issue.

Loved the moments between the characters, I enjoyed Karl Moline's art well enough (even though all the characters seemed to do a lot of unintentional naval gazing), but...the arc doesn't feel like a natural progression from the last. I absolutely loved the last arc, I thought it was brilliant, but this arc seems like a forced detour. There are probably other, die-hard Buffy fans out there squealing over this one, but...I'm gonna just hold my breath on this one a little. Part one of a four parter, there's more to come, I'll wait and see what goes on. Next issue looks like it'll probably be filled with a lot action and tension, so here's looking forward to it.

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