Buffy The Vampire Slayer #17 review

Time of Your Life part 2

This issue backtracks a bit over the previous issue so that we see what Fray was up to just prior to Buffy's appearance (kicking some vampire ass). After a bit with Fray's brother and some mysterious witch, we jump back in time to Willow and crew in the immediate aftermath of Buffy's disappearance then hopping over to Xander and the Slayers after the destruction of the castle. Things are pretty messed up with lots of Slayers dead, but Xander does his best to keep everyone focused. The fires around them are burning green, so they were hi9t with a magic missile and then find themselves being assaulted by flaming green snake men. Xander is about to have his shit ruined before Centaur Dawn shows up and tells Xander to get, uh...to uh...oh, shit, I don't wanna spoil this moment. So they bug out and we're back t Fray who's now fighting the monster Buffy replaced in her little time switch and Willow explaining to the New York group the potentialm hows and why-fors. From here on it's Buffy and Fray. Buffy is getting her ass whomped pretty much but she manages to get Fray to listen to her and she quickly comes around. Buffy is caught up on the "current" Slayer situation (There's only one again...well, one and a half). Fray gets Buffy up to speed on her evil twin brother, Harth. He's apparently a vampire. Buffy is also introduced to Gunther, a big fish dude. Fray and Gunther start talking but Buffy starts phases them out after the realization of everything that's happening starts to hit her. Back to Harth and the mysterious witch woman, it looks like they're preparing for a huge battle and we find out the identity of this big bad ass witch woman.

To be honest, this Fray story.....not my bag. Whedon is making it easy enough to follow for those not familiar with Fray and I'm definitely one of those people, but.....I just don't really care. This story might be really cool, but I'm just not interested in Fray at all. The future speak dialogue we get from her is a little grating. The story feels very much like filler. I understand if Joss Whedon wants to wrap up the whole Fray story, but it's feeling pretty tedious to me already.

Not to say there aren't parts of this issue that I didn't like. The attack on the castle? That shit really fired me up. It's too bad it's a subplot. The bit between Xander and Dawn was pretty damn funny as well.

I'm also very interested in this Harth character. Well, not so much the character so much as his connection to Fray. Fray describes that he's got all her memories and her connections to the Slayers, but with some vampire action going on as well. That's cool stuff.

The last issue was all set-up, which is fine, but so is this issue. Nothing really important happens and, since it's a four part story, I don't imagine anything really major is gonna happen at all. Two more parts, what can they do? This issue should have been all Buffy and Fray if you ask me. Honestly, if they concentrated more on that, I probably would have latched on to the story a lot easier. As it stands, I don't feel like I know any of these characters and I'm just sitting out Whedon's little vanity trip. Maybe one for the diehard Buffy fans, but for a more casual fan like myself it's a bit of a bore.