The Buffyverse Comics in Time-Line Order (Roughly)
Literature references and annotations by Dick Grune, dick@dickgrune.com.
Last update: Thu Nov 17 14:57:03 2022.
These references and annotations were originally intended
for personal use and are presented here only in the hope
that they may be useful to others.
There is no claim to completeness or even correctness.
Each annotation represents my understanding of the text
at the moment I wrote the annotation.
No guarantees given; comments and content criticism welcome.
Kel McDonald,
Yishan Li,
Buffy, the High School Years -- Parental Parasite,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
June 2017,
pp. 78.
Buffy's mother gets possessed by a cuclidus demon which tries to push Buffy out
of the nest. Guess who won. Question: how did Joyce get into her night gown?
Kel McDonald,
Yishan Li,
Buffy, the High School Years -- Glutton for Punishment,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
Oct. 2016,
pp. 78.
The Home Ec (= cooking class) teacher Mrs. Miller, known for her delicious
cookies and fair treatment of students, did not show up, and her replacement,
Mr. Blake, is an oversized bully, running any attempt at cooking by the
students into the ground, until Maria bakes the perfect cookies. Then Maria
disappears. In the meantime Buffy, on patrol in the early morning, hears the
baker of the Just Desserts bakery call for help. She finds him besieged by an
oversized tiger, and attacks the beast, only to find that its pelt is
invulnerable and all weapons break on it. Xander solves the home cooking
assignment by handing in cookies from the bakery, which win him high praise
from the teacher. Then Xander disappears. Buffy, Willow and Giles manage to
connect the dots, and raid the Fry the Tiger Café, where they indeed find
Mrs. Miller, Maria, and Xander, all cooking tidbits for the tiger. Willow
prepares an eclair with bottles of bleach and ammonia in it, and serves it to
the tiger. When the monster chews the eclair, the bottles break and produce
chlorine gas. [DG: The Wikipedia declares this to be an urban legend.]
The demon chokes and Buffy can take it down.
Faith Erin Hicks,
Yishan Li,
Buffy, the High School Years -- Freaks and Geeks,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
June 2016,
pp. 78.
Slighted by the bouncer of a chic vampire club, four high-school age
vampires decide to kill Buffy to gain status in the world. Their leader,
Hester, uses a misunderstood remark by Willow and Xander to damage Buffy's
self-confidence and her relationship with her friends. Using a spell
book and an figurine bought on the internet, Hester manages to lure Buffy into
a magical square, and by sacrificing her three minions she changes the
figurine into a ten-feet tall warrior. The first thing the warrior does is to
eat Hester, but he then turns against Buffy, and throws her into the street,
where he follows her, only to be overrun by a car with Giles, Xander and
Willow, who came to the rescue. The clean-up was a lot of work.
Tom Fassbender,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Out of the Woodwork,
(Comic),
Titan Books,
2002,
pp. 220.
Set after Buffy season 4. In the heat of the summer Sunnydale becomes Bug
Central.
Taking Back the Night:
At a school party Ron Borchinsky makes sexist remarks to his friend Cole
(friend of agent Finn) and to a young lady, who slaps him in his face. The
young lady goes out into the night, and is attacked by a red scaly
monster. Buffy fights the monster which makes off with a brown bowling ball
bag. When Buffy comes to tend to the young lady, she finds her covered in
small flies.
While the Scoobie gang theorizes about this phenomenon, Buffy and Willow go to
Prof. Walsh's anti-rape rally "Take Back the Night". But high on the bleachers
there is a strangely shaped figure with a brown bowling ball bag, and soon
swarms of midges begin to fill the auditorium. People panic, and the figure
tries to make off with Willow, but Xander distracts him. Buffy tries to stake
him but hits the brown bag instead, which splits open and showers a girl with
millions of midges. A hexagonal block falls from the bag and Buffy picks it
up. Then she starts to fight the monsters, who speak a strange language, in
earnest, and when the police arrive, Ron and Cole lie unconscious and three
monsters lie dead. Buffy states: "Well boys, looks like I took back the night".
Lost and Found:
Summer's here and Buffy is bored; Giles offers to take her to a guitar-playing
performance of his, but Buffy flees the premises. In an alley (McCollum Lane)
two vampires kill a tramp and steal a ring from him.
After his performance Giles is met by
Rebecca Stansberry, a tall and slender fellow librarian who wears an amber
pendant with an insect in it. Meanwhile Riley and Cole are patrolling the
town, and when they enter McCollum Lane they are attacked by the ghost of the
tramp, who demands his ring back, and the attack leaves Riley in a coma.
Giles introduces Rebecca to Buffy and Willow, and takes Rebecca out for dinner.
Buffy is worried sick about Riley, but Willow finds
the address of the ghost and both go out to look in McCollum Lane, where they
run into Xander and Anya. The ghost appears and Buffy attacks it, only to find
that it is not evil, and only wants his ring back. Meanwhile Giles and Rebecca
are in a restaurant, discussing the relative merits of Cutter-Sanborn versus
Dewey Decimal, Rebecca fingering her amber pendant. Buffy beats up a few
vampires for information and then dusts the vampire with the ring. She hands
the ring back to the ghost tramp, who moves on happily to a higher plane, but
to Buffy's deep disappointment this does not get Riley out of his coma. Rebecca
promises Giles to stay in Sunnydale for at least a few weeks, they part with a
kiss, and Giles walks home with a smirk on his face, unaware of the monstrous
shadow behind him which looks suspiciously like Rebecca.
Invasion:
The next evening the Scoobie gang is digesting the information that another
giant insect creature has been found, when Rebecca comes in to pick up Giles,
talking condescendingly to the "kids" and urging Giles to hang out with
people his own age.
With Riley out of commission Cole patrols alone and runs into three giant
bugs; he fights, but loses and is infected with bugness. Prof. Warren
Whitcomb, entomologist, is interviewed on Sunnydale TV; at the mixer after the
interview Whitcomb spots Rebecca, who is delighted to see him. [Here one of the
text balloons is pointing at the wrong person; DG]. Tara and Anya begin to
voice their suspicion of Rebecca. At a suggestion of Rebecca, Giles and she
take a walk through the park, but are attacked on a bridge by half-Cole
half-giant bug. Giles thinks he can handle him but is thrown into the
pond. Meanwhile Buffy is sitting gloomily in the park, Spike's efforts to
cheer her up making her mood even worse, when they are attacked by various
giant bugs, and much fighting ensues, leaving Buffy and Spike unconscious.
Hive Mentality:
The moment one of the monsters puts its foul appendix to Buffy's neck, she
wakes up and kicks the bugs to kingdom come (or thereabouts).
Giles mobilizes the Scoobie gang into a
search for Rebecca, and they find Cole, unconscious and changed still
further. For want of a better idea they put him in Oz's cage and bring him
some take-out. In his lab Prof. Whitcomb is dissecting one of the giant bugs,
having removed a hexagonal crystal from its body, when there is a knock on the
door. The visitor startles and frightens him. Buffy has brought Giles an
interesting part of a bug, but he is too tired to examine it. He doesn't get
any rest, however, since Spike comes in, but before he can tell Giles what he
knows about this kind of bugs, Buffy, Xander, and Anya come in to enquire after
Giles's progress, and before Spike can tell them what he knows Willow and Tara
come in to tell that Cole is turning into a bug, kind of
superfluously. Frustrated, Spike draws his own plan and sneaks off, pinching
the keys to the cage from the table. Tara finds in a book that these giant
bugs are Urukhai [courtesy of Tolkien, I suppose] and goes off to buy
ingredients for a magic insecticide. Xander proposes to let the Cole bug go,
hoping he will lead them to the hive. Willow and Tara bond over the
preparation of the insecticide, while Xander modifies some equipment from his
work to deliver it, with Anya sitting admiring on the work bench, and Buffy
and Giles select weapons -- the Scoobies are ready for bug war [the best drawing
in the book]. Cole is released, they follow him into the sewers and into the
hive, where they meet ...
Out of the Fire, Into the Hive:
... Prof. Whitcomb, tied up as food for the bugs, and speaking for the
Queen, a swollen insect, saying that is is all Buffy's fault (as if anybody
doubted that), because she took the hexagonal crystal. Riley wakes from his
coma and sneaks out of the hospital. Spike has remembered something about the
crystals from an affair Drusilla had with a three-eyed demon in Rio,
retrieves one from the package that Buffy had sent to Giles, and is surprised by
Riley. Spike brings Riley up to date, and they go and join fighting the bugs,
which have made off with Tara. Xander does a lot of good with his insecticide
spray-gun, but when a super-giant bug attacks Buffy it is brought down by
another bug. Buffy recognizes Cole but Spike kills him with a blow of a
pickaxe. Buffy is dismayed at first but then descries Riley, and is
delighted. The crystal leads them to the source of the bug magic, and while
Buffy is using her axe to "unplug" them, Giles shoots Whitcomb with a bow and
arrow. The bugs collapse, Tara is retrieved, and the Scoobie gang regroups
outside the sewers, mourning the loss of Rebecca Stansberry but still being
suspicious about her role, when suddenly somebody calls from across the street,
and ... there is Rebecca, right as rain. Questions are asked , but she answers
she was attacked and woke up in the hospital. She leaves telling Rupert to get
a real life and if he ever thinks of leaving Sunnydale he should call her.
[Rebecca's story is totally lame. Attacked by a bug and not infected? And who
brought her to the hospital? Either it's a ramshackle plot or something far
more sinister was going on and Rebecca is the Bug Queen.]
Peter David,
Spike vs. Dracula,
IDW,
2006,
pp. 120.
Five short stories about the quarrels through the ages between Spike and
Dracula.
Chapter 1:
Vlad Tepes, aka Dracula, was deeply attached to the Gypsy seer girl Magda, of
the Romani clan of Kalderash, until the day in 1898 when he
found her and her whole clan murdered. A vision left to him by Magda informs
him who the murderers were: two vampires, Darla and Drusilla, and he is bent on
revenge. In a book shop Spike and Drusilla find a copy of Bram Stoker's
Dracula, and Spike buys it for Drusilla, but since it is signed by the author
it costs 11 quid. Spike and Drusilla have an appointment with Darla to go to a
performance of "Giselle" by the Blinnikov World Ballet Corps but Darla does
not show up. The reason is simple, she is being seduced by Dracula while
thinking it is she who is doing the seducing. She takes
Dracula to Spike's apartment for further seduction, where they are surprised
by Spike and Drusilla returning home. The Count immediately turns to seducing
Drusilla, much to her delight, right in front of Spike, and a violent quarrel
ensures, in which Dracula throws the Dracula book, gift from Spike to
Drusilla, into the fire. Spike attacks Dracula shouting that he owes him 11
quid, but is also thrown into the
fire and has to jump into the Thames to get extinguished. Dracula moves the
ladies into a carriage and drives them to one of his castles, in Yorkshire,
not knowing that Spike is riding with them, on an axle under the carriage. In
the castle Dracula gives a three-people party, mesmerizes the two ladies, hands
each a stake, and hypnotizes them into killing each other, when a flaming
arrow crashes through a window: Spike has shown the villagers what a vampire
can do, reveals that the biggest vampire of them all is in the castle, and now
there is an angry armed mob outside. Dracula has to flee and Spike takes off
with the ladies through a back door, leaving a note informing Dracula who
ruined his party and reminding him that he owes him 11 quid.
Spike 1 - Dracula 0.
Chapter 2:
In 1934 in a letter to Darla in Berlin, Spike writes how Dracula has become
famous in America, not through his own exploits but through theatre
performances by Bela Lugosi. He and Drusilla went to watch such a performance,
and while Drusilla chatted with a young boy next to her, a Edward Wood, he
spotted Dracula himself in the front row. The count was seriously miffed
because Bela Lugosi was more impressive than the count himself, so after the
performance the count repaired to Bela's dressing room to kill the actor. Spike
writes how they fought, how the count first changed into a wolf and then into
a giant bat, jumped onto a low-flying stunt plane, got his scarf caught in to
propeller, and was ground to smithereens. Dracula's plan to kill Bela was then
continued by Dracula's vampire lady, but Drusilla wanted Bela for herself,
staked the lady vampire, and threw herself on Bela, only to be surprised by
young Ed who had followed the "nice lady". Ed grabbed a crucifix from the prop
table and pressed against Drusilla's cheek, causing her to leave screaming. At
school Ed writes an essay about his trip to the theatre, but has to write lines
for his effort, for making up stories.
Spike 2 - Dracula 0.
Chapter 3:
It is 1943, Darla is missing in Berlin, and Spike comes to investigate. In
an SS uniform he lifted from an SS officer who dared to ask him for his
Ausweiss, Spike explores the town and finds Dracula waiting for him, stating
that one of his brides, Anselina, is also missing, taken by a special unit of
stormtroopers that caters to the Fuhrer's interests in the occult, and after
the usual unpleasantries the two decide on a temporary truce. Using
Spike's uniform and Dracula's knowledge of German they try to bluff their way
into the camp where the ladies are kept but that plan fails of course, and they
have to resort to the usual violence. Inside they not only find Darla and
Anselina, but also a werewolf with a soldier's tag Private Nathaniel
Osborne. Spike frees the werewolf, steals a motor-bike with sidecar, and
together they drive to freedom, while Dracula changes into a giant bat and
airlifts the ladies out. Once back in Berlin, Spike gets an offer of free
virgin blood from the Prince of Lies, which he accepts, leading him into "Why
We Fight", Angel 5.13. Dracula makes a deal with Hitler in which Hitler agrees
to spare the "requested gypsy tribes" and Dracula agrees to no longer defend
vampires, and as a bonus throws in the promise to "grant him eternal life when
his assailants come storming in".
Spike 2 - Dracula 1.
Chapter 4:
Rome, 1959, and La dolce vita has arrived. Drusilla, in turtle neck pullover,
and Spike, with Mastroianni sunglasses, are doing the Via Veneto, when Spike is
separated from Drusilla, and is politely invited to follow a gentleman. When
he forcibly refuses he is kidnapped, but kills his kidnappers except one, whom
he forces to reveal where he would be taken. The unfortunate thug shows him to
a helicopter saying that it is just transporting a statue [as in the movie] to
the count who lives in a villa on Cyprus [this must be Capri, not Cyprus,
given the distances and the landscape there; DG]. Spike jumps on the statue,
recognizes it as depicting Count Dracula himself,
and rides on it to the count's villa, where he is welcomed by Drusilla playing
the harpsichord, and an elegant gentleman, the Comte de Saint Germain. The
Comte (and not Count Dracula as Spike had guessed) had invited Drusilla for a
night of beautiful music, and had arranged for her companion to be entertained
by Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren. But through his rash actions Spike has
spoiled that opportunity, much to his chagrin. Although Spike enjoys the
musical piece "A Sun Effulgent", composed by the Comte and played by Drusilla
and him, he still wants to take it out on Dracula, and smashes the statue,
thereby releasing Dracula himself, whom the Comte had imprisoned in it...
Spike 2 - Dracula 2.
Chapter 5:
The year is 2003, and Sunnydale has sunk into the ground, taking with it
substantial real estate owned by Dracula and insured by Wolfram & Hart. Since
W&H is of course reneging on the insurance, the count himself makes a personal
visit to the W&H office. Harmony goes through all kinds of antics to get
private time with the count, but he is received by Angel who reveals to him
that the Sunnydale disaster is caused by Spike, and that he is in the
building. A fight ensues between the corporeal Dracula and the incorporeal
Spike, which Spike manages to deflect to Angel. Dracula takes Fred hostage but
Angel convinces Dracula that he, not Spike, is the enemy, and Dracula lets
Fred go. Spike continues to tease Dracula, and to nag him about the 11
quid. Dracula haughtily throws him $20, which Spike tries to pick up, finding
he cannot, because he is incorporeal.
Spike 2 - Dracula 3.
James Marsters,
Derlis Santacruz,
Spike -- Into the Light,
Dark Horse,
July 2014,
pp. 72.
Spike, having just obtained a soul in Africa, is kind of at a loss what to do
with it. He ends up in Greenville, just one of those towns, hungry and out of
money, but his newly obtained soul prevents him from stealing and murdering. On
top of that the sole (pun?) of his boots gets loose, so he limps and/or
stumbles. Too bad all around.
Seeing a young lady being assaulted by two hoodlums, he manages to take the
two out in spite of stumbling all the time. The lady introduced herself as
Dylan, and she is grateful, but no food and no money is coming forward.
In his search he comes across a pawnshop, where he remembers to have hidden the
loot of a robbery from his soul-free days.
Also, there are a pair of fine boots in the window, just his size.
So he tries to talk his way into the shop, but is chased out by the Chinese
owner lady.
Then luck seems to be with him: he sees a baby being abducted by a zipper
monster, and we all know zipper monsters are very fond of babies.
Spike rescues the baby in spite of his loose sole, but when he returns the
baby to its mother and hopes for a reward, she sees his vampire face and
thinks he is another monster.
When he is waling the streets completely in a dump, he is invited in by Dylan,
who shows him some of her paintings, until he notices that one wall of her
room is a mirror.
Panicked he hides in the kitchen, and Dylan invites him to come outside and
see the miracles there.
One miracle is an olive tree, the only one in 100 miles around, and the other
turns out to be a ... sunrise.
Smoking, Spike flees the scene, only to find shelter in the hide-out of the
monster. He fights the monster in broad daylight and beats it.
Dylan leaves with the rescued children, but Spike is badly burned.
Living on rats he recovers, and tries his luck again at the pawn shop, this
time with the proposal to share the loot.
They accept, but when the money has been dug up, they claim it's their money,
call the police, and Spike has to flee.
But the owner husband takes pity on him, comes after him and presents him with
the boots from the window.
With his luck improved he sends farewell flowers to Dylan and leaves town.
Joss Whedon,
Brian Lynch,
Franco Urru,
Angel -- After the Fall, Vol One (cover: The Man and His Dragon),
IDW Publ.,
2009,
pp. 192.
This volume immediately follows Angel TV Season 5, and should thus be named
Season 6; but it coincides with Buffy Comic Season 8.
Some volumes don't have titles; identifications have been added.
In retribution for Angel c.s.' attack on Wolfram & Hart at the end of Angel
season 5, the Senior Partners have thrown L.A. into Hell. This mainly shows by
greater chaos and more monsters in the streets than usual. The vague and
sketchy drawings in this series match that atmosphere perfectly, but I'm not
certain that's on purpose.
The stories get increasingly erratic as the series progresses.
Chapter 1:
With an incorporeal Wesley breathing down his neck, and with Connor, Gwen,
Nina, and a dragon as unexpected assistants, Angel is helping the helpless.
This involves killing the son of Burge, the demon Lord of Downtown L.A.
Chapter 2:
Fearing that Burge may set his revenge upon Connor, Angel travels to see him in
Santa Monica. They fight a group of lords, some of whom have speech
defects. They find a strange writing on the wall which leads them to Beverly
Hills, where they find Spike surrounded by dozens of Playboy models all
chanting "Bloody Hail", and living under the protection of a completely crazy
Illyria. Angel and Spike argue, which annoys Illyria who attacks Angel.
Chapter 3:
Angel and Illyria fight, using guns and kitchen knives, and Angel is losing,
when his dragon bursts in and beats Illyria. Connor reconciles Spike and
Angel, who, now having nothing to do, challenges the assembly of all lords of
L.A. except one, the Lord of Silverlake (one of the best pictures in the book!).
Chapter 4:
The lords each provide their champions with a Hagun's Shaft. Angel is
approached by two gorgeous ladies sent by the Lord of Silverlake, where he
discovers Lorne, who has made this spot an island of heaven in
hell. Groosalugg appears, to help Angel. In the meantime Gunn blows up the
Wolfram&Hart building, making Wesley fade away.
Chapter 5:
Wesley gets his head chewed off by the Senior Partners for not preventing this
mess. The lords start the fighting by trying to kill a civilian, but Angel,
riding his dragon, saves him. The lords chain up the dragon since according to
the challenge Angel has to fight alone. Lorne is pulled out of his depression by
his muses. The lords bring in a T. Rex and Angel is losing, but Groosalugg
frees Angel's dragon, on the principle that cheating is allowed in
hell. Lorne's rousing speeches reach everybody, and soon Spike, Illyria,
Connor, Lorne, Gwen, and Nina join the fight on Angel's side. In the
middle of the fray Wesley appears, which gives Illyria such a start that she
turns back into Fred.
Joss Whedon,
Brian Lynch,
Angel -- After the Fall, Vol. Two, First Night,
IDW Publ.,
2009,
pp. 192.
Intermezzo, describing how some of our protagonists experienced their first
night in an L.A. dunked into Hell. It comes with comments on the stories by
the script writer Brian Lynch. Some stories are divided over several
installments.
Betta: Betta (the telepathic fish) survives everything by manipulating the
minds of any intending to harm him.
Spike: Spike likes it in Hell: his wounds are gone, his jacket is clean,
and he can enjoy the sunshine. At dawn he finds Fred, but as he rescues two
damsels in distress, she turns into Illyria, much to the distress of said
damsels.
Connor: Connor starts looking for Angel, but while reminiscing about his
sex night with Cordelia he is attacked by an army of disgruntled Wolfram&Hart
mercenaries. Further see "Kate".
Lorne: Having taking a taxi to Silverlake, he arouses the people there to
slay all monsters, and they succeed. A sorceress casts a protective spell, and
a piece of heaven in hell is born.
Wesley: Wesley finds himself in Arcadia with Fred, but soon detects it's
all fake, courtesy of Wolfram&Hart. In "reality" he is a non-corporeal
employee of W&H, and pseudo-Fred is his company wife, consistently calling
him "Honey".
Kate: Coming upon Connor beset by the mercenaries, she blows off the head
of the mercenaries' boss, rescues Connor, and sends him on, well-armed.
Gwen: Protected by the LISA device, she is in the middle of a petting
session with a Nate, when L.A. is thrown into hell. Her LISA device fails,
causing her inadvertently to kill Nate. She is seriously pissed and is
determined to take it out on anybody.
Civilians: A weirdo proclaiming the end of the world finds his prediction
coming true, but adapts by now proclaiming the end of the end of the world.
Gunn: Gunn finds himself heavily bandaged in a hospital room, when a
visitor shows up, who is slowly breaking the news to him that in order to save
his life in the battle he was sired at the behest of W&H, so he is now a
vampire.
Joss Whedon,
Brian Lynch,
Nick Runge,
Angel -- After the Fall, Vol. Three (cover: Snow on Hell.A.),
IDW Publ.,
2009,
pp. 192.
Chapter 1:
With Illyria reverted to Fred, and the servants of the war lords attacking
Angel, Angel discusses Connor's yearning for Gwen with him, until the war
lords lose patience and point their Hagun's Shafts. Angel teases them a bit
further, they all fire their shafts, and ... they die horribly (except the
loan shark, who dropped his shaft). Turns out Hagun's Shaft is a suicide
device for bored immortals. Gunn stole them from a W&R warehouse and had them
secretly distributed as Trojan horses. The lords may be dead but their minions
are not, and much fighting ensues, with Fred turned back to Illyria. Still, all
of L.A. recognizes Angel as their savior.
Chapter 2:
Sensing that there is still a concentration of power somewhere in L.A., Angel
and Nina set out to find it, calling in help from all and sundry, including
Dracula. In the end they find it, in the form of Gunn and a band of very well
trained slayers. Angel is shocked to find that Gunn is now a vampire.
Chapter 3:
Gunn tells that he had been mortally wounded in the fight in the alley, and
that the powers that be had arranged for him to be sired in order to survive.
On top of that they had given him visions about how to save L.A. Angels doubts
the visions and questions their source. This angers Gunn, and they fight,
leaving Angel severely wounded, and human, and dying.
Chapter 4:
Angel has a hallucination in which he is visited by Cordelia, who tells him
she is sent by the powers that be to ease his dying, but he refuses. Wesley
tells Gunn his visions are actually from W&H, and were meant to keep Angel
alive for the fulfilling of the Shanshu prophecy. Angel gets a glimpse of the
prophecy, sees himself destroying L.A., and turns to Cordelia, and says: "I'm
ready to go."
Joss Whedon,
Brian Lynch,
Stephen Mooney,
Franco Urru,
Angel -- After the Fall, Vol. Four (cover: At Your Service),
IDW Publ.,
2009,
pp. 192.
Chapter 1:
Upon Angel's decision to die, W&H sends a huge army, threatening his
friends. With his friends in danger and his dragon dead Angel cannot afford to
die. Spike returns to the locked up slayers to fight them but is killed. Five
minutes later he shows up alive again, accompanied by said slayers. It is
revealed (in Chapter 2) that Gunn has been training the slayers by letting
them repeatedly kill in a 5-minute time loop set up for him by Illyria. Gunn
fakes remorse which causes Illyria to turn into Fred again, and Gunn kills
Fred, which is all part of his Plan ...
Chapter 2:
... to obtain a Fred- and internal conflict-free Illyria, who should then do
his bidding and use her time-shifting abilities to move time back to before
everything went wrong. But Illyria has her own idea of resolution: end time at
all. That's fine with Gunn, because it still fits his Plan.
Chapter 3:
Illyria has turned into a monster, murdering left and right. Betta, Spike and
Wesley bombard her with memories of Fred to subdue her enough to allow W&H to
drop a building on her. Connor dies in a fight with Gunn, and by now almost
everybody of the living is dead.
Chapter 4:
Wesley, under the pretext of warning the armies of W&H to keep Angel alive at
all cost in the battle to come, suggests a way out to Angel. Angel and Gunn
fight, and Angel makes sure he is killed ... forcing W&H, who need him alive
at any cost, to reset time to the fight in the alley at the end of Season
5. So they are back in the fight against the forces of W&H, with the rain
pouring down on them, but they remember precisely what happened in L.A. in
hell. With Illyria's help they win the battle but Gunn is mortally
wounded. With W&H defeated, they want to raid the their medical supplies to
cure Gunn, but when they reach the place they find an empty lot with a sign:
"Doublemeat Palace Coming Soon". Gunn is in the hospital, and when Angel wants
to visit him he is beset by grateful L.A. citizens.
Chapter 5:
Angel and Nina dig into the mystery of the disappeared W&H building, but get
nowhere. There is some clean-up to do, a resurrected war lord or two to kill,
but with Illyria guarding Gunn in the hospital, Angel is free to go back to
heading his detective agency.
Kelley Armstrong,
Dave Ross,
George Freeman,
Angel -- After the Fall, Vol. Five, Aftermath,
IDW Publ.,
2009,
pp. 192.
Back to relative normalcy. Just naked female assassins, real angels, etc.
Chapter 1:
With the help of police detective Kate Angel sets up office in an abandoned
church, but it turns out his clientele consists solely of fans who want to
take a selfie with him. When Kate and Angel run into their first scantly clad
lady in real distress, they find the attacker is not a demon but a human with
gross habits. Then a sleek and glib pair turn up who offer them a job to
handle "apocalyptic fall-out". On the condition that the pair protect them
against bothering fans, Angel, Kate, and Connor accept.
Chapter 2:
Asleep in bed Angel is attacked by a naked female assassin. They fight but the
assassin sometimes strikes cat-like poses. She reveals that she owes a debt to
the lord of Sherman Oaks and it is he who wants Angel dead. She has an idea to
pay her debt and at the same time get the angry demon lords out of Angel's
hair. In the meantime they begin to find out what apocalyptic fall-out is. The
reversal of the L.A.-to-hell situation has been faulty, leaving some people
mentally damaged, and it is our trio's task to find them and bring them to
St. Luke Hospital.
They are joined by Gwen, who is fully electric again and distrusted by
everybody. Next Angel introduces the fifth member of the team, Dez, jaguar
woman and naked assassin. Then Angel and Dez kill the lord of Sherman Oaks,
making it look as if some other lord had hired Dez to kill him in such a way
that the blame would fall on Angel. This set up the demon lords against each
other, leaving Angel and Dez alone. In St. Luke Hospital Angel is addressed by
a patient with a message from ... Cordelia.
Chapter 3:
Gwen has been secretly following Dez and finds her changing a caught human
into a gorilla. Angel distrusts the hospital and sets up facilities of their
own. Kate and Gwen capture Dez in jaguar form. The patient, James, claims to
be an angel and needs help to rid the hospital from an demon infestation, and
Angel obliges. The sleek pair gives Angel a new job: cooperating with
James.
Chapter 4:
The team realizes that the oddly behaving people are actually animals that
have turned semi-human in the reversal of the Hell moment, which means Dez is
innocent. James's mission is to bring back the potentates, sent to L.A. for
apocalyptic fall-out correction, but who have been indulging in random demon
clean-up. Lots of confused fighting ensues.
Chapter 5:
Angel, Kate and James find the potentates killing humans as well. They step
in, fight, and in the middle of the fight a representative of the White Hats
appears, and explains that the potentates have taken the opportunity to also
kill some people who in the near future are going to commit heinous
crimes. Neither Angel nor Kate want to have any of this. The potentates stop
fighting and concentrate on reverting Dez to her jaguar state, calling her an
abomination. Connor fights them and Angel and Kate joins him, but Jams points
out that Dez's spell is already fading, and they don't need to bother. They
however loudly claim the right to do continue doing such things in the future,
and now the team starts to fight them in earnest. Seeing that the only way to
make Angel change his mind is to kill him, they retreat. The sleek pair, who
are probably the Colorless Hats, evaluate the situation and proclaim him
master of his own rogue team, asking him: "What will you do with them?". He
answers: "Fight for what's right."
Brian Lynch,
Franco Urru,
Angel -- After the Fall, Vol. Six, Last Angel in Hell,
IDW Publ.,
2009,
pp. 192.
Vol. Six consists of four separate stories, detailing the adventures of several
persons just after the return of L.A. to relative normality.
Chapter 1, Become What You Are:
Gunn, heavily wounded in Hell L.A. is in a hospital in a coma, and visitors
get fewer and fewer. But when a demon tries to kill him, it turns out Illyria
has been guarding over him from distance. Non, ex-lord of Beverly Hills,
appears and heals Gunn, in the hope of obtaining a promising evil ally, but
post-hell Gunn wants nothing of it. Illyria steps in and kicks Non out,
although she had to punch out a dragon to do so. They hand in Non to the
Mosaic Rehabilitation Center for the Supernatural, and Illyria takes her first
driving lesson to get in touch with her human/Fred side.
Chapter 2, Drusilla:
Just before L.A. is thrown to hell, Drusilla is found heavily wounded in the
streets, with wounds that suggest somebody tried to stake her with a sword,
unsuccessfully of course. (She describes the incident in the comic "Spike",
#4, pg 23.) Given her behavior she is admitted to the psychiatric
wing of a hospital. While doctors are discussing her condition, she starts
killing off staff left and right, seduces the head psychiatrist, steals her
folder, and kills a lady psychiatrist, in whose handbag she finds a revealing
blue dress. She changes into it, sticking the folder in her belt.
In her new attire she continues her rampage, but the scenes more and more
remind her of her past and cause visions. The remaining doctors start a
therapy session, but Drusilla is getting visions of L.A. going to hell,
drawing dragons and masses of people marching on the hospital. She admonishes
the doctors "to run", but while they are interpreting her drawings in
psychiatric terms, L.A. goes to hell. The doctors flee the advancing masses,
leaving Drusilla to be molested by them. As a good psychiatric patient Drusilla
withdraws into her own fantasy world, her family home in Victorian England,
where she plays with dolls and wonders "How long will this last?". As the
Buffy wikia points out, a name plate in the fantasy shows that Drusilla's
family name is Keeble.
Chapter 3, Boys and their Toys:
Groo informs Angel that the Flaming Sword is missing, and that someone may be
out there wanting to kill Angel with it. While his staff are discussing a plan
to locate it, Connor has already found it on the Internet: it is in the
auction room of a Sci-Fi and Fantasy Con. At the con Angel and Groo meet Spike,
who came to watch the movie "Last Angel in Hell", and Jeremy, who is dressed as
a wizard. Angel receives a death threat and Jeremy, always with the loopy
ideas, suggest that they all dress up as somebody else, using the costumes
that are handed out for free. Spike dresses as Angel and Jeremy as a Kung-Fu
master. But the costumes are handed out by two villains who possess the
head of Janus, which will change the wearers of the costumes into the real
items, thus providing said villains with an army of supermen. Groo locates
the people of the death treat, and proclaims: "All slaying must take place off
convention premises." Then the villains activate the Janus spell and Spike
turns into Angel. Fortunately for the reader, the highlights in his hair stay
white (and those in Angel's hair are brown). Much confused fighting
ensues, with aliens from the planet Skrum, and a real demon sent to kill
Spike. Angel, still himself, tries to find the magic object, but fails in
the ruckus. Then he sees a small boy in the wizard costume Jeremy came in, and
asks him to do a locator spell. The spell works, Angel finds the Janus head in
his hands and crushes it, returning everybody to normal. Groo retrieves the
sword, and Angel and Spike leave, the latter musing on being the former.
Chapter 4, "Last Angel in Hell":
With one in every three people in L.A. being a script writer, somebody made
the trip of L.A. to hell into a movie, starring Nicholas Cage as "Angel
Cartwright", Jorge Garcia as "Gunn/Cordelia the Dragon", and Supervamp Lady as
"Spike"(!). Totally camp, totally a hilarious parody on Hollywood. Dating back
the first vampire to the dinosaur era, the movie finds Angel, cop and hero of
the underdog of L.A., in his wedding suit with his bride Sara (M.G.?). When
she opens her mouth it shows fangs, which he calls "spikes", and since then her
name is Spike. The wedding guests turn out to be a bunch of vampires and their
padre, using the unabridged version of the bible, sends L.A. to hell. After
some unsubtle plugs for Doublemeat Palace, Angel finds out guns don't kill
vampires, but then he gets help from Gunn and Fred, played by a black actress,
wearing an "Illyria industrial body armor". They find out Satan is holding a
Charity Ball where he collects souls for "soulbloode". Angel sneaks in but is
seduced by a woman, who turns out to be Spike, now Satan's girl
friend. Although Angel kills some body guards, he is thrown of a cliff. His
friends shoot the devil with a nuclear device, but the devil boasts that only
his Cursed Hell Dagger can kill him, only to find that it is missing. While
Angel vouches to single-handedly take down the devil Spike gives him a parting
hug, slipping the Cursed Hell Dagger into his pocket. Gunn, with fire from
his dragon form and Fred with her electric field, corner the devil, allowing
Angel to stab him with the CHD, all with neat texts like "I'm a vampire but
you suck", and "The devil is down, let's minimize his minions". Three month
later Angel presents his team with a pregnant Spike, while the ghost of Wesley
warns them for the coming of the Wolf, the Ram, and the Heart (sic!).
Joss Whedon,
Georges Jeanty,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 8.1, The Long Way Home,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
2008,
pp. ~100.
The rise and fall of "Twilight", a mysterious evil power, the nature of which
is not revealed until Angel & Faith, Vol. 9.3, "The Hero of His Own Story".
Season 8 finds Buffy heading an 1800+ slayer army, fighting the usual baddies.
Part 1:
Buffy's army, under remote control of Xander, attacks a castle in which
monsters house who have kidnapped and possibly killed humans. They kill the
monsters but find that their victims, dead indeed, were actually attacking the
monsters. These attackers wear a strange curve-and-line mark.
Meanwhile the US army investigates the remains of Sunnydale to find out how
Buffy destroyed it so nuclear-attack-like, and find a crazed-out Amy.
Part 2:
Giles, Buffy, and Andrew try to get the unruly slayers organized, each in
their own way and with varying success. When Buffy is distracted by a quarrel
with Xander, Amy, sent by the US army, captures her using magic confusion. She
ties Buffy up, gives her nightmares and then decides to kill her with a
dagger. Xander, recovered, barges in with a couple of slayers, and wounds Amy
with an arrow. The dagger breaks on Buffy's body, but Buffy remains in a sleep
from which only "a kiss of true love" can awaken her. Demons under Amy's
command attack the command center, and she proclaims that nobody can take her
on. Willow arrives and says (of course): "I'd like to test that theory."
Part 3:
Buffy's nightmares continue, but under the influence of Ethan Rayne they turn
into erotic dreams about her and Angel and Spike, chained together. Willow and
Amy fight, and Willow wins, but Buffy is still asleep, dreaming about a giant
mouse treadmill. Xander organizes an all-eyes-shut kissing session to wake
Buffy up and it works, thanks to an anonymous kisser. Willow does a spell to
find out where Amy came from, but it backfires and Willow and Amy get sucked
back to where Amy came from, the military installation under Sunnydale, where
they are met by Warren, still skinless but ready to take a surgeon's bone saw
to Willow.
Part 4:
When Warren was skinned by Willow in 6.21, Amy provided him with magical
protection, which she supports all the time. While Warren is torturing Willow
at the installation, Buffy's mystics are trying to reopen the portal through
which Willow and Amy disappeared. The army know that Buffy + army will follow,
and Buffy + army know they are expected. The army has installed a giant laser
gun, but when the mystics get through and the laser gun fires, it turns out
Xander has installed a large parabolic mirror and the laser beam is reflected
right back, making mince meat of a large part of the military
installation. Buffy confronts Amy but gets paralyzed by her. Willow makes Amy
see her mother instead of Buffy, which confuses her, and Xander throws in a
flash grenade, ending the fight. Amy and Warren flee through a portal, and
Buffy and general Voll have a talk, ending with the general saying "You are at
war with the human race", to which Buffy answers: "Oh ... kay...".
The Chain:
The history of a nameless slayer, told as memory fragments as she lies heavily
wounded or dying far underground. This is the linearized version:
When all Potentials are activated by Willow in 7.22, a nameless girl is
swept off her feet and ends up unconscious on the ground of the
schoolyard. But when she comes around, she sees a run-away truck and whisks
away her friends from in front of it and stops the truck. She is enlisted,
trained, and found to be a good substitute Buffy, to serve as a decoy. Her
task will be to prevent the underground army of Yamanh of Hoht to rise to the
surface. She descends into the earth, and after being interrogated in the nude
by the head of the Slime-Slug Clan and with the help of a faerie called Tink
she is admitted to the lowest region, where she finds Yamanh. They fight and
he slays her, but when he thinks he has won, an army of slayers descend on him
and his ilk, brought in by Tink and her folk.
Brian K. Vaughan,
Georges Jeanty,
Joss Whedon,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 8.2, No Future For You,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
2008,
pp. ~100.
Season 8 finds Faith freelancing as a killer of demons, especially those who
are after children.
Part 1:
After a failed children rescue operation Faith is approached by Giles who
tells her forthright that he needs her to take out a rich English rogue slayer,
Lady Genevieve Savidge. Giles puts her through a lady training, and stops when
she has the right British attitude.
Part 2:
Faith, as Lady Hope, a viscount's daughter, bluffs her way into a society party
revolving around Lady Genevieve, but is spotted and watched by the Lady's
riding master Roden and his two evil stone giants. While Faith is gathering
courage on the balcony, Lady Genevieve shows up and the two of them get on
marvellously, chatting away about an Amy Winehouse concert, when she is pulled
into the air by the two gargoyles. She takes a hair pin out of her hairdo, and
deflates one of the gargoyles, so all drop to the ground. The second gargoyle
lifts her up again to gargoyle height and a third arrives. Faith taunts them
both, and in their frenzy they both storm at her and collide in mid air,
reducing themselves to a bunch of rubble, falling to the ground and taking
Faith with them.
Faith comes around in a bedroom in Lady G.'s mansion and is introduced to Lady
G.'s plan to kill Buffy, whom she sees as a threat to her coronation as Queen
of the Slayers.
Part 3:
While Faith is fretting that Giles wanted her to kill Genevieve who wants to
kill Buffy and therefore sent her just to protect his Golden Girl, i.e. Buffy,
Genevieve explains to Faith that Buffy deserves to be assassinated, not
mundanely killed or murdered. Genevieve and Faith get chummier by the minute,
having a bath in a luxury bath tub. Rather than taking Genevieve to Buffy,
Roden uses a spell to transport Buffy by portal from the castle in Scotland to
the mansion. Here we get a first glimpse of something that was kept secret in
the TV series: Buffy has a weak stomach and throws up when transported through
portals or interdimensionally. Genevieve attacks immediately, but Buffy wins
and as she is about to kill Genevieve, Faith jumps from behind the arras and
pushes Buffy through the window into the swimming pool, saving Genevieve's
life. Faith tries to argue with Buffy but Buffy sees her as part of the evil
slayer's club she seems to have landed in. Fighting in the pool seems to
sober them up a bit, but then Buffy gets transported back to HQ by Willow. She
arrives barfing, and in the mansion Genevieve comes at Faith with a battle
axe...
Part 4:
Faith kicks Genevieve right over the swimming pool through the roof of the
conservatory where the fight continues amidst statues of Lady G. Genevieve
rams the battle axe into the stem of a tree and uses the handle as a
springboard to launch herself at Faith. Outside, Giles, unable to reach Faith
calls HQ and gets Buffy on the phone who chews him out for his underhanded
action with Faith. Still fighting, Faith lands in the rose bushes, recoils,
and kick Genevieve high into the air. She lands with her back on the battle
axe, and is dying. Faith orders Roden to heal Genevieve, but he refuses saying
that since she won, she and not Genevieve is clearly the right person to
eliminate Buffy, offering her a black book with the Twilight emblem on the
cover. Faith refuses and Roden has her strangled by another gargoyle but the
gargoyle is
stabbed in the back by Giles with an oversized pair of garden scissors. The
gargoyle disintegrates and Giles uses a spell from the Twilight book to make
Roden explode. Back in his apartment Giles and Faith realize that they have
both fallen out with Buffy, and they come up with the idea to become the
Avengers, John Steed and Emma Peel. On a lone mountain top Lieutenant Molter,
arriving by helicopter, reports to Twilight, floating in the air, that "his
goons have failed and Buffy is still alive", but he explains that not Buffy
but the goons were the target. Ms. Molter is nonplussed. (Note: Lieutenant
Bennett A. Molter is an author of books about WWI airforce.)
"Anywhere But Here":
Puzzled by what "Twilight" may mean, Buffy and Willow set off to consult the
demon Sephrillian who sports four TV screens for eyes and who knows everything
because he jumps between times. Since it is quite a journey and to distract
Buffy while she is flying with Willow, they play the fantasy game "Anywhere
But Here", where we learn that Buffy's favorite movie star is Daniel Craig and
Willow's is Tina Fey. Sephrillian lives at the top of an endless staircase
that starts in a shed on the English coast, guarded ("minded") by Robin to
keep it stable. Willow and Robin greet each other as old acquaintances
although they have not yet met but know they will have; this is what you get
with temporal displacement and so. The staircase is infinite but fortunately
Sephrillian meets them halfway, although "fortunately" may not be the right
word, since he attacks them right away. Still Willow poses the question "What
does Twilight mean" and Sephrillian has the answer: "The death of
magic". Sephrillian declares them liars because their heads are not made to
contain the truth. To prove what liars they are, he shows them how Buffy
acquired the money for her organization (not from a donation but from robbing
a vault in Switzerland), what Willow lied about (having an affair with Aluwyn),
and how Dawn lied about how she became 25 meters tall (not by sleeping with
her boy friend Kenny but with his room mate Nick while drunk). Then
Sephrillian comes with his conclusion: he now knows the weaknesses of mankind
and welcomes the coming war. Buffy begins: "Hail Mary..." (thanks to
https://usaerklaert.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/hail-mary-oder-warum-kluge-damonen-american-football-gucken/
for explaining the cultural reference), Willow conjures up a magic sword and
throws it to Buffy who decapitates Sephrillian. The whole place blows up, and
since they probably never left the shed, they are back outside with
Robin. They think Robin will hate them for it, but she is actually grateful to
them for giving her some free time until her next assignment.
Drew Goddard,
Georges Jeanty,
Joss Whedon,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 8.3, Wolves at the Gate,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
2008,
pp. ~100.
Vol. 8.3 starts with a single episode:
A Beautiful Sunset
Buffy is depressed: Simone Doffler is besmirching the good name of slayers,
she reminds herself of her "Thomas Crown Affair", her relation with Willow is
"complicated", there are kiss issues with Satsu, and Dawn is getting drunk in a
Scottish barn; in short, life sucks. To cheer Buffy up Xander has found her a
vampire nest and Buffy jumps in enthusiastically, but finds herself followed
by Satsu, who lands on her face in the Scottish mud. Buffy tells her she
(Satsu) is in terrible danger. Why? Because she is in love with Buffy, and
that never ends well. She is immediately proven correct by Twilight diving from
the air and smashing Buffy into a tomb. Satsu attacks Twilight but is defeated
instantly. Twilight and Buffy fight and although Buffy is losing she continues
to loud-mouth him; they seem to know each other very well. Twilight tells her
that one slayer at the time is OK, that with her slayer army she has upset the
natural order, and that it is his task to correct that. He then disappears
into a Beautiful Sunrise. Satsu and Buffy recover in sick bay, and when Xander
points her to the field where hundreds of happy slayers are exercising she says
"Yay me".
Wolves at the Gate, Part 1: The Tokyo Affair.
Xander and Renee are standing watch shoulder to shoulder as they see wolves
arrive at the gate. Buffy and Satsu have an intimate night in bed, and decide
to keep it a secret. And Willow brings in Andrew flying. When she lands she is
attacked from behind by a Japanese punk girl. Xander and Renee see the wolves
turn into (Scottish) fog, Andrew sees wolves running down the hallway, and
all three barge in on Buffy and Satsu. Then Dawn peeks through the skylight,
and Willow comes falling through the roof and says: "Why are you naked in bed
with Satsu?". Now Buffy is seriously pissed. The fog changes into a
Japanese op who then steals the scythe. They fight, the op gives the scythe
to a panther which runs off with it and hands it to the Japanese punk
girl. Holding war counsel the Scooby gang realizes that there is only one
vampire with the ability to turn into wolves, fog, etc., Dracula. Xander sets
out by helicopter to go and talk to him, with Renee keeping an eye on him in
view of past events. Dracula greets him: "Hello, manservant."
Part 2:
An old man is sitting in a despondent mood in a Transylvanian mansion but when
he sees a heli land on a nearby hill, he puts the bottle aside and transforms
himself into the well-known and vigorous Dracula. In talking with Xander he
realizes that some Japanese, in a game of Pai-Gow, cheated him out of some of
his powers. In Tokyo a Japanese slayer, Aiko, gets Buffy a name: Toru, the guy
who stole the scythe, a name she obtained by dismembering a large number of
Kabuki demons. While Buffy + army is flying (by military plane) to Tokyo Aiko
tracks Toru. But Kumiko, the Japanese punk girl, and Toru use the scythe and a
red lens to de-slayer Aiko, and Toru kills her.
Part 3:
The world wakes up to a horrible sight: the dead body of Aiko, strung up on a
Tokyo department store. Buffy is devastated and sits freezing and holding a
wake over Aiko's body in a temple, when a time-zone-confused Dracula steps in
and offers a spell to contain vampires who can change into fog. While the
enhanced Japanese vampires prepare a giant version of Toru's lens, Buffy et
al. capture such an enhanced vampire, using Renee as bait.
The vampire tells them that Toru wants to
de-activate all slayers, using the giant lens and the scythe. While her crew
make plans to fight the enhanced vampires, Buffy points out that only one thing
matters: getting the scythe back. For that they need a big distraction, which
Willow is going to provide: using a lengthy spell she transports the 25 meter
tall and proportionally wide Dawn into the middle of the vampires who flee
like mad. Buffy + crew walk into Toru's lair where he stands with the scythe
in his hand. Buffy walks up to him and grabs the scythe, but Toru and scythe
turn out to be projections. Then the real Toru steps forward with the real
scythe and kill Renee with it.
Part 4, Conclusion:
While Renee lies dying and Xander is devastated, Buffy tries to protect Xander
and Renee, but Dracula takes over, sending Buffy away to get Willow so she can
do a spell that Dracula knows to take the Dracula powers away from the
enhanced vampires. Willow is fighting Kumiko in mid-air and she discovers
that Kumiko and she are both disciples of the Snake Goddess. Buffy, telling
herself that the skyscraper she is standing on is just a diving board, dives
at them and stakes Kumiko, who beside a witch is also a vampire and so
susceptible to staking. Unfortunately Willow has lost consciousness and they
are falling towards the ground. In the meantime 25 meter tall Dawn tramples
the hordes of the enemy until she is met by a mechanical copy of herself,
Mecha Dawn, a sight not seen since Godzilla. With instructions from Andrew,
Dawn defeats the Mecha Dawn. Since Kumiko is missing Toru himself starts
casting the spell to take away all slayer powers, while his side-kick Raidon
directs the activation of the giant lens from HQ. Before Toru can finish the spell Dracula rushes in, wrestles
Toru to the ground, and sends the scythe flying for Satsu to catch. In the very
last moment Willow wakes up and transforms the sidewalk into a water basin
cushioning their fall. They catch Satsu and the scythe, and try to stake Raidon
but he turns into fog. Dracula instructs Willow how to use his sword to direct
the spell into the giant lens, greatly magnifying the effect.
Instantly all enhanced vampires are reduced to
normal vampires and Buffy et al. start enthusiastically killing them. Raidon
comes after Buffy but Willow stakes him from behind. Toru attacks Dracula but
the latter hacks off Toru's hands and feet, leaving it to Xander to perform the
final kill. As night falls, Dracula returns to his ship, Willow renews her
relationship with the Snake Goddess, Buffy and Satsu spend a last night in
bed, and Xander scatters Renee's ashes.
Joss Whedon,
Fray,
Dark Horse,
2003,
pp. ~120.
In a hell close, close by in the 23rd century two Old ones discuss the rumour
that for the first time in 200 years a slayer has been called. Her name would
be Melaka Fray and they decide to send Urkonn to deal with her.
Chapter One, Big City Girl:
Fray is reminiscing how bad her day was and stayed: Gunther had ordered her to
grab some jewels in the uppers, but Ruebrin's gang had shown up and tossed he
from the roof. She had broken her big fall into lots of smaller ones but she
had not landed on her feet.
As she comes too she is picked up by genetically, electrically and chemically
enhanced goon overseen by one of Ruebrin's minions. The goon tries to rob
her of the loot, but she kicks him in the groin and he collapses. Both Fray
and the minion grab their guns and point them at each other. "It appear we
have a stand-off", the minion says, but Fray answers: "I don't have a
stand-off" and zaps at him with her flash gun, blinding him. She then tells
him in no uncertain terms to tell Ruebrin to lay off of Gunther's operations.
Hopping from flying car to flying car Fray arrives at Gunther's place, where
she is welcomed by his midget butler, who ushers her into the reception room,
the floor of which is the ceiling of Gunther's aquarium. Fray tells him she
wants hazard pay, but to her surprise he pays her far more than she had
expected. She says OK but warn me next time it is a tough grab, and he says
next time come wearing a skirt.
But Fray is suspicious: a month's wages for a morning's work. On her way home
she has an encounter with a police officer, her sister Erin, who tells he that
she thinks that Fray has just stolen an amulet from the wall safe of a senator
and sold it to Gunther. But Fray huffs off to Versi (Riverside) in the big
city of Haddyn (Manhattan), where she lives. She is greeted by a little
motormouth by the name of Loo, who tells her that there was a bald man
looking for her and saying she was chosen.
The man shows up and proclaims in prophetic terms that she will end the
scourge. Loo remarks that the man smells of gas as he sets himself on fire,
shocking even Melaka. To prevent the whole warren getting up in flames, she
grabs him and dives into the river with him. Sorely pissed she goes home,
sighs that it was a bad day but at least it is over, only to be met by a Fyarl
demon at her doorstep.
Chapter Two, The Calling:
Fray recoils from Urkonn the Fyarl demon, but he grabs her and they fight.
Fray gets hold of her ray gun, and threatens him. He laughs it of, saying that
bullets cannot harm him, but Fray zaps him and he goes down. But not for
long. He picks up Fray and throws her through the wall, but she pulls him with
her. While falling she turns the two of them around so she lands on him,
driving him deep into the ground. There they talk, and it turns out that he
was sent to train her. In answer to her question why he threw her through the
wall, he says "I got angry".
Urkonn explains to her that she is the Slayer and that she has to fight
vampires, but making her understand takes some doing: the decaffeinated vampires
of the time, called "lurks", are no threat, just a nuisance. He asks her after
her slayer dreams, but Melaka does not know what he is talking about, which
puzzles him. Then Melaka gets an order from Gunther to steal a totem from
a museum. Just when she has angled the statue out of the vault, the alarm goes
off, and Melaka is certain it wasn't her. On her way out she finds the cause
of the alarm, a fat vampire feasting on the guard. She fights the vampire and
throws him into a glass showcase covered with steel mesh for the
night. He is still moving and she regrets that she does not know yet how to
kill him. And when she meets Urkonn on a roof top, she asks him "So, what's a
slayer".
The alarm has attracted the police, among them Erin and her partner
Broder. Erin is complaining about her sister Melaka's criminal career, but
Broder objects that he has seven sisters of whom two are in jail. (The drawing
shows the Chrysler Budding extended with a kind of inverted pyramid...) Down in
the warren Loo is telling tall stories about Melaka, how she will stomp
everybody who wants to harm Loo and that she is a thief! "Cool", her friends
say.
Chapter Three, Ready, Steady:
Melaka. sleeping in a hammock, dreams of when she and her twin brother Harth
stole meat at the butcher's. In her dream he told her off for stealing, fell
off a roof and she rescued him, calling him a "scaredy" and happy to bring
home the food. But at the end of her dream she is met by a vampire, Icarus,
saying "You are the food".
She wakes up screaming, only to look in the face of Urkonn, saying "Time to
train". On their way to the delivery to Gunther, Urkonn explains to her how
slayers came to be in this dimension, but when she asks: "What is a dimension"
he just growls. To reach Gunther they jump off the train at a station where
the train does not stop. Gunther and Urkonn growl at each other, and Melaka
hands over the totem to Gunther, Erin and Broder watching over a subwave
tap. Broder says: "You wanted to come here to show me your sister is a thief?"
but Erin says: "No, I wanted to be wrong." Gunther orders his butler to
tell their collector they have his prize.
Urkonn starts training the Slayer by throwing girders at her, and in the
subsequent history lesson she asks what became of the last Slayer, to which he
answers: "I don't know, but the story goes that there was a huge battle
between all demons and the Slayer and her allies. The demons were all pushed
through a portal, the portal was closed, and with the vampires gone no
slayer was called any more, until you. You were called yesterday." Melaka
denies that she was called, but then realizes that the guy who set himself on
fire was actually her (now late) watcher. Urkonn agrees that the watchers were
insane, but they were also right, the monsters did come back.
The collector turns out to be Icarus, but he is just a middleman for a demon
(= speaks in clunky bubbles), who informs after Melaka's health.
Arriving home Melaka and Urkonn find Loo there complaining that Kettie Rawls
has called he a freak, and upon seeing Urkonn Loo has only one question: "Do
you have candy?" (Melaka is living at number 333.) They bring Loo back to her
parents' tavern, where Melaka teaches Kettie Rawls, a 42 years old hoodlum, a
lesson, which results in much broken furniture. The other patrons of the
tavern join in the fight, and Melaka shouts to Urkonn: "This is training!"
But the fight ends abruptly when Icarus enters.
Chapter Four, Out of the Past:
Seeing Icarus Melaka remembers how he bit and killed Harth when he caught them
stealing meat a couple of years ago. And she remembers more, how she has killed
Icarus a hundred times and the memory freezes her, and Icarus throws her off a
building (again). Icarus comes after her and wants to bite her, but Urkonn
interferes and knocks Icarus out. Melaka shouts "Kill him", but he refuses and
throws him into the water. Melaka collapses and remembers how she landed in
hospital after her previous encounter with Icarus, and insists he should have
killed him.
Icarus reports to his master, who has the totem displayed. Urkonn also reports
to his masters, the Old ones Boluz and Vrill, that "the girl" has no slayer
instincts, just slayer strength. It appears that the Slayer must be prepared
to stop a leader who will unleash havoc on all their worlds. Melaka
takes a shower from a water pipe she has disconnected, and when Urkonn comes in
he is amazed that she isn't even limping. She tells him Icarus killed her twin
brother Harth. Melaka wondered why Icarus came for her and knew her name, to
which Urkonn answers: "The word is out, you are the Slayer". Melaka visits
Gunther to get info on Icarus, but Gunther has sold her out to the police and
Erin arrests and stuns her. The party gets attacked by hordes of vampires,
which wakes up Melaka, and she begins by pulling vampires off Erin but a
vampire knocks her out with a heavy jack.
Icarus dumps the unconscious Melaka at the feet of his master. When she comes
to she is greeted by Harth sitting on a make-shift throne and saying in a
demon voice: "Miss me?"
Chapter Five, The Worst of It:
Harth explains that Icarus bit him he had bitten him back, and suddenly he
knew everything from the earliest memories of the world and all the
Slayers. Melaka realizes that Harth has gotten her slayer knowledge, heritage,
and memories. And Harth reveals his Master Plan, to open a gateway to bring
back all demons to earth. For this he made Melaka steal through Gunther all
the artifacts he needed for the gateway. Harth casually flicks Melaka away and
into his throne, which collapses and takes Melaka with it into the sewers.
When Erin comes home she finds Melaka there, wet and miserable.
Erin is shocked and disbelieving what Melaka tells her, that she is the Slayer
and Harth is an undead vampire with slayer memories.
But Erin keeps an open mind and tells Melaka she will not stop her.
Sailing on a motorbarge on the waters around Haddyn,
Melaka picks up Urkonn on the way to her house, where they find the place
trashed: Urkonn was not the only one who had been looking for her.
And amidst the rubble they find the broken body of Loo, and Melaka decides it
is time to make war, her hair pinker than ever.
Chapter Six, Alarums:
With the voice of a watcher in her ears Melaka carries the body of Loo to the
local tavern, puts it down and enters, scythe in her hand. But the dozen or so
tavern folk are only luke-warm interested in her war speech. Harth, on the
other hand, is receiving loud cheers from an assembly of thousands of lurks
and demons, with his war slogan "I'll bring hell back home to you".
Walking along the river Melaka and Urkonn evaluate the events in the tavern,
mainly in sarcastical terms, when Melaka hears a girl being attacked by lurks,
and decides to start her war on lurks right here.
She immediately discovers her talent with the scythe, staking and decapitating
lurks left, right, and center.
Melaka's rampage sends shock-waves both through the police and through Harth's
world. Erin's boss Broder starts wondering where her loyalty lies, and Harth
suspects that it was Icarus' actions that pushed his sister into this frenzy.
To exonerate himself Icarus sets out to "end the threat", with Harth calling
after him: "I want the body".
Chapter Seven, The Gateway:
Challenging Melaka in a street in Haddyn, with Urkonn as an observer, Icarus
taunts her, asking her what she has got besides a shiny new axe. Her answer,
"Faith", is underlined by a heavy flying car falling straight from the
sky, crushing Icarus.
The hatch opens and out climbs Erin, declaring
"That's for my brother, dickhead".
Taking stock of the situation the three realize that tonight Harth will open
the gateway from hell, causing the destruction of everything. Melaka asks
Erin for help for the coming fight, but she is embroiled with her boss and the
whole police corps. Only a dozen and a half more or less able bodies from the
tavern folk turn up, with arms, but while they are preparing to make a last
stand, Erin arrives with the cavalry, police officers who have seen the light.
Then the vampires attack by the thousands, woken from their lethargic state
by Harth's magic chants. Melaka's army fights for all it's worth, but does not
do enough damage. It looks as if the war is lost, and then the Gateway breaks
open and in comes Harth, riding on a single scale of a gargantuan snake. Mel
hooks up to Erin's flying armed scooter to be taken high up to fight the
monster, but it flicks Melaka off the scooter right into its mouth.
Chapter Seven, All Hell:
ZZ
Joss Whedon,
Karl Moline,
Jeph Loeb,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 8.4, Time of Your Life,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
2008,
pp. ~100.
This volume takes place partly in Scotland and in New York in the present and
partly in Haddyn (Manhattan) two centuries in the future, which makes it
awkward to summarize. One is tempted to write things like "At the same time
two hundred years in the future...". There are no classical unities in these
tomes... I'll linearize; this is a summary, not literature.
Part 1:
Buffy et al. are eating Scottish-Chinese take-out in HQ, with Willow reporting
about a mystical message saying that the scythe must be found in New
York, while it is not missing at all. Leah bursts in calling everybody into
the woods, where Dawn has turned from a giant into a centaur. Warren shows his
weapon of Buffy destruction to Twilight. Buffy and Willow fly to New York,
with Buffy getting more and more excited. They are met by Kennedy, and Willow
explains temporal anomalies to the New York crew with Buffy off to a
mysterious appointment. Buffy returns from her date in a revealing party
dress, and senses danger, but before she can change into something less
comfortable, she is replaced by a horrible monster -- finding herself, scythe
in hand, fighting in a weird environment with a similar woman, equally scythe
in hand, who calls her a "lurk". In Scotland centaur Dawn and Xander see
Warren's weapon hit the HQ castle.
Part 2:
Xander races into the ruins which are engulfed in green flames, where he finds
Rowena leading the evacuation through the tunnels. The flames turn into
cobra-faced soldiers and the situation becomes untenable, but centaur Dawn
comes barging in and rescues Xander on her back. They are pursued by the green
flame army.
In 23rd century New Haddyn (Manhattan) the half-slayer Melaka Fray and her
sister Erin are chasing a van with vampires and monsters, and while fighting
them discuss their brother and second half-slayer Harth and a mysterious dark
old woman with whom he seems to conspire. They read in an old book about a
place where the old woman appeared, so they set out to investigate. Melaka
finds a horrible monster there, and while she fights it, it is replaced by
Buffy in party dress. They fight but Buffy recognizes the moves, understands
the situation and convinces Melaka to stop. At Melaka's home they talk with her
mentor/room mate/merman Gunther who is more interested in Buffy's party
underwear but still gives them some hints about the old woman.
Harth has a negative
philosophical discussion with the old woman who turns out to be Dark Willow.
Part 3:
Buffy and Melaka set out to catch a couple of vampires to squeeze them for
rumours, using a stolen flying car. They find a group but rather than
capturing them, Melaka helps the victims, when Dark Willow intervenes and
takes Melaka to a rooftop and offers to show her something: the end of her
world if Buffy returns to her world.
Buffy, alone in the car, crashes it, and
returns to Melaka's flat, where she is met by Erin. They have a chat about
sisters when Buffy is zapped in the back by Melaka. In Scotland Xander and
Dawn meet the Wood Men who try to scare them away, but they tell them they are
fleeing from something much scarier. In New York Willow consults with Aluwyn,
and she learns that she should not look into the future when she retrieves
Buffy. The suggestion is made that this consultation is during sex with Kennedy.
Part 4:
In Scotland Xander, Dawn, and the Wood People are helped by a coven of wiccans
who lift the magic off the Cobra soldiers, so they can now be beaten.
In Haddyn Melaka has brought Dark Willow with her, Buffy comes around, Harth
shows up and everybody has questions. While everybody accuses everybody of
lying, Melaka's pet spider monkey unties Buffy's bonds, and then Gunther barges
in. A fight ensues, and Buffy escapes. She hitches a ride on a flying car and
arrives at the rooftop only to find Melaka there. More fighting ensues, but
Buffy wins, only to find Dark Willow in her way. Buffy asks her why she has
forced her to come there and then shown her the way out, but Dark Willow says:
"It's a long story". Buffy sees her responsibility in her own time line, not
in Dark Willow's Haddyn, kills Dark Willow, and returns home, leaving Melaka
and Erin to puzzle over Dark Willow's motives.
"After These Messages ... We'll Be Right Back":
After an especially tiring bout of monster reduction Buffy drops like a log in
the first bed she sees (Xander's) and dreams. She dreams she's back at the
beginning of season two, and her Mom is trying to get her to school in
time. She meets old friends, Cordelia, a very un-dark Willow, and an old enemy,
Principal Snyder. Buffy and friends are off to a party but are stopped by
Giles who has dug up a prophecy saying that the Disciples of Morgala will
stage another apocalypse this night. Buffy finds the three disciples and
slays them in grand style, but Giles points out that the Disciples of Morgala
worship a dragon and that no dragon was seen. Buffy shrugs and continues on
her way to the party, when she meets Angel who congratulates her on defeating
the Five D.o.M. At the party it hits her that Angel said 5 and she killed 3.
She finds the other two creeps who leer at her and tell her she's too late and
they have already called Morgala using a big red jewel. Morgala shows up and his
teeth alone are almost as tall as Buffy. The dragon takes Buffy high up into
the air, Buffy finds the red jewel in the forehead of the dragon, and kicks it
out, which makes the dragon go poof. Buffy plunges to the ground, to wake up
to Xander's attempts to get her out of his bed. Buffy has a happy reunion with
her surprised friends, for whom she was asleep only for seconds.
Joss Whedon,
et al.,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 8.5, Predators and Prey,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
2008,
pp. ~100.
This volume consists of five separate entries, describing the downfall of the
slayers society at the hands of Twilight, the humans, and internal dissent.
Harmonic Divergence
Using her twin assets (two too cute doggies) Harmony charms and bites her way
into the life of TV producer A. (Andy) Dick. Tabloid photo's introduce the
public to the thrilling habits of vampires, who have learned to bite without
killing. Harmony gets her TV show, but is attacked on screen by a freshly
activated and unexperienced slayer. They fight and Harmony makes the slayer
fall into her own stake. The public sees the slayer as the mean attacker of
the harmless and charming vampire, and a TV host is quick to generalize that
to all slayers. Harmony's TV ratings go through the roof, much to the
dismay of Buffy c.s.
Swell
Refers to both the cuteness and the overwhelming numbers of the Vampy Cat Play
Friend.
In Tokyo a four-armed monster steals a bag from an armored truck, but Satsu
cuts off the arm holding the bag. After chucking the now three-armed monster
into the bay, she and Kennedy open the bag to find it contains a Vampy Cat
Play Friend, a vampire-like fluffy Japanese puppet. The next morning Satsu is
acting strange, all-out traditional Japanese girl available for marriage,
wearing a furisode, preaching marriage and babies, and ranting against slayers
and lesbians. Kennedy tries to calm her down but her concern leads to a fight,
Kennedy kicks Satsu in the stomach, and Satsu spits out the Vampy Cat, which
in the night has secretly crept into her. Kennedy cleaves it in two and it
is filled with green gore. Satsu c.s. follow the lead to the company where the
truck came from, and find that half a million Vampy Cats have just been shipped
on the Daikaiju (= Big Monster) to Buffy's location in Scotland. They land on
the Daikaiju, bringing some explosives, but before they can use them the
zombie crew attack them followed by thousands of Vampy Cats. They keep killing
them off, but then a huge Vampy Cat rises up, consisting of the rest of the
Vampy Cats, shouting "We are the Legion, Hail Twilight". Satsu lights a flare,
the super Vampy Cat mocks her "sparkler", but has misunderstood: the flare
alerts the submarine which Satsu had retrieved from some vampires who
had stolen it from the Koreans. The slayer crew of the sub launch two
torpedoes at the Vampy Cat ship which is blown to smithereens, including the
super Vampy Cat. Harmony grabs the opportunity to depict the slayers as mean
and abject toy killers.
Predators and Prey
Andrew alerts Buffy to the fact that he knows the location where one of Simone
Doffler's aids, Nisha, is held captive by a Ragna demon. They plan to free
Nisha, and hope she will lead them to Simone. Buffy and Andrew go on a road
trip by plane, train, and car, to a place near Milan, Andrew showering Buffy
with geek talk all the time, which captures Buffy's interest only when the
subject is Daniel Craig. They find Nisha, but it turns out to be a trap, first
engineered by Andrew to catch Simone but now used by Simone to lay her hands
on the Ragna demon. Simone stuns the Ragna monster and transports out, but
Andrew has put a tracer on the (metallic) monster, and the trail leads to a
very Italian island. A small girl explains that all the other inhabitants have
fled, and Buffy promises to have a talk with the bad lady. Under a lot of
awkward talk from Andrew they walk into the Opera House where Simone is
expecting them with her army of 16 slayers. Simone wants Andrew, Buffy refuses
of course, and they fight. Simone loses, but pulls a gun on Buffy. She is
about to shoot Buffy when a bunch of slayers burst in, Andrew's Italian squad,
alerted by Xander. Buffy disarms Simone, but when Simone thinks Buffy is going
to shoot her with it, Buffy shoots the stunning device on the Ragna, setting
it loose. They leave the island regretting that they have not been able to
retake the island for the inhabitants.
Safe
Faith and Giles find Courtney, a young slayer in distress but when she is
really threatened her slayer reflexes take over and she says that she is not
ready for the "slayer sanctuary" yet. Giles gets curious and they decide to
investigate. Courtney knows the slayer sanctuary is in Hanselstadt, and it is a
safe house where slayers can go who do not want to slay. It is run by Duncan
Fillworthe, an acquaintance of Giles, and they are invited for dinner, but
there are no slayers in sight. They are told they are all in the library, but
Faith and Courtney get suspicious and go off to said library, where they are
met by a monster which feeds them hallucinations. Faith fights a vampire and
fails to kill him, which fills her with regret, and Courtney is already full
of self-reproach over the divorce of her parents. And the monster feeds on
these feelings, as it did on the feelings of inadequacy of all the slayers
that went to the sanctuary. Giles discovers the secret but Duncan comes after
him with his cross bow. Faith, who has liberated herself of her feelings of
guilt and thus of the monster, kicks Duncan into the many arms of the monster,
while Giles is trying to protect Courtney. Duncan shouts at Giles that he is
sorry for leading all those slayers to the monster, which allows the monster
to devour him. Using the cross bow as a stake Faith then slays the monster. The
monster gone, the vampires rear their ugly heads again, Faith mobilizes the
villagers and Courtney, summarizing slayerdom in four words: "Aim for the
heart".
Living Doll
An old man looking like the doll maker of Pinocchio finishes a doll looking
like Dawn, under her protest. In Scotland Buffy c.s. is preparing to rid the
country side of the Judas Cradle vampire clad, whose presence may endanger
Dawn, who is missing. Dawn tries to stage an escape from the doll maker, but
fails, since the other dolls see him as their father. Buffy c.s. make quick
work of the Cradle clan (a total of 6 vamps) and Buffy + Xander go off into the
woods to find Dawn. Andrew poses as a student trying to rent a room in Kenny's
place, Dawn's tricewise ex boyfriend. While chatting amiably he puts four Yoda
statues in the corners of Kenny's room, which Willows uses as totems to
transport the contents of the room to HQ, using the Witchcraft 101 spell
"Erehavoteg". Kenny reveals his form as a tricewise and much explaining
follows. While Xander bemoans the fact that he can these days curse in
British English, Buffy and he find the doll maker's cottage with assistance
from a wood creature (they throw him into the shrubbery and he crashed
through a window of the cottage, thus revealing the location). Xander is shot
down by poisonous arrows shot by dolls and Buffy rushes towards the cottage
only to be bested by Kenny in his impressive tricewise form. The moment Dawn
says: "Sorry" the spell breaks and Dawn resumes her natural form. Dawn
apologizes for having had sex with Kenny's friend Nick, saying she isn't ready
for a relation yet. Kenny understands and they part friends. Dawn expects to
be chewed out by Buffy, but Buffy only says that she has a thousand soldiers
but only one sister, and she cannot keep her safe, and that that drives her
mad.
Harmony Bites:
Three very short items.
1. Harmony does audition for a role in "The House of Blues" but makes a
mess of it. On her way out she meets an ungrateful vampire she has sired a
few months ago, and who tries to stake her, but the stake has two sharp ends and
she stakes him. She calls Clem to drive her home, in spite of the fact that he
is out on a date. He obliges, but she bitches all the way, and in the end they
part company and go home separately, Harmony in the car planning to bite and
kill Clem when she comes home, Clem in subway and bus knitting a sweater. When
they meet in the dark house, Harmony bites, only to get her mount full of
sweater wool. They burst out laughing, make up, have a meal together, and
Harmony announces that she has got the role and that they are going to invite
a bunch of slayers for her first night.
2. In a short promotion gig for the Vampy Cat from Santorio Corp.,
Sachiko is bullied by three neighborhood nasties and is given a Vampy Cat by a
friendly neighbor to console her. When the bullies harass her again her Vampy
Cat fights like the devil and chases them away, making Sachiko very happy.
3. In a three-page promotion leaflet for "Harm", a glossy dedicated
entirely to Harmony we get the titles "Q&A with Harmony Kendall", "Slayers:
Why They Hate America", and "Top Three Slayer Public Enemies" (Buffy, Faith,
and Kennedy), an announcement for "Harmony Bites", Season Premiere, and an ad
for Vampy Cat.
Jane Espenson,
Georges Jeanty,
Joss Whedon,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 8.6, Retreat,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
2008,
pp. ~100.
A sorry story. The less said the better.
Part One
Buffy has a new magically protected HQ in Scotland. Giles and Faith get beaten
in Berlin and Andrew and his crew get beaten in Rome, and both converge by
low-life transport to the Buffy HQ, as do all demons of Scotland, attracted
by the magic emanations of the Buffy team. They fight, the HQ is bombed, and
Buffy c.s. flee in the Korean submarine, to Oz in Tibet. How do you flee to
Tibet in a submarine? You have Willow dumping it magically high in the
Himalayas.
Part Two
Willow has sent out mental images of the slayers drowning in the fall of the
Scottish HQ, which are picked up by Amy, but Twilight doesn't buy it, saying
that he knows Buffy well enough to know that she will not die without sending
out magic waves. A technician and Amy then determine that the slayers moved to
Mongolia. But they cannot find them there and they kill the technician. In
Tibet Oz tells the Buffy crew how he learned to drain his magic powers into
the earth to get rid of the wolf within him, and Buffy and the slayers decide
to do the same to stay off the Twilight radar.
Part Three
Andrew has the feeling that there is a spy among them, and starts documenting
the new life the slayers are leading, hoping to film dissent. He finds plenty
of dissent; none of the slayers like to be drained of their powers by doing
hard menial work. Then he realizes that actually the most loyal looking
person might be the spy, and he goes after Willow. But when he is reporting
his findings the Siamese cat goes poof, and it is clear that it was Amy all
the time.
Part Four
Now that their secret of their location is out, and with their magic drained,
the Buffy army turns to modern weapons, partly vandalized from the Korean sub,
and partly swapped with villagers for electronics from the sub. But Twilight
comes with a complete army, and the slayers have no chance against them, not
even when they roll a torpedo downhill against the tanks. They need their
magic badly and Buffy finds out that their magic, though drained, was
absorbed by three Tibetan Bon goddesses buried millennia ago. Buffy and Willow
summon them, and three huge terrifying garishly colored figures appear.
Part Five
The tables have turned, and the army flees. Buffy, Willow and Satsu take
a jeep out into the battle field to pick up a wounded soldier, who turns out
to be Riley, Buffy's undercover man with Twilight (and Buffy's mysterious date
in Time of Your Life, Part 1). But then it becomes clear that the goddesses do
not fight on Buffy's side, they just fight. While the army is rounding up
what is left of the slayers, the blue goddess picks Buffy up, looks her
straight in the eye, and drops her to the ground, knocking her out. When she
comes around, she is covered with snow. Looking around she finds that she is
high up in the air, seeing the goddesses and the army camp deep below her.
Harmony Comes to the Nation
As a guest on a TV show Harmony points out that vampires need to kill to
live, but slayers kill by choice.
Always Darkest
Buffy dreams that the priest Celeb marries her to skinless Warren in a chapel
full of creepies and Elvis, while Angel and Spike are making out in the aisle,
and she immensely enjoying being a bride. Next morning scowling at her
breakfast she says "Everybody die always" (a reference to her mode of speech
in "Beer Bad"). The strip ends with "Fin" rather than "The End", indicating
that this is a Film noir.
Brad Meltzer,
Georeges Jeanty,
Joss Whedon,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 8.7, Twilight,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
2008,
pp. ~100.
A very confusing story; I don't know what I can say.
Turbulence
High up in the sky, Buffy finds she can fly, and land even better than
Willow. It is clear she has her powers back and then some. Willow's powers are
also restored, in a burst of green light. Buffy apologizes to Oz for bringing
war to such a peaceful place, but Oz says she's not the first one to bring
war tot Tibet. Meanwhile the Bon goddesses run rampant. Willow and Buffy put
them back where the belong, in the earth, by digging a deep hole and just
punch and shove them into it, under the amazed eyes of the rest of the crew.
Chapter One: Buffy Has F#@$ing Superpowers
Indeed, the cat's out of the bag. While Xander tests Buffy's new superpowers
and the crew quarrels, Amy, Warren and a general spy on them, having
mysteriously penetrated the guarded perimeter. Willow finds dead slayers in
many places on earth. Faith, Giles, and Andrew suddenly find themselves in a
hall with comic-strip-like machinery, which Andrew recognizes immediately as
built by Warren. Conclusion: They are in Twilight's H.Q. Buffy finds Amy,
Warren, and the general, who tell her that Twilight has chucked them out, and
they want to join Buffy's side. Willow realizes that Buffy absorbs the powers
of those dead slayers, which makes Buffy freak out, and Andrew realizes that
the three of them have been swapped for three people from Twilight's crew,
allowing them to get inside the perimeter.
Chapter Two: The Master Plan
While Twilight is explaining the master plan to Giles and Faith, mainly using
his fists, Andrew sneaks away to pick up the comic book superhero outfit that
comes with the comic book machinery Warren and he designed, and attacks
Twilight with it, to no avail. Faith kicks Twilight in the groin, also to no
avail. As soon as Satsu has determined the location of the Twilight H.Q.,
Buffy enters it, flying through the concrete wall. She begins by mocking him
on the lame name Twilight, but then he takes off the mask and reveals himself
to be ... Angel. Next they start behaving like gods in the creation myth of
some primitive people: they fight, have sex, and ...
Chapter Three: Them F#@$ing ... create a new universe.
While Giles comments on the situation by expounding a flimsy theory about the
balance in the universe being disturbed and the universe reacting to it, our
merry couple climaxes (Buffy emits an empty text balloon) and they arrive in
an Arcadian landscape in matching garb. Giles may have had a point though,
since the creation of the new universe has made the present one superfluous,
and all kinds of demons begin to rain down on earth.
The Final Chapter: The Power of Love
Buffy is very suspicious of this new paradise universe and expects the orcs to
come over the hill any moment. That does not happen, but she discovers that
this universe adapts itself to their thoughts and moods. Worried about her
friends she desires to see them, a rip in the canvas allowing her to see
them appears, and they are sorely beset by monsters from all over the old
universe. Angel tries to convince Buffy that this is no longer her problem and
that she is meant for higher purposes, but she won't have any of it, and steps
through the rip, back into the old universe. Angel follows and together they
do serious damage to the monster population. But Willow points out that there
are innumerable many of them, and it seems they will have to fight forever,
when a grim-looking space ships lands, and Spike steps out, proclaiming that
he can end this Twilight crap.
Joss Whedon,
Georges Jeanty,
Scott Allie,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 8.8, Last Gleaming,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
2008,
In which almost everything goes to pieces.
Part One:
A short prequel, taking place before season 8 starts:
Angel, totally bemused, is catapulted to earth through the letter O of
HOLLYWOOD, and finds he has super-powers: he easily rights the damaged letter,
and without losing one breath rescues a crashing passenger plane. A talking
dog, a rescued talking flight attendant, and several talking park animals tell
him he is going to serve a higher purpose, but Angel protests. A bespoke
tailor sows him a cape and mask. Reluctantly Angels dons cape and mask, and
Twilight is born.
Another short prequel, taking place after 8.5 but before 8.8:
Spike arrives in London in his bug-manned space ship (actually an
intergalactic escape pod of the Senior Partners, which Spike liberated in
Spike (IDW) #6 & #7), reads about "terrorist Buffy Summers" and "Harmony's
Beauty Tips", sees the only photograph of Twilight in a newspaper, immediately
recognizes him as Angel, and rushes to Buffy's help.
Spike explains to Buffy, not mincing words, that she and Angel are in big
trouble because all incoming monsters are looking for the source of all magic,
and that he and the rest of the drew of his space ships is hurrying to get
there first. This object is the "Seed of Wonder", it is located under
Sunnydale, and it is in the custody of ... the Master.
Part Two:
Buffy, enjoying the shower in Spike's space ship, is nevertheless sorely
displeased they are going back to "Suckydale" as she puts it. Spike explains
that the Seed acts as a cork to keep creatures from other dimensions out, and
that if the incoming monsters remove it, all hell can come in. While Buffy is
having erotic dreams of Spike and Dawn is having horror dreams of the bugs
that man the space ship, Willow gets into a trance in which Aluwyn tells here
that if the Seed is destroyed rather than removed, magic disappears from this
world and no magical creatures, pleasant or nasty, can get in any more; this
includes Aluwyn... The first words Willow utters when she comes to are "We have
to protect the seed". Under Sunnydale, Buffy and the Master fight, and while
Spike distracts him, Buffy beats him into a pulp. Angel is fighting incoming
monsters on the bottom of the Sunnydale crater, when he is approached by an
Azlan-like magic lion, who claims to be a form of the Twilight universe, calls
him "Father" and demands him to take up his parental duties, or else.
Part Three:
While the Twilight-lion is working on the "or else" part at the expense of
Angel, Buffy and crew try to explain to the Master that they have not come to
remove the Seed (to help establish Twilight, as he thinks) but to defend it
and prevent its removal. Monsters drop in on them and Dawn get wounded. As the
enter the chamber of the Seed, the Master's power increases and Buffy's
decreases by what Willow calls "Buffy Kryptonite". Angel, though trying to
refuse the lion's orders, gets under its influence. On the space ship Warren,
Amy and the general, who have discovered that the seal under which Willow left
them is broken, assault one of the bugs, and escape. Xander takes Dawn to a
military field hospital where they meet the general who has broken up with
Warren and Amy because "their agenda does not fit with that of the US in this
conflict", and he suggests to Xander and Dawn to destroy the Seed to stop the
fighting. While Willow summons the power of the Seed to help protect it, Buffy
and Spike, having gone to the surface, fight monsters when Angel shows
up. Buffy and Spike greet him happily but are beaten to the ground: he is
Twilight again.
Part Four:
While Amy and Warren have eclipsed to Venice, where they are having coffee in
front of the San Marco, innumerable fights are going on on and under
Sunnydale, the parties being Buffy, Spike, Faith, Andrew, on the ground; Angel;
incoming monsters; Giles leading earth demons, who do not want incoming
monsters either; and Willow, the Seed, the Master, underground. Most fights go
badly for our friends. Angel kills the Master, again, and Buffy cheers, but
kicks him senseless. Giles has obtained the scythe from Faith, and wants to
get it to Buffy, since its power increases the nearer it gets to the
Seed. Xander advises him to throw it to Buffy, who is in lethal combat with
Angel, but Giles wants to "be there for Buffy", and steps between the
two. Angel snaps his neck, and upon seeing Giles dead Buffy in utter
despair grabs the scythe, destroys the Seed, and all magic is gone. The
incoming monsters retreat; Willow falls from the air; Warren's magic skin
dissolves as does he; the wiccans lose their magic and their connection to
Sunnydale;
Willow realizes that she will never see Aluwyn again; and the Twilight lion
slinks off like a beaten dog. Xander descends into the chamber of the Seed,
where he finds Buffy curled up in anguish, Giles dead, Angel catatonic, and
the scythe broken.
Part Five:
Months later Buffy is back at being a barrista, and is glad she is no longer
responsible for 1800 slayers. But many of those slayers are less glad, and
feel betrayed: no more new vampires to slay. Buffy has heart-to-heart talks
with Kennedy, Willow, and Dawn, with only Dawn understanding. Giles' will is
read, and it turns out he left almost all his possessions to Faith Lehane, and
the book Vampyr to Buffy, because she is The Slayer. Faith takes upon herself
the task of taking care of Angel, who is a mental wreck, thus starting the
series "Angel and Faith". But with the demise (?)
of Twilight the troubles are not over. Spike comes to warn Buffy that someone
is coming for her. When Buffy goes out patrolling, a bunch of disgruntled
slayers come looking for a fight with her. Buffy does not want to fight them
but they attack all at once, and Buffy disables then all with one complicated
move. And when the general steps out of an elevator on his way to retirement
he is shot by a freaked-out slayer with a machine pistol.
Commitment through Distance, Virtue through Sin:
We finally get some hints of what was behind Twilight.
Riley Finn, on a mission for Buffy, and his super-spy wife Sam drive
through the corn fields of Iowa to an old nuclear missile site. Meanwhile
Angel, half dressed as Twilight, is discussing the Twilight plan concocted by
Whistler, telling him he does not like it because it means pulling the wool
over Buffy's eyes. But Whistler claims it is "the only thing with a chance of
working", and Angel gives in. From the nuclear missile site the trail leads to
a (Pacific?) island, where Angel is awaiting them with his army, into which he
enlists Riley.
Jeff Parker,
Christos Gage,
Willow: Wonderland,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
2013,
pp. 124.
Season 9
Willow's magic-seeking walk-about.
Previous: Disenchanted of a world without magic, Willow joined Angel and Faith
[in "Family Reunion"] on a trip to Quor'toth, where she charged up a bit on
black magic, which was converted to (kind of) white magic with help from Angel.
Now the problem is how to get more magic and to get it to Earth.
Part 1:
Using the magic she picked up in Quor-Toth, Willow enters a realm in which
magic is still strong. She casts a tracking charm to find the source of the
magic and meets Marrak, a shady wizard stranded in this realm. They are
attacked by a young hiberrax, roughly the size of a 15 tons truck. Willow
freezes the beast but Marrak kills it. They meet the Caterpillar, who spouts
Lewis Carroll-isms, when the mother hiberrax arrives...
Part 2:
Mother hiberrax eats Marrak, but Willow uses a prey-inversion spell, which
causes the predator to explore while leaving the prey unharmed. They follow
the divination track, and after encountering a scary false portal and equally
scary nightmare birds, they come at the Witches Paradise, where they find
Aluwyn, the green snake goddess, and many other witches.
The witches repair the scythe, Willow uses it to cut a portal to our world,
but after allowing a short glimpse the portal closes again: it cannot be
established because there is no magic at the other side for a foothold.
Part 3:
The witches console Willow, and show her the women's paradise they have
created. She immerses herself more and more in the
coven, having magical adventures in sexual bliss. Marrak, possessing one of
the nightmare birds, enters her dream and reminds her of her friends stuck in
a world without magic.
Part 4:
Willow realizes that she has lost sight of her mission, and after some
discussion Aluwyn lets her go. She teams up again with Marrak, who is much
darker now, since he has been feasting on nightmare birds, but who also has
discovered the "Liminal" world, where magic is even purer. There Willow
becomes pure white, meets her black self, and finally sees Marrak for who he
is: Rack, her magic dope peddler from "Wrecked" [Buffy 6.10].
Part 5:
Rack gets hold of the scythe, but when he tries to use it to cut a portal to
Earth, the present universe itself blocks him, and Willow and Rack
duel. Willow wins on arguments but Rack wins on force. In the end the universe
sends both to their destinies/destinations, Willow to Earth, where she arrives
with her own magic but without restoring it to the world, and Rack to
parts unknown.
Georges Jeanty,
Karl Moline,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 9.1, Freefall,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
2013,
pp. ~130.
Part 1: Buffy parties heavily and is accosted by a demon charged
with collecting her study loan.
Part 2: Buffy meets officer Dowling, who chases vampires, and Severin, who
turns them into zompires.
Part 3: Buffy is stalked by a demon by the name of Eldre Koh, and Severin
gets out of hand.
Part 4: Buffy fights Severin, Spike and Eldre come to the rescue but
officer Dowling shoots Severin, who turns out to be on the payroll of Simone.
Slayer Interrupted: Buffy has slayer dreams and finds out she is pregnant.
Karl Story,
Andy Owens,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 9.2, On Your Own,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
2013,
pp. ~130.
Part 1: Buffy works out her pregnancy problems with Robin, the
son of the black slayer Nikki, decides to have an abortion, and asks Spike to
accompany her.
Part 2: Officer Dowling gets into a nasty fight with zompires and Buffy and
Spike come to the rescue.
Buffy looses an arm and finds out she's not pregnant but a robot, thanks to
Andrew swapping her to protect her.
Apart of Me, Part 1: Buffy chews out Andrew and officer Dowling finds
his partner zompired. Buffy-robot traces her human body, which is captured by
Simone.
Part 2: Buffy-robot finds Buffy-human, only to be caught and bound by the
latter.
Part 3: Buffy-robot manages to free herself and they fight, but are
interrupted by Simone with a machine gun.
Spike and officer Dowling come to the rescue and Simone flees for unknown
reasons.
Andrew swaps the minds of the Buffies and the now fully human Buffy hands in
her resignation as a barrista.
Dexter Vines,
Georges Jeanty,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 9.3, Guarded,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
2013,
pp. ~130.
Part 1: Buffy takes up a job as a body guard to a young Internet
billionaire, Theo Daniels, who claims Wolfram and Hart is trying to kill him.
Part 2: Theo has become a billionaire by setting up a site for demon social
networking, Tincan, but it has gotten out of hand and he now wishes to take it
down.
Part 3: Buffy, Kennedy, and Eldre help him, but Eldre sees profit in
cooperating with the demon world.
Part 4: Buffy and Kennedy win anyhow, Eldre disappears in a hole with part
of a demon, and the Tincan server goes up in flames.
Buffy gets an offer from Kennedy's security firm, but declines: She's the
slayer.
Karl Moline,
Andy Owens,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 9.4, Welcome to the Team,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
2013,
pp. ~130.
Part 1: While Buffy is helping Officer Dowling slay
vampires, she is suddenly transported to L.A., by none less than Illyria, who,
like Buffy, still has magical powers.
Part 2: Buffy is met by a group of entities, the last who have magical
powers left: d'Hoffryn, Buddha, God, Ganesha, etc., and they are threatened by
the Syphon who wants to extract their magic to go to the past to save his
girlfriend. While Dawn collapses from an unknown illness, the team (Buffy and
company) attack the Syphon, but walk into an ambush.
Part 3: The team is saved by Koh of the Nitobe. It turns out that Dawn's
body is shutting down due to lack of supporting magic. The team tries to draw
out the Syphon, but they get separated due to magic interference.
Part 4: Illyria is de-magic-ed by the Syphon, and the team abandons Buffy,
Koh, and Illyria as failures. The Syphon has teamed up with Simone, a rogue
slayer, and with Dawn fading away, Xander feels more and more useless.
The Watcher Willow returns from wherever she went ("Willow", 2013), and
thinks her magic is coming back, but she fails to cure Dawn, which makes
Xander feel even more desperate. Simone and the Syphon convince Xander they
have common interests: going back in time to save their loved ones.
Andrew Chamblis,
et al.,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vol. 9.5, The Core,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
2013,
pp. ~130.
Part One:
Xander literally drops in on Buffy, who is sitting outside the hospital where
Willow is using her new magic in trying to cure Dawn. He explains that Simone
and Severin have tried to get him on their side and steal the Vampyr book for
them, but that of course he refused, when a loud "boom" announces that Willow
has exceeded her daily allowed dose of magic, leaving Dawn reinvigorated but
not cured. Willow realizes that she needs to seriously top up her magic, and
Xander comes with the idea to consult the Vampyr book, where they find info
on the "Deeper Well", a tomb for the Old Ones, who were entombed there long
ago together with all their magic. The team set out to its entrance in the
Cotswolds, to get Willow some magic, leaving Spike to baby-sit on
Dawn. Unbeknownst to the team Xander has informed Simone and Severin of the
existence of a second entrance, in New Zealand. And it is there where Simone,
Severin, and the general attack.
Part Two:
The team is met at the Cotswolds entry by d'Hoffryn and a group of guardians,
who have no intention to let Buffy pass, not even to get the small bit of
magic needed to cure Dawn. Fighting ensues, d'Hoffryn is surprised that Willow
possesses some magic, and Willow is surprised that a Zen demon can do some
fighting. Meanwhile at the other entry Simone c.s. is met by a single guard, a
little girl with a balloon / a tentacled monster. Simone shoots the monster to
pieces and Severin drains the girl of her magic, thus removing the only
guard. Eldre Koh and Illyria had gotten word that the Deeper Well was under
attack, and had come to its rescue, only to find that the attacker is
Buffy. They immediately choose her side, and, with much misgivings on Buffy's
side, begin to do serious damage. Meanwhile Dawn is fading away more and more,
and Spike begins to record his memories of her on a tape recorder. Xander is
getting impatient that Simone and Severin haven't succeeded yet, and that they
haven't gone back in time yet, but when Buffy proposes an attack plan that
will get Willow and Illyria in to get the magic for Dawn but will probably get
her killed, he blurts out that he cannot let her do that because he has
already saved Dawn. And so Xander's treason is revealed.
Part Three:
Simone and Severin make progress at the south side with Severin getting giddy
with power and so do Buffy and Willow on the Cotswolds side, by passing
d'Hoffryn. Spike finds that the recordings of his memories of Dawn have faded
too, and Buffy and Willow can no longer remember the name of Buffy's sister.
Xander is put in the care of the Zen demon, who advises him to let go of his
anger and accept his place in the universe. Then Xander gets a telephone call
from Spike telling him that Dawn is doing badly and that in reality Simone
intends to use the magic for turning slayers into vampires, slaypires. Xander
releases his anger by asserting the place of his fist in the universe and
joins the fight on Buffy's side. Koh and Illyria join Buffy and Willow in
their descent into the Deeper Well. Simone indeed abandons Severin, finds the
right holding cell and releases the demon Maloker, creator of the first
vampire. When Xander reaches Buffy, they find the bleeding body of Simone ...
Part Four:
... who intentionally has let herself be bitten by Maloker and who now turns
into a super-slaypire, claiming she was chosen as a slayer, but chose herself
to be a super-slaypire. Fighting on several fronts ensue, with Buffy and
Xander fighting Simone, Koh and the rest of Buffy's team fighting Maloker,
Willow being knocked out by a wave of magic, Illyria diving down to the
core where Severin is overloading on magic and threatens to explode and rip
time-space apart, and Dawn having become invisible. When Willow comes around,
she finds a new seed of magic glowing red next to her, but it tells her it
will take millennia to ripen, and Dawn needs magic now. Willow devises a plan
to hasten the ripening process by using the magic collected by Severin, and
dives after Illyria, who immediately grasps the plan and agrees to stay down
with the small seed and feed Severin's magic into it when he explodes. Buffy's
battle with Simone goes badly, and although Xander scores a partial victory by
remembering Dawn' name, Buffy ends up being gored by Simone with her own
scythe.
Part Five:
With d'Hoffryn, Koh, and Xander fighting Maloker and Simone, Illyria warns
them to get out immediately since when Severin explodes the blast will kill
everybody in the shaft of the Deeper Well. Buffy is recovering rapidly from
her wounds but when Maloker grabs her in his fist and threatens to crush her
Koh cuts off Maloker's finger, releasing Buffy. Willow uses d'Hoffryn's staff
as a high-speed tractor to get them out of the well, and in the last second
Buffy manages to stake Simone. Then the Deeper Well blows up, Illyria keeps her
word, the seed takes root, and magic is restored. Back in San Francisco
Willow performs a seance to give Dawn back her magic, but nothing happens
until they find Dawn just standing among them, very surprised why everybody is
staring at her. They find the Vampyr book all pages blank, but in Santa
Rosita the first evolved vampire rises...
Jane Espenson,
Karl Moline,
Andy Owens,
Love vs. Life,
Dark Horse,
2013,
pp. 24.
In Santa Rosita, gay pseudo-slayer Billy, his friend and pseudo-watcher Devon,
his grandmother Sky and their friend Katie try to rid their town of a zompire
infestation, using such original weapons as a small van with a battery of
stakes mounted on the front. When they discover that zompires are "mortally"
afraid of fires, they erect bonfires all over the place.
Christos Cage,
Rebekah Isaacs,
Angel & Faith, Vol. 9.1, Live Through This,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
June 2012,
pp. ~130.
Freed from the influence of Twilight, Angel deeply regrets the misery he has
caused, and has decided to at least make amends by resurrecting Giles.
Part 1: While wrapping up some loose ends left by
Giles, Angel and Faith run into two human-demon half-breds, Pearl(f) and
Nash(m), who had just murdered all slayers from Nadira's group.
Part 2: Faith and Nadira bust a drugs deal, but the
buyer brought a semiautomatic, and wounds Nadira. An unknown (Angel)
decapitates the buyer, and Faith is left with the goods, a (broken) vial of
fresh Mohra demon blood, a super-regenerative material. Angel and Faith start
searching for this demon, with the unspoken intent of using the blood for
Angel's plan; but so do Pearl and Nash.
Part 3: Angel and Faith find the demon, held captive by
a mobster, at an auction of his blood. They free the the demon, hoping he will
help them fight their way out, but he kills himself. All hell breaks loose,
and the Pearl and Nash enter.
Part 4: Faced with an angry mob and two psychopaths,
Faith uses a ruse to escape. She and Angel descend into the basement where
they find several horribly misshapen victims of the over-active Mohra
blood. These are now invincible, since any wound heals immediately. They clean
out the mob and chase Pearl and Nash away. Angel finds a way to put them out
of their misery. Giving up on the idea of using Mohra blood, they return home
where Angel asks for "a spot of tea".
In Perfect Harmony: Harmony, now a reformed vampire, appeals to Angel's
detective capabilities, to stop the person who is blackmailing her with sex
tapes from a former life. After some amusing adventures in which nothing much
happens, Angel discovers that the perp is no less than Harmony's personal
assistant, the loose-skinned demon Clem from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, who'd
hoped to impress Harmony by "solving" the case. Harmony forgives him and gives
him a raise out of somebody else's money.
Christos Cage,
Rebekah Isaacs,
Angel & Faith, Vol. 9.2, Daddy Issues,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
June 2012,
pp. ~130.
Part 1:
Very crazy people turn up in the streets of London, and an unshaven man asks
around looking for Faith.
One of the crazies gives Faith a name: the Mother Superior. Angel and Faith
track her down and find her to be Drusilla, and she is perfectly sane and
reasonable.
Part 2:
Drusilla keeps a Lorophage demon as a pet. These demons feed on trauma, which
they extract from their victims, who then die. Drusilla tamed this one to let
the victim live; for most people this takes away all mental problems, and
Drusilla has fans to prove it, but some get a lot crazier.
The unshaven man finds Faith and turns out to be her father.
Drusilla offers Angel to relieve him of his traumas but he refuses and Drusilla
orders the demon to desist since she does not want to cure him by force.
Part 3:
Faith's father did not show up out of fatherly love, but because he is in
trouble with a mob boss, and wants Faith to kill him saying she has killed
before.
Faith is furious, but then the gangster arrives. Angel interferes, the
gangster pulls a shotgun on him, and Faith chops off his arm.
In utter despair of first having found her father and then having lost him,
Faith runs to Drusilla for solace and a cure.
Drusilla asks if she is certain, Faith says yes, and the demon takes away the
troubles in her soul.
Part 4:
Angel barges in, too late, on a happy Faith. Angel demands that Drusilla undo
the treatment, she says she cannot, and Angel starts forcing the demon to give
back Faith's traumas. Drusilla decides that this has gone too far, and orders
the demon to cure Angel, so "we can all be one happy family". At the words
"happy family" Faith flips and attacks Drusilla, allowing Angel to force the
demon the apply the cure to itself. The demon evaporates, and everybody gets
their traumas back. Drusilla's entourage now suddenly consists of crazies, who
attack Angel and Faith. They escape by setting the house on fire; Drusilla
sneaks out, completely her old crazy self again.
Women of a Certain Age:
Returning home, Angel and Faith find Lavinia (Vin) and Sophronia
(Sophie), two great-aunts of Giles from the 19th century. But they look
straight from Ab Fab, due to deals with rejuvenation demons, deals payable
upon their first grey hair. With magic gone from the world that grey hair
has arrived, and the demons bash in the door (several times) to collect. A&F
make minced meat of most of them, but one demon, whose price for the Talisman
of Horkoth had been a kiss from Lavinia gets his payment amidst a cheering
crowd. The aunts then tell how Giles at an early age had shown his ability to
handle magic by helping to subdue a light demon using the Shard of
Stronnos. The ladies give Angel the Shard. Then there is a knock on the
(repaired) door and outside stands Willow.
Christos Cage,
Rebekah Isaacs,
Angel & Faith, Vol. 9.3, Family Reunion,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
June 2012,
pp. ~130.
Part 1:
Willow is on a mission of her own: to bring magic back to the world. Her plan
is to restore her own magic first. To that end she needs to go to the only
place with magic accessible in a non-magic way: Quor'toth, and the non-magic
way is Connor, Angel's son. Angel objects vehemently, but Willow promises him
the use of her scythe in reviving Giles, and they team up for the duration.
Leaving Gunn in L.A. as an anchor the four enter Quor'toth.
Part 2:
While Willow is recharging her magic, they are attacked by assorted monsters,
until they run into a pack of dog-like demons who worship Connor as their
savior. Willow is done recharging and wants to move out, but many of the
worshippers have been made prisoner by the evil and will be executed at
dawn. Connor feels responsible and stays to save them, and the others join
him. In the meantime Lavinia and Sophie find their London home burglared by
Pearl, Nash, and Whistler, who seems their boss.
Part 3:
Heavy battle ensues on Quor'toth, during which the four try to work out their
personal problems. Then Quor'toth himself shows up, and while fighting him
and freeing the prisoners Willow overcharges and turns Black Willow. In London
L&S find that Whistler has stolen all their magic possessions, which he
intends to use for his own plan to improve the world.
Part 4:
Black Willow conquers Quor'toth (the monster) and establishes herself
as the new god of Quor'toth, threatening Angel and Faith. Angel goes vampire,
bites Black Willow, and drains enough blood to calm her down. Willow goes on to
a less violent magical world (see "Willow", 2013), and Angel, Faith, and
Connor go back to L.A. Meanwhile in London Nadira finds one of her slayers
killed by Drusilla.
The Hero of His Own Story:
Part One, Whistler:
In a diner in L.A. Whistler tells Angel that he, as a child of a pure-blood
demon and an agent of the powers that be, has the calling of maintaining the
balance.
Buffy destroying the Seed of Magic has made that impossible any longer and
Whistler's solution was to create a New World. His attempt through Twilight
has failed and he is now going to try by himself. Whistler and Angel argue and
they tell each other to go to hell.
Part Two, Pearl and Nash: Oklahoma 1935, on the worst day of the Dust
Bowl, an emaciated farmer woman summons a demon and requests him to make her
pregnant, resulting in the twins Pearl and Nash. They get children but all of
them are killed by demon hunters. In despair they team up with Twilight, but
that too fails. At their mother's death bed they swear "salvation and revenge".
Victor Gisschler,
Paul Lee,
Spike -- In a Dark Place,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
2013,
pp. 124.
How Spike lost his space buggy.
Part 1:
Spike has ordered his space ship to the dark side of the moon so he can pine
over Buffy and contemplate the lyrics of the Pink Floyd album in the proper
place, but this worries his bug crew who dislike a depressed captain, and try
to cheer Spike up by upgrading Buffy's solar deck so it can be used by a
vampire.
Meanwhile a group of Ninja sturgeons (yep) are looking for transport and,
having spotted Spike's space ship, they attack. The bugs open a space door to
go out and fight, but seeing the enemy they flee in panic. Spike, always a
burning cigaret in hand does damage to the sturgeons' attack lizard (yep), but
is knocked out by the biggest brute, who prepares to jettison Spike as dead
weight.
Part 2:
Spike teases the head sturgeon that he and his band will never get back to
their dimension because all magic is gone, when the big ugly blurts out that
they are going to Sunnydale to find shards of the Seed and use them to get
home. Spike convinces them they need him to find the shards, and they take him
to Sunnydale. In the meantime the bugs manage to grill one of the sturgeons
using Buffy's hair spray as a flame thrower. Spike and the remaining sturgeons
find the chamber of the Seed devoid of shards, but are met by a very beautiful
and very charming lady, who immediately reveals that she too was stranded and
has been looking for pieces of magic, but that somebody had cleared out the
place before her. The head sturgeon does not believe her and chooses his
default option, Kill'm both. The charming lady turns into a flying monster and
attacks the "Battle Chief of the Fighting Sturgeons" but he beats her to the
ground. While he is gloating over his victim, Spike kills him with a sword in
the back and decapitates him for good measure. The lady introduces herself as
Morgan, a succubus, and Spike and she are getting comfy, when the roof
collapses and Pearl and Nash drop in.
Part 3:
Spike reminisces how in 1953 in Rome he saved Pearl from a black widower demon,
but Nash interrupts him saying he thinks Spike has the shards and will he
please hand them over. Rather than fighting them Spike pushes over a piece of
wall which makes the whole chamber collapse. Pearl and Nash are buried under
the rubble but Spike, Morgan, and the bugs escape to the space ship. There
Morgan charms Spike, but the bugs mistrust her influence on Spike, and take
steps.
Part 4:
Morgan wants to use the Hellmouth on Easter Island to go home through, and to
humor her Spike takes the ship there, knowing full well that she cannot
achieve anything because there is no magic left, but the suspicious bug crew
plot on. The attraction of Spike to Morgan is growing mutual, and Morgan
realizes that now that she has a purpose, making Spike great, she does not
need to return to her own dimension. But to her horror Spike takes a pass,
saying that each perfect moment with her would just remind him of his
imperfect but real life with Buffy. Morgan is deeply insulted but says that
she'll manage and go back to her dimension, and that is the moment that Spike
realizes that she has a piece of the Seed and can indeed open the
Hellmouth. Spike fights Morgan to prevent her from opening the Hellmouth, and
the bugs come to his aid by catching Morgan in an electric net. But they have
again underestimated the succubus, who shreds the net and jumps through the
glass of the space ship onto the island.
Part 5:
Morgan uses her shard, a spell, and a password, and the stone heads of Easter
Island come to life. But when she commands them to open the Hellmouth for her,
they attack her instead. As Spike points out, passwords let you pass, not
command. The bugs bring in the space ships, guns blazing, and the stone heads
are reduced to rubble, which ... reassembles into one single giant stone
head. The space ship continues its attack but is flung aside by the giant and
is heavily damaged. Morgan changes into her flying
monster form and airlifts Spike out. All bugs but one, Sebastian, leave the
ship using escape pods, and the lone kamikaze bug rams the crippled space ship
into the giant stone head, pulverizing it. The stranded bugs decide to settle
on the island, and Morgan apologizes and makes another attempt to team up with
Spike, which he declines. She realizes she cannot compete with a memory, but
makes another attempt, to which Spike reacts with "Sod off". Which she does,
still expressing hope for better days. While alone on the beach reflecting on
life in general Spike gets a telephone call from Angel in London, requesting
his help
(Angel & Faith, Vol. 9.4, Death and Consequences, end of part 3).
Christos Cage,
Rebekah Isaacs,
Angel & Faith, Vol. 9.4, Death and Consequences,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
June 2012,
pp. ~130.
Part 1:
Using sword and flame thrower A&F retrieve the Crown of Coils from a
creepy-crawlies infested cave in Peru, the N-th object for their mission
of Vol. 9. They try to dig up the N+1-th object, the body of Giles, but
find the coffin empty.Their subsequent discussions are interrupted by Nadira
barging in with the dead body of one of her slayer, Marianne, and demanding
that the focus of the mission be switched to her. In the middle of the
ensuing fight one of Nadira's slayers gets a call saying that Plan B is Go.
Nadira & girls drive the body to a very English mansion in Guildford, where
they are received by what seems to be Giles.
Part 2:
Although Nadira has her suspicions, Giles paints magic symbols on the body,
among them the sign of Eyghon. A&F browse the guest book of Giles' funeral and
find an impossible name: Ethan Rayne, who was already dead at that
time. Marianne is resurrected in seconds but turns out to be a friendly but
empty shell. Nadira attacks Giles, who calls in his goons and then his
Eyghon-possessed friends. Nadira brushes "Giles" aside as a pawn demanding to
see whoever is in charge, and Eyghon appears.
Part 3:
Having located Eyghon through a library book, A&F drop in on the fight and
manage to extract Nadira and four of her slayers, while Eyghon keeps the
others as hostages. On their way out Angel makes a telephone call for
help. From the short moment Faith was possessed by Eyghon, she remembers his
plan: he had made a deal with Whistler, each getting half of humanity,
Whistler for his New World and Eyghon to possess. Alasdair Coames explains
that Eyghon can only be killed by decapitation and that he cannot possess
vampires with a soul. Then the called help arrives, Spike, the other vampire
with a soul.
Part 4:
Nadira gives Spike a Vorpal blade, suitable for decapitating Eyghon. Now they
need to kill Eyghon and capture Giles and the possessed slayers without
harming them. Then Eyghon attacks, preceded by his army. The possessed
slayers and Giles are netted and handcuffed, and Angel and Spike attack
Eyghon, but they have miscalculated and Eyghon takes possession of Spike. Faith
knocks him out of action by kicking him in his balls; seems to work even for
possessed vampires. She throws the Vorpal blade to Angel who decapitates
Eyghon with it. Due to the Tooth of Ammut through Angel's nipple, Giles' soul
enters Angel on the death of Eyghon, throwing Angel into a catatonic fit.
(Is this a soap or what?)
Nadira's slayers, sick of seeing more and more of their fellow slayers killed
under Nadira's command, walk out.
Spike and Faith:
With Angel alternating between catatonic and crazy it's now up Spike
and Faith. Alasdair Coames thinks it's impossible to transfer Giles' soul
directly from Angel in this state, so they need an "essuary" for temporary
storage. The only one known is in the possession of the "Enders", and Spike
and Faith retrieve it with extreme prejudice. With Spike guarding Angel in the
basement, Alasdair, Lavinia, Sophie, and Faith perform the transfer to the
essuary. Angel recovers and texts the perpetually grouchy Spike Harmony's
telephone number, for "a good night without thinking", which the two enjoy
ostentatiously.
Christos Cage,
Rebekah Isaacs,
Angel & Faith, Vol. 9.5, What You Want, Not What You Need,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
June 2012,
pp. ~130.
Part 1:
With Giles' body on the table and his soul in the essuary, the resurrection
crew bickers about where to get the magic to perform the ritual, and Spike
gets a telephone call that Dawn is very ill and he rushes off. Alasdair is
forced to volunteer his magic artifacts and Lavinia and Sophie are called in
for their memories of Giles. Just when they start the ritual Whistler, Pearl,
and Nash drop in and start stealing all the artifacts. A&F fight them, leaving
the others to finish the ritual. Having stolen all, Whistler c.s. leave, and
the others watch the result of their labour.
Part 2:
With Lavinia reciting the final spell and with nobody present who remembers
the grown-up Giles, they find they have resurrected him as a 12-year
old. They soon find out his mind is mature-Giles, but especially Faith finds
out his body is a teenage boy, to great embarrassment of both. Whistler is
starting his own plan to save the world by forcing magic down everybody's
throat, but our heroes have few magical weapons, and Lavinia and Sophie stock
up on Molotov cocktails. Using a lodestone Giles locates Whistler's party...
Part 3:
... which is already in full swing, with Whistler having concentrated
all of Alasdair's artifacts' magic into a glowing ball. While Faith and Nadira
fight Pearl and Nash, Angel argues and fight with Whistler, who changes into
his demon form. Giles, Alasdair, Lavinia and Sophie arrive by car, and after a
lot of fighting and pyrotechnics the magic ball almost breaks, snowing magic
on the inhabitants of Hackney, who promptly change into monsters.
Part 4&5:
Lavinia and Sophie go out into the streets to help the wounded like they did
during the blitz while the fight for the magic ball continues. It threatens to
explode, Whistler has a moment of lucidity in which he sees the horror he has
caused, and in the explosion he absorbs all the magic energy, which wounds him
lethally. Nadira is in hospital, badly wounded; Lavinia and Sophie are
interviewed on TV; Giles and Faith go to the US to join Buffy; and Angel goes
off to help the helpless.
Victor Gischler,
Will Conrad,
Angel & Faith, Vol. 10.1: Where the River Meets the Sea,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
Dec. 2014,
pp. 134.
While Angel is in London fighting the fall-out of Whistler's bomb of magic,
Faith has joined Kennedy's Deepscan security firm in the US.
Angel and inspector Brandt are investigating a pixie gang leader Corky, who
seems to be bottling magic collected from shreds of magic brought in by whoever
he can threaten.
His investigation leads him to Nadira, who has survived her overdose of magic,
which is now tattooed in the left half of her body, and who is now a mystic
running a shelter for magic-refugees.
Nadira explains to Angel that this part of the world is now "where the river
meets the sea", where there are strange currents, and where strange animals mix.
Together they bottle Corky, with neither of them knowing how they did it.
The now desintegrating gang leads Angel to the client for the bottled magic:
Amy.
When Faith finds out that the rock star she is protecting for Deepscan is
actually a demon having an under-age girl friend, and that Deepscan knew about
the first half and suspected the other half, she walks out, but Kennedy runs
after her and shows her a file that she thought might get Faith interested
again: private Riley is missing in the jungle of South-America.
Victor Gischler,
Will Conrad,
Angel & Faith, Vol. 10.2: Lost and Found,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
May 2015,
pp. 134.
Hired out by Deepscan to Reese Zane, daughter of pharmaceuticals magnate
Walt Zane who is missing in the jungle of Suriname near the Coeroenie river,
Faith joins a search party only to become leader of this party through the
death of the previous leader at the hands of members of a vampire tribe.
Although wisdom would dictate to pull back, Faith and Reese push on, the first
wanting to make resolve issues with Riley and the second to find her father.
Find him they do, as the leader of the vampire tribe and a vampire himself.
Since vampires don't get ill, he thinks vampirism is the best cure of all
illnesses, and when he tries to bestow this cure on his daughter, she stakes
him.
They free Riley and Faith tries to apologize, Riley accepts but says there was
no need, and he is past it.
Angel finds out that Amy needs the bottled magic to bring Warren back (is this
a soap or what?) but in secret she also wants to set a trap for Willow.
Angel and Amy fight, but when Angel loses, he steals Warren's remains.
Eldre Koh enters the scene searching for Illyria, who has information about
who framed him for the murder of his family and fellow villagers.
Angel enlists Alasdair's help to fight Amy, and he offers a Najakot demon, who
destroys magic.
Amy lures a willing Angel to her den to force him to cooperate with her on her
plan, but he refuses and brings on the Najakot instead. When Amy beats the
Najakot and inspector Brandt with policemen with guns, Angel flees, and Amy
plots to get to Willow.
When Angel returns he announces to bring the "big guns", Amy expects to see
Willow enter, but instead Nadira enters. Amy, in rage, throws tons and tons of
magic at her, but she remains unperturbed, and when Amy is exhausted she flees
as a rat.
Angel leaves the remains of Warren in the care of Alasdair, and when he walks
home through the London night mist, he spots a figure who might be Faith, but
when she turns around he sees ... a frightened Fred.
Victor Gischler,
Will Conrad,
Angel & Faith, Vol. 10.3: United,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
Oct. 2015,
pp. 134.
Still London, Magic Town. A mixed couple (i.e. human/non-human) is attacked by
hoodlums and saved casually by Eldre Koh. When they find he is wandering
aimlessly, they point him on to Nadira.
Faith, jet-lagged, is crashing with Lavinia and Sophronia, and her first day
with Reese Zane's new branch in London is a success.
While Fred remembers more and more about her life as Illyria, Reese sends
Faith to talk to inspector Brandt, who sends her on to talk to Nadira, where
she meets Angel. As the title says, United. Then the only one missing from
the plot enters: Eldre Koh, who immediately recognizes Illyria in Fred.
Eldre tells the story of his life as a young man, how he, having left his
village for a warrior initialisation rite and then returning home, found
everybody dead and the village in ashes. The overseer investigating the matter
has a culprit ready: Eldre, who is accused of having done this deed in warrior
frenzy. Thus Eldre was condemned and imprisoned for eternity in a magical
stasis, until ... Buffy ended all magic. And now he walks the earth seeking
vengeance on whoever killed his family and framed him.
Fred, through sharing her body with Illyria, however, knows the culprit:
Illyria, and while she tells this to Angel, Illyria tries to surface but Fred
fights her back.
Faith convinces Fred to let the lab technicians of Zane Comp. do some
measurements on her, but the procedure awakens Illyria, who takes over Fred
and starts tearing the place apart.
With Angel distracting her, Faith using her slayer power, Eldre cutting away
at her with his magical knife hands, Reese Zane driving her car into her, and
Fred fighting her in their head, they manage to overpower Illyria.
But it gave Nadira and her friend, Magic Town, a real fright.
Kel McDonald,
Will Conrad,
Fight or Flight,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
Oct. 2015,
pp. 24.
To give Fred some rest and to get a grip on his bad dreams, Angel takes Fred
on a trip to his home town, Galway, Ireland, where they take up lodgings in an
old dockside inn. Fred takes the "1753 Massacre Tour" the place offers,
guided by the daughter of the innkeeper,
while Angel stays in the hotel to research bad dreams on the Internet. Angel
finds that the hotel personnel lives in mortal fear, while Fred experiences
floods of magic when she is scared for fun by some antics staged by the
hostess of the tour. Angel suspects somebody is using the blood of Gachnar
(Buffy TV 4.4) to store fear, and Fred makes the connection with the jokers
jumping out of shadows to scare the tour guests to produce that fear.
While deliberating what to do
they are crept upon by the bell boys, Angel is hit over the head and Fred is
abducted. Angel wants to rescue her (of course) but Fred shouts: "Trust me".
The boys take Fred downstairs to the kitchen where granny is bleeding Gachnar.
Angel gets hold of Gachnar, and squeezes him, releasing all the fear he holds.
The witches (landlady, daughter, and granny) pick up the fear and try to
control Angel and Fred with it, but then Illyria emerges,
who makes short thrift of them.
While the paramedics receive the bell boys, Angel and Fred discuss how she
again regained control. Then Spike phones, asking Angel if he has bad dreams
too...
Victor Gischler,
Cliff Richards,
Will Conrad,
Angel & Faith, Vol. 10.4: A Little More Than Kin,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
March 2016,
pp. 134.
Magic Town, where every waiter and every landlady reminds you you're in Magic
Town.
Those Who Can't Teach Teach Gym:
Faith has a week leave from Zane Comp. to think about their offer of a
permanent job, when she is asked by Brandt to do some investigation at
St. Cuthbert's School, where students turn up dead. Faith, thinking about
Angel's dreams of killing high-school students, agrees, and together with Fred
they go at it, first in a students cafe where they immediately run into an
altercation with a obnoxious student who soon shows his fangs, new
style. While Fred breaks a toilet pot over his head Faith dusts him.
Meanwhile at the school a shy girl, Mary, is being harassed by three vixens, a
blonde, a redhead, and a brunette, but they sure are not Charley's Angels.
After consulting with Brandt we find Faith and Fred at the school, under
cover, Faith as gym teacher and Fred as cook / cleaning lady.
They land right into it, when after her first lesson Faith discovers another
student murdered, with Mary sobbing by her side.
On top of that Angel skypes from San Francisco telling that they have just
knocked out Archaeus's boots on the ground, and that he may be heading their
way.
Mary returns to school to accuse the vixens of having killed Meredith, but
they laugh at her and instead invite her to their "little club". She refuses
and runs off.
Fred, as the cleaning lady, sees that the vixens are invisible in her mirror
and reports that to Faith. So when the three ladies accost Mary again, to
invite her more forcibly, Faith shows up and dust two of them; the third
escapes as a bat.
Now the enemy tries a different path to get at Mary: a good-looking young man
drops a note in Mary's path, saying that knows everything about Meredith's
death, and they meet behind the lockers. Of course the nice guy turns vampire,
and behind him stands Drusilla with her gang.
Drusilla makes it clear that Mary is going to be the last and most important
addition to her gang, but Faith barges in and attacks D. and the gang, while
Fred tries to get Mary to safety.
Both endeavors don't go well, the vamps from the gang are very strong, and one
of them comes after Mary and Fred. Much fighting ensues, but in the end Fred
and Mary stake the lone vamp with a flag pole, and Koh arrives to rescue Faith
and help slay all the ubervamps. Except that in the fray Drusilla escapes.
Mary returns home where her father, retired curator of a museum is studying a
remarkable artifact, the huge and fiercely looking statue of a warrior.
A Little More Than Kin:
Fred sees a couple of ruffians in the street molest an elderly lady, challenges
them, but of course they turn vampire and corner her. She turns into Illyria,
who kills the vamps with raw energy.
Angel has returned from San Francisco and reports about Archaeus and his
supposed servant Drusilla. They decide they need information and two groups
depart to reconnoiter.
Koh and Fred go to talk to Rory, but find his bar smashed up.
Angel and Faith go to find Nadira, but she is kidnapped right from under
their noses by Drusilla's more brute minions.
Angel and Faith succeed in doing serious damage to the minions but the biggest
brute is off with Nadira, who seems to be quite OK with being abducted.
Angel and Faith + Koh and Fred converge on Drusilla, but while our troops are
decimating her troops Drusilla absconds as usual, with Nadira.
Our troops enlist Brandt's help in locating Drusilla and her prisoner by
finding and interviewing sellers of pigs' blood.
But Drusilla and Nadira are at that very moment outside Magic Town and in the
august company of ... Archaeus, who offers Nadira the job of ambassador of him
to the Magic of Magic Town.
She answers, however, that she has come, not to be his ambassador, but to
save him..., because if he comes barging in into Magic Town the Magic will
lash out and destroy not only him but many innocents.
When Archaeus ridicules her, she turns into a slayer and attacks him, but
after dusting some minions she is knocked down.
Victor Gischler,
Will Conrad,
Angel & Faith, Vol. 10.5: A Tale of Two Families,
(Comic),
Dark Horse,
Aug. 2016,
pp. 134.
Part 1:
Incredibly, Drusilla tries to wangle her way into Prof. Weatherford (Mary's
father)'s house using the old my-car-broke-down-and-could-I-use-your-phone
trick, but the "ol' codger" does not fall for it and slams the door in her
face.
Angel and Faith give Tricia and Parker a street lesson in vamp dusting, with
the secondary purpose of showing the spies of Archaeus that Angel is going to
stay in Magic Town.
Archaeus scolds Drusilla for failing to bring the statue to him, and impresses
on her the need to bring her "brothers" Angel and Spike back into the fold,
for one happy family.
To do better, Drusilla raids the museum and forces the curator to phone the
professor that Lloyd's insist the statue be returned to the museum and that she
will send a van to pick it up.
Meanwhile Angel gets a phone call from inspector Brandt that he has a lead on
Nadira, but his face is all knobby... and so Angel walks into the trap, where
Archaeus and Drusilla are waiting for him.
They try to invite him in, they try to force him in, but in the end Archaeus
imposes his will on him with a spell from which Angel emerges as Angelus, all
vampire-face.
Part 2:
Executing part two of the plan, Faith, Fred, Koh, Lavinia and Sophronia walk
into Archaeus' and Drusilla's lair, to be welcomed by a group of uglies. Faith
decapitates the head ugly, greatly annoying Drusilla, who calls in all her
minions to fight the intruders.
In the meantime Angel/Angelus learns that Archaeus wants Nadira not for
herself but for her bond with the magic of Magic Town, which he wants as an
ally.
"Angelus" approaches Nadira in her cage to convince her to join the Archaeus
"family" but surreptitiously frees her, wings Archaeus, and sends Faith a text
message "I got her". Angel and Nadira flee one way, and Faith and her crew flee
the other way; Faith calls it 'ring and run with vampires' but Koh does not
get it...
And in the middle of Magic Town the statue is delivered, as a gift from Archaeus.
Part 3:
Nadira reports that the magic of Magic Town is getting more and more
independent and distant from her, and Angel roots out Inspector Brandy
gone-vampire and dust him, including his minions, with Faith's help.
In Magic Town the statue comes to life and begins to investigate its
surroundings, starting with an old lady's pet dog.
The old lady kicks the statue but is rudely swept away.
More and more civilians, both of the human and non-human variety, flock
together to help the old lady and retrieve the poor doggie, until Nadira
arrives and explains to the Magic which that has come to inhabit the statue,
that this is a mockery of what it want, and that it is a trap.
The statue picks up Nadira, which angers Fred; she attacks the statue and, as is
to be expected, turns into Illyria.
Part 4:
Illyria and the statue have a bit of a tiff, with Illyria throwing loose
objects like trucks, vans, and so at the statue and the statue blasting Illyria
with magic, but Koh manages to calm her down by explaining that things have
changed and even his lust for vengeance is gone.
Archaeus asks the statue to join his family of his own free will, but as it
remains impassive, Angel and crew attack Archaeus, saying that they will take
him down no matter what because they are family and he has only minions, but
Archaeus mocks them saying that he has many more of them.
Part 5:
It turns out Archaeus is wrong; the crowd that assembled to defend the lady
with the dog is still there and joins Angel's side.
Pages of street fighting ensue, the minions flee, Archaeus orders Drusilla to
order the minions to come back, but finds that Drusilla has fled too.
Alone he faces Angel and crew and claims he is a demon and will turn the world
to pain, starting with Nadira, but she, seeing the statue behind Archaeus,
says: "Trust me, Archaeus, you're making a mistake".
A magical storm rises to a tornado on the plaza, and when it dies down ...
Archaeus is encased in the statue.
To celebrate the crew have a night-time barbecue party on the roof of Giles's
house, with Koh in charge of the barbecue.
Christos Gage,
Rebekah Isaacs,
Buffy: Season Ten Volume 1: New Rules,
Dark Horse,
Nov. 2014,
pp. 136.
Part 1:
Buffy is happy to be back in Santa Rosita, fighting the local zompires, when
she gets help from another breed of vampires, who turn out to be more
resistant than usual. Buffy talks to their leader, Vicky the Vampire, only to
be told that slayers are history and that they are a new breed of vampires,
able to fly, turn into smoke, and move about in daylight.
In the meantime Willow, Dawn, Spike, and Andrew are moving civilians to a safe
part of town, in a van, hotly pursued by more zompires.
As they arrive at the operations' headquarter, a liquor store, Xander
switches on an array of 2 x 2 sun tan beds, which fry the zompires.
When daylight comes the new vampires attack, but they get help from a Harry
Potter like teenager, whom, after some quips from his side, they recognize as
Giles.
Part 2:
Giles brought Faith and a squadron of Kennedy's heavily armed slayers and soon
the new vamps beat it. When Giles meets Billy, the male vampire slayer, he
asks to consult the Vampyr book, but Buffy explains to him that after the
collapse of magic it was completely empty. But it's no longer so, and when they
read it, they find some of the events that had just happened.
They decide to consult Dracula on vampires that can walk in daylight and send
Xander and Dawn by plane to Transylvania, where Xander immediately loses a
battle of will with Dracula.
Part 3:
The fact that the new vampires can shift shape in broad daylight piques
Dracula's interest, and he flies back to America, where he reveals his secret
to Buffy and company: he can do the things he can do because he just wills
them. No magic involved. Then Dracula points out that when new rules are
established they turn up written in the Vampyr book, might not words written
in the book turn out to be the new rules? Then Dracula grabs the book and
escapes with it with help from a mesmerized Xander.
Part 4:
The first thing that Dracula, showing himself as the decrepit old man he is,
has Xander write in the book is that his body is restored to the full bloom
of youth, which instantly happens.
Buffy, Spike, and Dawn hit the streets to find out where Dracula went, hitting
demons left and right, and finding no vampires, nor Dracula. The reason is
simple, all vampires have flocked to their master, Dracula, as Xander has
written in the book. But soon the vamps get pushy and Dracula has to dust
them.
Then Xander writes into the book: "Dracula became the most powerful vampire of
all", and Dracula begins to change into a kind of vampire Hulk. Buffy and
company find him by his roaring, and figure out the cause of his
transformation: Dracula is literally becoming the most powerful vampire of all
-- Maloker.
Part 5:
As Dracula changes into Maloker, his grip on Xander begins to weaken, and his
guardian ghost Anya manages to get through to him, and point out to him that if
he does nothing not only will his master die, but with him most of the West
Coast.
In the mean time Dracula/Maloker has grown to skyscraper size, which gives
Buffy an idea: to stake him with the Redwood Investment Group Building, which
looks like a stake. Then many things happen: Willow has a priest bless the
building to make it a sacred object; Giles makes Dawn a giant again; Dawn
lures Maloker over to the Redwood building; Buffy and Spike climb up Maloker's
neck and put swords in his eyes; and then giant Dawn throws him down on the
pointed building, destroying Maloker and restoring a naked Dracula.
But then, to everybody's horror the cycle starts again -- the text is still in
the book, and attempts to delete it have failed.
Xander grabs the book and writes in it: "Through his awesome will-power Dracula
gave up the powers he had acquired", and peace returns.
After some deliberation Buffy decides that she trusts only one entity to write
in the book to create new rules: the Scoobies.
Christos Gage,
Nicholas Brendon,
Rebekah Isaacs,
Buffy: Season Ten Volume 2: I Wish,
Dark Horse,
April 2015,
pp. 136.
The book plays "I Wish" with the team members, tempting each with their secret
wishes.
Part 1:
Buffy returns to her apartment in search of peace and quiet, only to find
that Tumble has introduced new roommates to help pay for the rent, since the
landlord has raised the rent upon Anaheed moving out.
Buffy feels too old for this crap, gives notice, and contacts Xander and Dawn,
only to find that they have given notice too, since they are splitting up.
With Andrew offering futons, the housing problem gets dire, but officer
Dowling knows a haunted building that might be theirs for the ghost busting.
The building was thought to be haunted because 25 children disappeared in it
over the last 30 years and Giles considers it a simple job, having done dozens
of such simple exorcisms, so he takes Buffy, Dawn and Spike, allowing Willow
and Xander to go job hunting.
The moment Giles starts his incantation, a tentacled monster appears, which
embraced them all, and ... Buffy finds herself in front of her parental house
in Sunnydale, being called in for dinner by her father and mother. Her parents
are surprised that Buffy is surprised, because they always have been a very
happy family, haven't they. And Buffy is ecstatic, although she feels that
there is hsomething she should be doing.
Giles finds himself playing with a model Spitfire, and Spike is reading poems
to his old mother.
Outside Willow and Xander notice that they cannot get phone contact with the
rest of the team, and investigate ... Xander finds himself invited to dinner
by his parents (though there is no place set for him at the table). He
looks twice, does not buy it, and storms out of the house, right into the
street in front of Buffy's house. Buffy's parents are annoyed by the
disturbance, offer Buffy her scythe, and tell her to end it. Willow is
confused; her computer is ancient, Xander is missing his eye patch, they are
back in the ideal years of their youth, in short they are being had by a
Hamelin demon.
Spike bites his mother again but she crumbles into goo, and Buffy hacks at her
parents with the scythe.
With them refusing his reality the Hamelin demon disappears, but then the 25
children resurface + Giles, shouting the Scoobies are ruining everything and
that they want their demon back.
Buffy gives a pep talk encouraging each to take a chance on life, and all do,
except the young Giles. The illusion shatters, leaving Giles embarrassed and the
children free.
Part 2:
As the group settles into their newly acquired home, the
Vampyr book of magic rules makes itself felt, as each has his or her own
wishes: Xander wants Dawn back, Giles wants to be grown-up again, Spike wants
Buffy to love him, and Willow and Andrew have their own desires.
And the book could
fulfil them all. After fighting over where to put things in their common room,
Xander and Spike go out to have beer, where they meet two perfect girls, a
literature major for Spike and a female construction worker for Xander. As the
four head to the ladies' abode for promised steamy sex, ghost Anya follows
them, warning that these girls are sirens, but their song is more convincing
than Anya's warning. Once in their abode the girls change into their normal
mermaid form and introduce the boys to their sex partner, a slumped-down old
mermaid, the Mistress. The Mistress makes Xander and Spike have a cushion
fight in the buff, but ghost Anya manages to overshout the sirens and catch
Xander's attention. He is not strong enough to fight Spike, but grabs two
skewers from the banquet and pierces Spike's ear drums, temporarily freeing
Spike from siren influence. Spike turns vampire, bites the Mistress and all
mermaids flee. Spike and Xander agree never to tell anybody. Coming
home, Xander sees Dawn having fun with a colleague student, and ponders with
the Book in his hands. And in a nearby cafe a lady asks after Spike, saying that
Dylan is looking for him.
Part 3, Return to Sunnydale 1:
On Halloween the Vampyr book is gone, which is impossible given the
precautions and wards. By elimination the team concludes that Andrew (part of
the team, so not subject to the wards) has taken the book and that he is going
to resurrect someone. Magical GPS on the book places him at Sunnydale (which
seems to be at the location of Fort Hunter Liggett according to the map on
page 57; excellent cover!), and Buffy, Spike, and Willow set course that way.
On this Halloween, the Sunnydale crater rim is crowded with hundreds of
dressed-up party goers, among whom somebody looking like a goo puppet,
introducing himself as the Soul Glutton and telling a sob story about how eons
ago his family was murdered by a slayer. His story is judged for its
originality and literary merit by a party goer, but he kills the critic with
his trident and starts feasting on the other party
goers. Meanwhile Andrew has found their secret hide-out, with the resurrection
kits of Jonathan Levinson and Warren Mears still intact. Andrew tests
Jonathan's kit and it works enough to get a hologram of J., but he breaks
Warren's samples.
The team finds the debris and fears the worst but is attacked by the Soul
Glutton. It likes Willow's white magic, but Willow turns black temporarily and
chases the Soul Glutton away. And Andrew finds the grave he is looking for:
Tara's. But Willow is on his heels.
Part 4, Return to Sunnydale 2:
The Soul Glutton returns, better fed now, and attacks, but Buffy lures him
onto a weak floor. The floor collapses, taking the Soul Glutton
out of the game for the moment.
Andrew starts his resurrection procedure of Tara, but Willow beseeches him to
stop and leave Tara in peace. After deep and emotional discussion Andrew sees
the light and stops the procedure, just in time to free Willow and himself to
rescue Buffy and Spike from the Soul Glutton, who has predictably returned.
Having learned a lot, Andrew in his house in Oakland begins his discussion
with Jonathan about J.'s resurrection.
Day Off (or Harmony in my Head):
Being in the possession of the Vampyr book, Buffy and Willow are besieged by
supplicants of representatives of all kinds of magical creatures, as there are
a leprechaun, a Chinese lucky cat, and a slime man. Having dealt with these,
Buffy and Willow find themselves face to face with Vicky the Vampire, who wants
her influence on the Book. A quarrel might have broken out, but Harmony and
Clem appear and Harmony turns out to be an excellent mediator: they all agree
that the new vampires retain their special powers (fly, turn into mist, walk
by daylight, etc.) since that had already happened and thus had been recorded
in the Book, but that a note would be added saying that when walking in
daylight they lose their other special powers.
Exhausted from these efforts Buffy, Willow, and Dawn treat themselves to a
day off in the Pamper U Day Spa, paid for by Theo Daniels.
With the three ladies gone, Harmony returns to their house and talks Spike
into letting her and Clem into it. She charms him and then hits him over the
head, grabs the Book and orders Clem to write her wishes into it: everybody
always loves her, everybody does exactly as she says, unicorns are totally
real, and for good measure Buffy, Spike, and Angel live happily as a
polyamorous family.
When Harmony asks Clem to read back what she has dictated he hesitates, Spike
comes to, grabs the book and shows that Clem has not written
anything. Although Clem explains that he did so to out of love and to protect
her, she slaps him and leaves, only to find a unicorn outside: the only thing
Clem did write.
The last page sees the Mistress, the Soul Glutton and the Sculptor making
evil plans...
Christos Gage,
Nicholas Brendon,
Rebekah Isaacs,
Megan Levens,
Buffy: Season Ten Volume 3: Love Dares You,
Dark Horse,
Sept. 2015,
pp. 136.
Love makes fools of us all.
Part One:
Buffy tries speed-dating, Xander and Dawn try to have a cozy dinner, Willow
tries to entertain Aluwyn at a wiccan party, and Giles tries to have a night
of sex with Olivia, all in vain.
Andrew is not looking for a partner but rather for the Asclepian vial, which
purportedly can make new bodies. He finds it at a coven party led by a bald man
called Clive. He takes a swig but nothing happens, until ... the Sculptor and
his minions crash the party, promising he will only kill half the party-goers
if they give him the Asclepian vial. Suddenly Andrew grows a few inches in all
directions, bursts out of his clothes Hulk-like, and beats the Sculptor into
retreat.
Meanwhile Spike helps officer Dowling investigate the theft of large chunks of
meat from slaughterhouses, and in the process saves a couple of kittens from
being consumed by vampires (by buying them...). But his kittens are not
appreciated by Xander (although they can see the ghost of Anya) and Buffy is
looking for a distraction, so together they find the minions of the Sculptor
and start beating them up, quarrelling about the quality of each other's puns,
when suddenly...
Part Two:
... they kiss. Love seems in the air but soon the conversation derails and
they part company. Subsequent conversation with Xander does not improve
Spike's mood, when Andrew comes long-distance-jumping in, one of his
super-hero abilities.
Bringing Clive and Julie, he reports on the Sculptor's attack. Together with the
Buffy team they attack the Sculptor, who brings an 8 meter tall golem to
fight for him. Andrew shreds it and the others burn or otherwise destroy the
remains. To celebrate their victory Andrew kisses Clive: he has discovered he
is gay!
Disillusioned by all their amorous experiences Buffy explains to Spike how
good and mature it is that they are respecting friends, to which Spike answers:
"There's only one problem with that, I'm in love with you", and they end up in
bed. But at night he has a dream in which he kills a couple in the street.
Part Three:
The next morning Spike is still "a bit out of sorts" from the dream,
especially when Buffy inquires to find out if he has gotten evil from the sex.
But the real shock comes when officer Dowling shows Spike a couple found
bitten and dead in the street and Spike recognizes them as his dream victims.
Spike confesses his doubts about himself to Xander who convinces Spike to have
himself checked for demon possession by Willow and Giles. The pair put Spike
through one gruelling test after another, and all come up negative, until they
hit upon a dream of his which shows a vampire nest. They send Buffy and Xander
to investigate and they find vampires all right, but as soon as Buffy stakes
one of them the place goes up in flames: it's a trap. Although Buffy is happy
that Spike is not the murderer, she is angry that she has been lured into a
trap. Willow and Aluwyn meet, Aluwyn blames Willow for changing, Willow blames
Aluwyn for not changing and they break up. Buffy and Willow end up sharing a
carton of ice cream while contemplating the complications of relationships.
Relationship Status: Complicated:
The team is worried about the murders that happen in Spike's dream and in the
actual world, and decide to send one of them in astral form into Spike's
dreams to better observe. Buffy is the best qualified. Spike has qualms to
let her into his mind, for fear she may find many awkward things, but in the
end he relents.
She discovers that he loves kittens, that he slept with Harmony, and that he
really loves her. She witnesses the murder and from there a grey path leads
into Spike's past, right to the point where Spike, Angel, Drusilla and Darla
were sired, ultimately through Archaeus. Willow and Giles pull Buffy and Spike
out of it, Buffy with the knowledge of Archaeus whereabouts, right there in San
Francisco, at the waterfront.
The place is easily found, identified by the absence of birds and sea lions,
and Archaeus attacks immediately.
He finds himself losing the battle until he commands
Spike to kill Buffy, using his authority as Spike's ultimate sire. Spike
fights the command, but Archaeus manages to wound Buffy with one of his
pinchers, and offers Spike her blood, making Spike go vampire and attack Buffy.
Relationship Status: Complicated, Conclusion:
While the rest of the team is busy fighting Archaeus' minions, Buffy has to
fight Spike, goaded on by Archaeus, alone. She does not know how to subdue
him without killing him, and the rest of the team urge her to do so.
Having seen his love for her in his mind, she takes a big gamble: she drops
the scythe and appeals to his love. Archaeus is ecstatic, Spike goes for
Buffy's throat, but then picks up the scythe and starts hacking at Archaeus,
shouting: "I'm no one's puppet!".
With everybody wounded or exhausted and Archaeus furious they are in a bad
situation, but Xander has spotted a line of load-bearing columns, and asks
Willow and Giles to take these out. As the team runs for the exit, Archaeus
comes after them but is buried under the collapsing storm drain. Knowing that
this will only hold him back temporarily,
the team regroup and, after much deliberation about the awkwardness, phone
Angel for help.
Christos Gage,
Nicholas Brendon,
Rebekah Isaacs,
Megan Levens,
Buffy: Season Ten Volume 4: Old Demons,
Dark Horse,
Feb. 2016,
pp. 136.
Chapter 1:
Spike is seriously miffed because Buffy called Angel for help, but their
bickering is interrupted by a morituri demon crashing up through the floor. It
fires spikes at everybody and wounds and poisons Willow. Giles takes Willow
into Xander's room which is demon-protected, to heal her. The rest of the crew
lure the demon to crash into the protection barrier of the room, which fries
it. Willow, recovered, finds out that it came through a portal. They conclude
that Archaeus controls a portal, and set out to confront him.
Chapter 2:
The scents of Archaeus and the portal lead into two different directions in
the tunnels under Sunnydale, and in an atmosphere of animosity between Angel
and Spike, Buffy decides to split up into two parties. Team One is Angel,
Xander, Willow, and Giles, following the portal trail; and Team Two is Buffy,
Spike, Dawn, and Andrew, hunting for Archaeus; Andrew's banana-phones will
allow them to keep in contact.
En route Angel discusses his inner life with Willow and decides to walk away
to guard the rear;
Spike tries to discuss his inner life with Buffy but is sent away to guard the
rear.
To their surprise they the two parties meet at an old shipyard, where they
find Archaeus and the portal generator, the Restless Door. While Willow and
Giles try to disarm the artifact, the rest fight Archaeus, who explains to
them that their separate trip here has let their animosity grow, and right on
cue Angel stabs Spike with his sword.
Chapter 3:
With Buffy and Willow fighting Archaeus, Spike fighting Angel, Giles and
Andrew trying to destroy the Restless Door, and Xander and Dawn warding off
incoming vampires, the chaos is complete. But when Spike makes it clear to
Angel that he is just still obeying his father, who hated him, he snaps out of
the spell, and jumps in to help Buffy. With Buffy, Spike, and Angel now fighting
Archaeus and Willow helping to ward off vampires, the odds are a lot better,
and when Giles and Andrew have removed almost all protection from the
artifact, Angel and Spike pick up Buffy and launch her headlong at the
artifact, scythe at the ready. The point of the scythe cracks the Restless
Door, which explodes, Archaeus leaves for parts unknown, and peace is restored.
However, back at the apartment d'Hoffryn informs them that the fragments of
the device were stolen by walking hands by the unholy alliance of the
Mistress, the Soul Glutton, and the Sculptor, and that these three are trying
to reassemble it.
Freaky Giles Day:
Willow has found a spell to make Giles of age for one 24 hours, and he
immediately visits Olivia for a night "in which there is no such thing as
being too eager". The next morning Olivia has to go to work, and Giles, back at
the Scooby apartment hears that Hank, Buffy's father has turned up and wants to
talk with his daughter. He starts giving fatherly advice, but is rebuffed by
Buffy. Giles decides to hit the town with Xander, but when they leave a pub
they are attacked by a flaming monster from another dimension. They manage to
kill the beast using a spade and a guitar, but the whole affair proves that
the Restless Door is operative again. Xander and Willow go to their jobs,
leaving Giles alone.
Hank tells his daughters that he is going to remarry, and that his fiancee
does not want Buffy at the wedding for security reasons. Dawn is livid, but
Buffy says: "She's not wrong." After the conversation Dawn runs off with her
friends, leaving Buffy alone.
Buffy returns to the apartment where she finds Giles having a beer, and they
spend the evening talking and watching the sunset.
Triggers:
Women's counselor Jean Anthony calls upon Buffy and Spike to help with a
"person" who abuses women but is irresistible; she herself has been a
victim. Also, there exists a 40-years old photo of him in which he looks just
as today. "Incubus" Buffy and Spike exclaim simultaneously. In the meantime
officer Dowling needs help with a supernatural phenomenon, and Buffy thinks
this is a good job for Giles and Xander. Together, followed by the ghost of
Anya, they check on the psychic Ms. Lana Pasternak, only to find he possessed
by a spirit who announces "Lana isn't here right now." The spirit tries to
grab Anya, but Xander vanquishes it with a bottle of holy water, but
not before the spirit has revealed that the ghost of Anya is not the ghost of
Anya. Buffy sets herself up as bait for the incubus, the incubus falls for it,
and while Spike distracts it, Buffy decapitates it. Anya reports back to
d'Hoffryn, miserable that she isn't Anya, but he promises her that at the end
of the day she will really be Anya.
Christos Gage,
Rebekah Isaacs,
Megan Levens,
Buffy: Season Ten Volume 5: In Pieces on the Ground,
Dark Horse,
July 2016,
pp. 136.
In spite of the title this is not a gloomy volume; it is about how people can
stay friends when they change.
Part 1:
The Restless Door has been reassembled by the Evil Triad, they sell its
services to any bunch of demons, who then open portals to Earth to party
there at the expense of mankind, and Buffy feels guilty about it.
The US Army is fighting the incoming demons, and Satsu turns to Buffy to ask
her to get vampires of both kinds to fight on the side of Earth. Although
Buffy has a lot of bones to pick with the Army, she agrees at least to meet
with them, at the VampCon organized by Harmony at the Bacchanal Resort, the
safest place for vampires and humans. And Harmony and Vicky have already
decided how to solve the issue: trial by combat. The old-style and the modern
vampires each chose a champion, and it Buffy and Spike can vanquish them, the
vampires are in. With Clem as Master of Ceremony and under much taunting by Vicky, Buffy fights Golgotha, a
new-style vampire, and dusts him after sticking the point of the scythe in
his eyes, and Spike, hopping mad from Vicky's comments, vanquishes his
old-style vamp by breaking all the bones in his body: the vampires are on
board. The next night Spike meets the Dylan who was looking for him at the end
of Season Ten Volume 2, Part 2.
Part 2:
A week earlier Willow was approached by Theo Daniels to come and work as a
magic-and-code wizard for his army-affiliated company, and is has been doing
life-saving work there. When Buffy hears about this she is aggrieved for
Willow going behind her back. Meanwhile Spike has agreed to come an see
Dylan's paintings show, and when Buffy hears about this she is pissed off for
him going behind her back. But just before the explode they apologize and hug.
As something begins to develop between Willow and Ms. Lake Stevens, military
attache to Mr. Daniels Technologies, Lake takes Willow out for dinner and
they discuss the the problems of changing and staying friends. Buffy and Spike visit Dylan's
exposition at the Gallery Verde, and Dylan thanks Spike for getting her out of
a rut, and gives them one of her paintings. On the way home Buffy expresses
her worries about her relationship with Willow, and sets out to talk with her,
only to find Willow waiting for her in her apartment. They hug and decide that
adulthood is not going to separate them; then they bond over ice cream.
Part 3:
Andrew is visited first by the hologram of Jonathan, who demands a body, and
then by the Sculptor, who offers to make just such a body in exchange for
Andrew swapping Buffy's scythe for a fake. Buffy's nerves are frayed further
when she is almost pulled into the Kraken dimension because d'Hoffryn has his
priorities skewed. There is far too much work, and the only option seems to be
to give the Council more power, but Buffy won't be that stupid, she says. In
the end it is agreed that each of the members of the Council should get very
specific powers and only when in function:
d'Hoffryn gets the power to detect incursions of magic;
Monarch gets the power to drain enemy magic;
Keiko gets the power to absorb any physical attack;
the Quiet Man gets the power to return any being to its own dimension;
the Brahma gets the ability to sense the enemy's greatest weakness;
and Matango, the Mushroom, will be invulnerable to magic attacks.
With this out of the way everybody hopes to be able to continue with their
lives, and as a parting gift, Monarch introduces Giles to the Fae dimension,
where his appearance means nothing and he will be judged for his character
only.
The next morning Buffy goes out for a run, trying to get back to normal, and
she meets normal people like two men with a baby in a stroller, and an elderly
couple, but with Buffy gone Andrew sneaks in and swaps the scythe. That night
he presents it shyly to the Sculptor, who gleefully accepts it and turns
Jonathan's hologram into a body of flesh and blood, only to find that Andrew
has double-crossed him and he has been given the fake copy...
The whole Scooby gang shows up from behind the gravestones, Willow sets fire
to the Sculptor and when he is done, Buffy cleaves him in two, using the real
scythe. One down.
Jonathan is livid, because without the continuing support of the Sculptor he
will soon die, will not listen to new promises, and runs off angrily.
Part 4:
Buffy and Giles have a falling out over her refusal to allow Sundrop, Giles's
friend in the Fae dimension, to create a portal in his study.
Xander realizes that the ghost of Anya is not the ghost of Anya and breaks up
their relationship, telling her to go and find out who or what she really is.
Anya objects vehemently, but Xander, in tears, turns to his game console.
In spite of all this misery, all sever heroes jump to the rescue when
d'Hoffryn announces that he has located the Soul Glutton and the Mistress. As
a diversion the enemy has created a portal to the Hell of Screams, which the
Council is now fighting to close, so Buffy and friends are on their own
against the two big bads. Unfortunately they find the Soul Glutton well-fed
and huge. On top of that the enemy have opened a portal to Anharra.
Giles provides Xander and Spike with ear mufflers, and together they cut off
some tentacles off the Mistress. The Soul Glutton gets hold of Dawn and starts
devouring her soul, only to choke on it, realizing that she is an artifact and
her soul is poison to him. The Soul Glutton, severely ill, and the Mistress,
badly wounded, decide to call it a day, destroy the Restless Door and
disappear.
With the Restless Door gone no more portals can appear, but this one continues
to grow, and all Willow can do is trying to keep the nasty Anharrans out, but
she is tiring fast. Since the portal originated from the Anharra dimension it
can only be closed from there, but obviously whoever did the closing would be
trapped there. Giles suggests it would even then take a key to close the
portal, and suddenly everybody looks at Dawn...
Conclusion:
Everybody objects and declares everybody crazy to just think the thought, but
Dawn declares it's her decision and she will do it. Because Willow can no
longer hold the masses of Anharra back, the Seven jump through the portal to
fight the enemy on their own ground, only to be welcomed by masses of uglies
and a 7 meter tall giant by the name of Kerberon, using belligerent
language. They cower and both Buffy and Giles blow the retreat, but Dawn
pushes them aside and with two lightning bolts reduces the giant first to a
skeleton and then to ashes. The uglies slink away, leaving the Seven to
discuss what to do now. It is clear that Dawn has to stay behind to close the
portal, and everybody wants to stay with her, but somebody(s) have to go back
to Earth, to root out the Soul Glutton, the Mistress, and the demons they have
imported. In the end Xander convinces Dawn to accept his staying with her. As
the now Five pass through the portal back to Earth they find there the ghost
of Anya screaming that she cannot follow Xander this way, and threatening to
turn back into a vengeance demon. Buffy sighs that she wishes that for once
things would be easy and that the Council would wipe out the Soul Glutton and
the Mistress without their help. Upon hearing so Anya turns into vengeance
demon and says "Wish granted"... In the meantime the Soul Glutton has eaten the
souls of a whole office building in Silicon Valley and is huge, but when
d'Hoffryn descends on him and his companion, the Soul Glutton cannot kill
him, which is physically impossible, since he should now be strong enough to
kill the entire Council. D'Hoffryn explains to him that because he, d'Hoffryn,
is now on official vengeance mission, he is allowed to bend the laws of
physics, and he easily kills the Soul Glutton. The Mistress applauds him and
tries to make a deal, but he kills her too, telling her he no longer needs
her. Anya and d'Hoffryn are proud of a job well done, but d'Hoffryn is deeply
frustrated that he has this enormous power only when he is on official
vengeance duty.
Christos Gage,
Rebekah Isaacs,
Juanan Ramirez,
Buffy: Season Ten Volume 6: Own It,
Dark Horse,
Dec. 2016,
pp. 144.
Part 1, Home Sweet Hell:
Thanks to Dawn's key powers Xander and she settle well in their dimension
Anharra, teaching the local how to build acid-rain-resistant houses,
dispensing counselling and even performing marriage ceremonies. But then they
see on a rock wall the images of a wolf, a ram, and a hart...
Meanwhile back on Earth, the Four are searching for information on
Anharra. D'Hoffryn will consult the Council, which he does in his own way,
killing them one by one usurping the powers of each member to kill the next. A
now invulnerable d'Hoffryn breaks into Buffy's apartment and makes off with the
Vampyr book, leaving the Four in shock.
Part 2, The Centre Cannot Hold:
Dawn and Xander are approached by Lilah Morgan, temporarily at the local office
of Wolfram & Hart, who offers to take them home in exchange of an
"arrangement". D&X flatly refuse and decide to risk finding a way home by
themselves, accompanied by the local Rancidus, who gives Lilah a solid
talking-off. But Lilah phones the home office telling them that she has put a
tracer in Dawn's quiver, and that W&H will benefit from all information D&X
will gather on their trek.
Meanwhile the Four start bickering and blaming each other in circles for the
present disaster. The army launches a missile attack on d'Hoffryn's newly
created base, but he detonates the missiles at launch. Willow wonders how he
could do that since that was not one o the powers he usurped, but comes to the
conclusion that someone has asked for vengeance, and then a vengeance demon
can do anything. A very healthy Jonathan shows Andrew selected excerpts of
what his friends have been saying about him, to undermine his self-image, and
he is succeeding. Buffy and Spike squeeze everybody for information on how to
hurt or defeat d'Hoffryn, and as they get more frustrated they quarrel more,
until Spike says: "Maybe it's time we took a break.".
Part 3, Taking Ownership:
Buffy declares that she has no bandwidth for that, and says that she has an
idea. Willow is fired from the military who have just discovered that it is
the Scoobies that gave (indirectly) all this power to d'Hoffryn. Dawn and
Xander are having lots of adventures, meeting giant shrimp, the White Rabbit,
carnivorous otters, body swaps, phantoms of childhood, etc. Buffy and Spike approach everybody of magical
importance with her idea: Denial of Magic to d'Hoffryn. Clive sets Andrew
right by showing him the context of the remarks by his friends, and he returns
to the Scoobies, carrying conventional an magical weapons. Then Dawn and
Xander drop in through a portal in Buffy's apartment, and there is a lot of
news to catch up with.
Part 4, Vengeance:
On Anharra, in his headquarters, d'Hoffryn is celebrating the fact that he has
removed all protective spells from the Vampyr book with his crew of Jonathan,
pseudo-Anya, and four other minions, and his first order of business is to
remove the clause that limits his powers to what somebody else asks for
vengeance. But the moment he tries to scratch out the words, the ink spats
back into his eyes. He consults his magic TV and sees Buffy spreading her
Denial of Magic idea. He admires he cunning but vows to destroy her utterly.
But he finds her home well protected with spells and reflecting weapons. After
a fight d'Hoffryn breaks through, but just before the kill pseudo-Anya
requests permission to have her revenge on Xander for leaving her at the altar
and disavowing her when she was a ghost, and makes him a ghost.
Part 5, It's on You:
D'Hoffryn and Anya enjoy the suffering of the remaining six, rubbing salt in
their wounds, but then Buffy calls for vengeance, wishing she had never given
d'Hoffryn those powers. "Wish granted", Anya says, pointing out to him that
she has reason for revenge too, since he had made her into a puppet on a
string. She decides ghost-Xander has suffered enough and makes him human
again. But d'Hoffryn still has his innate powers and using these he mortally
wounds Anya. Seeing this his minions quit, and when Buffy cuts off his right
hand with her scythe he beats a hasty retreat. In a hospital on Anharra
d'Hoffryn is getting his wrist bandaged when a portal opens and the Scoobies
appear: they have used the book to give Dawn portal-opening powers
everywhere. D'Hoffryn congratulates them on growing up and proposes an
agreement: he stays Lord of the Vengeance and he will grant each of them a
wish. Buffy says: "We've been down that road before", and decapitates him.
With all of the Magic Council killed the Scoobies fear weirdos may try to
fill it and decide to fill it themselves. Their first convention is held in the
Plaza Inn, and the lobby is filled with, yes, lobbyists, with Lilah Morgan
offering lobbying services. The council consists of Buffy as president, Giles
as chairman, and Count Dracula, Archduchess Venobia, the Mud Man, the Lucky
Cat, the Skeleton Man, Willow, and Riley Finn as members. Buffy has to drive
the scythe into the table before the meeting will come to order...
Part 5, Where Are They Now?:
Harmony Kendall has a TV program visiting past celebrities, and this week it's
Buffy. Monday: Buffy is filling laundry machines when Harmony, Clem, and a
camera crew enter. Harmony asks Buffy indiscrete questions and reveals that
someone is out to kill her, to which Buffy reacts with "Welcome to my
life". Then Buffy steps on an unisolated camera cable and gets
zapped. Furiously she stuffs everybody except Clem into dryers. Tuesday: Buffy
and Spike walk the streets of San Francisco, when Harmony tries again, only to
be interrupted by a run-away streetcar. Buffy, Spike and Harmony stop the car,
preventing worse. Harmony continues to irritate the hell out of Buffy and she
ends up wrapping the remains of the streetcar around the crew. Wednesday:
Buffy is in the library helping Giles get books from the upper shelves.
Harmony barges in and accuses her of narcissism, when Giles recognizes
the sound man from a watcher training program. At being found out, the camera
man turns into a panther vampire and the disgruntled sound man threatens Buffy
with a magic gem. Buffy rolls up a book and uses it as a stake to dust the
panther vampire, and Giles stuns the sound man and hands him over to the
police. Harmony, who was unaware of the conspiracy, ends her documentary with
"Is she the best slayer ever, .. or the worst?", leaving Buffy speechless.
Bechko,
Corinna,
Angel: Season Eleven Volume 1: Out of the Past,
Dark Horse,
Aug. 2017,
pp. 112.
Whether slapstick or deep philosophy, this issue gets very bad reviews on the
internet.
Part 1:
Angel and Fred (not Faith) are in Dublin to exorcise a poltergeist from the
hotel of a friend of theirs, when Angel gets a vision of bugs and flesh-eating
plants. The poltergeists show up but Angel fails to catch them because Fred
turns Illyria. Angel is angry but Illyria tells hem the poltergeists are
themselves fleeing, from something in Angel's past. On their way out, A&F find
the same flesh-eating flower growing in the street. Wanting to know more about
the past, Angel recalls that there would be a scrying glass under a church
nearby. They find the scrying glass guarded by bugs, but Fred retrieves
it. They skype Lavinia and Sophronia, and find Lavinia sad because her demon
friend has stood her up. The poltergeists attack again and Illyria takes Angel
to his past where he should right wrongs.
Part 2:
They arrive in the past all right, but not Angel's: it's Illyria's past in an
other dimension. Oops, rounding error, Illyria explains rather lamely, but it
seems Higher Powers are to blame. Soon they see the past Illyria in her
true goddess form. Illyria-Fred explains that they have arrived
pre-apocalypse. A Very Ugly Monster (VUM) had arrived, and had begun eating
past-Illyria's subjects. Much fighting had ensued but neither could kill each
other and in a fit of rage past-Illyria had blown up all the lands, killing
all her subjects and so causing the VUM to leave for lack of food. This seems
to be the wrong that should be righted.
Goat-like locals are fleeing but again Angel misreads the cause: they are not
fleeing from Illyria but running towards her to help fight the VUM. But the
VUM devours them all and Angel realizes that the VUM gets stronger with each
victim consumed. He tries to convince a local, Sval, to stop fighting and let
Illyria do her job.
Part 3:
But when Illyria-goddess shows up, Sval immediately follows her. Angels meets
a group of three-eyed locals, who profess to be pacifists, and are opposed to
violence, but they confess that in their attempt to end Illyria's violent
reign they have conjured up a VUM of equal strength thinking that the two would
kill each other. And now the VUM is gaining strength! "Turns out wasn't the
best plan", the chief admits. Using the scrying glass to magically skype L&S,
they see Lavinia happily kissing with her (three-eyed) demon boy friend,
showing that they have already changed the present. The boy friend tells Angel
where the army for the final attack on the VUM gathered in their legends. And
indeed they find the gathering there.
Part 4:
While Illyria-goddess sets the doomsday machine (an erupting volcano) into
action Illyria-Fred tries to reason with the chief of the goat herd, but he
considers her a cheat, until Sval turns up and declares that this Illyria can
perform miracles. The goat people slowly come over, and the three-eyers are even
more easy to convince. Then the VUM attacks and goddess-Illyria, Illyria-Fred
and Angel simultaneously attack it, while the army disappears. With the
prospect of its food gone the VUM retreats. Now they have to convince
Illyria-goddess to stop the volcano (stupidity reigns), but they succeed,
leaving Fred exhausted. Illyria-goddess sets them on a path back to the present
"with Angel to illuminate the path". They wonder what that means.
Corinna Bechko,
et al.,
Angel: Season Eleven Volume 2: Time and Tide,
Dark Horse,
Jan. 2018,
pp. 110.
Part 1:
Angel and Fred find themselves on the good ship Galene in a rough sea, and
unsurprisingly Angelus and Darla are also aboard. Darla is being seduced by a
strange ship mate to allow him to show her something, but Angelus interferes,
and the deck hand flees. Angel and Fred follow him and find he is hiding a box
with a buzzing beetle. While Fred changes into sailors' clothes, Darla barges
in and they fight about the box. Angelus enters and Fred addresses him as
"Angel"...
Part 2:
Angel and Fred flee with the box, and they use the scrying glass for guidance,
but it shows the flesh-eating flower. The deck hand barges in, there is
fighting, the beetle escapes, and starts infecting all and sundry, turning
them into zombies. At that moment the pirates attack. More fighting, the
pirates turn into zombies too, and only Angel, Fred, Angelus, and Darla
remain human. Illyria appears and puts Angelus and Darla in a sloop and
throws it into the sea.
Part 3:
The pirates attack them and fire breaks out, forcing Angel and Fred to jump
overboard. Angel swims to a sloop, and pulls Fred into it. The sun rises and
Angel has to hide behind the lid of a cask. It turns out the zombie-pirates
can swim, and they attack the sloop from the water.
Part 4:
Using Angel as an outboard motor they escape the pirates and land on a lone
rock, but the beetle has multiplied and the offspring is attacking in
droves. Lo and behold, Angelus and Darla are there too, and surprise, they
fight. Illyria appears and opens up the rock which turns out to be a volcano,
about to explode. Illyria grabs the other three and promises to get them out
of there before that happens.
ZZ
Corinna Bechko,
et al.,
Angel: Season Eleven Volume 3: Dark Reflections,
Dark Horse,
Sept. 2017,
pp. 110.
ZZ
Christos Gage,
Rebekah Isaacs,
Georges Jeanty,
Buffy: Season Eleven Volume 1: The Spread of Their Evil,
Dark Horse,
Aug. 2017,
pp. 144.
And the evil spreads badly indeed.
Part One, The Spread of Their Evil
Slaying is as usual, Willow is teaching magic to wiccans, Dawn comes home with
excellent grades, Buffy is running the Magic Council, and Xander is running
the barbecue, when a gale of epic proportions arises and whips up a tsunami
that ruins large parts of S.F., including the Scoobie apartment. It turns out
that the storm is caused by a Shenlong, a Chinese storm dragon. The Scoobies
kill the Shenlong, but it falls into the streets of S.F., causing still more
damage. The Shenlong should be extinct, but the Scoobies in the trailer camp
come to the conclusion that it has been brought back and sent to S.F. by an
evil one. Question is "Who?".
Part Two, In Time of Crisis
It turns out that the government has reached the same conclusion, and has
determined its own answer: "Magic". Measures are announce to "normalize" magical
beings. When Buffy and Spike rescue a magical being from an angry crowd, they
get unexpected help from another slayer, Jordan, who introduces herself as
"Licensed Military Contractor" and tries to recruit Buffy, explaining that
the government is hiring slayers "to keep the peace", now that Magic has been
identified as the source of the tsunami. Buffy refuses in no uncertain terms,
but Jordan points out that she is not the Chosen One any more. Andrew sees the
storm rising and heads for the Continent, to friends in Italy. The house of
a wiccan friend of Willow is fire-bombed, Willow puts out the fire and chases
the evil-doers away. A video of that appears, stirring more hatred towards
Magic. Lane offers Willow a job to "change things at the highest
level". Willow refuses and is warned "to abide by the law". Soon the law
becomes clear: all magic beings will be relocated to a "Safe Zone", read
"internment camp".
Part Three, A House Divided
The situation deteriorates rapidly. People with even the slightest amount of
magic are rounded up, and Buffy procures forged papers for Giles on the black
market. But Spike is too well known and has to report for transport to the
Safe Zone, although Buffy tells him not to. Buffy gets a final offer from
Jordan, which she rejects, very violently, and to prevent slayer killing slayer
Spike agrees to go. Buffy joins him, as does Willow, who has many wiccans
inside. The slayer guarding the bus tells Spike to sit in the back, and when
he goes up the wall, she explains that there's where the darkened windows
are. For they are going into the desert.
Part Four, Desperate Times
Inside the camp conditions are dire; food is rationed, an ogre is top
dog, and protection consists only of government slayers on the other side of
the fence. Spike is starving and Buffy, in a very sexy outfit, tries to seduce
him into drinking at least a small sip of her blood, which would keep him
going. When the ogre's crew start to extort food from inmates Buffy decides to show
them who is king of the yard, and beats up several hoodlums, which only makes
them more angry. Buffy's weekly telephone call to Dawn gets interrupted by a
bird man who claims revolution is brewing. When Buffy investigates she has
again to fight the ogre and his crew, and she gets help from Spike, who fills up with ogre's
blood. As step one in a plan, Buffy agrees to the position of trustee in
exchange for extra blood rations for Spike. After all, her aptitude test said
she should be in law enforcement...
Part Five, Desperate Measures
And the law is enforced, especially making the ogre furious. Willow gets two
magic-less wiccans released, and leads Buffy to he friend wiccan Calliope, who
knows about a break-out planned by the ogre. Buffy goes out to talk to him
about his crazy plan, but he grabs her by the throat and lifts her up. She
kicks him in the groin, and then beats his minions into a pulp. Jordan judges
that it is now too dangerous for Buffy inside and assigns her the job of
guarding the inmates working at a nearby factory, which gives Buffy her
much-desired freedom to roam. Inside the factory Buffy sees the workers
produce weird metal signs, and in the mess she hears on TV that the Supreme
Court is hearing arguments on whether magic beings have human rights, and that
it can take a while. Willow recognizes the metal signs as runes, magic runes,
so a government that is suppressing magic, produces magic runes?? Meanwhile
the ogre plans to kill the slayer.
Part Six, Back to the Wall
The ogre ambushes Buffy between two barracks and has her poisoned by his
minion Karriok. Buffy says: "Poison and ambush, eighteenth birthday", and
cleaves Karriok and another minion in two. Again the ogre tries to strangle
her, but she breaks both his wrists.
Under duress the ogre confesses that he works
for "them" and that in the factory they are working on combining science and
magic. Buffy smuggles Willow into the factory under an invisibility spell, where
Willow discovers that the government is working on a machine that will
extract all magic from the world. And that would maim half-magic creatures
and kill beings fully dependent on magic, as for example Spike. Buffy decides to
break out, because however bad that may be, what the government is going to do
with all that magic will be worse.
Deleted Scenes
The issue ends with six very comical "covers" for the six parts in this issue.
Joss Whedon,
Erika Aleander,
Jon Lam,
Giles: Season Eleven: Girl Blue,
Dark Horse,
Sept. 2018,
pp. 102.
ZZ
Christos Gage,
Rebekah Isaacs,
Georges Jeanty,
Buffy: Season Eleven Volume 2: One Girl in All the World,
Dark Horse,
Aug. 2017,
pp. 144.
Part 1: Disempowered
Ophelia Reyes, Secretary of the Supernatural announces that "we" (the
government, or whoever is behind all this) have developed a machine that will
drain the magic from supernatural beings so they become natural and can leave
the Safe Zone the same way Willow has "helped" some weaker wiccans.
This causes a wide rift between those who can take this option and those who
cannot, and Buffy has to deal with the ensuing fights.
Willow suspects that this machine is a smaller version of the magic machine
the Department of the Supernatural is building.
Riley and Sam Finn show up and try to convince Buffy and Willow to take the
procedure.
Buffy can't believe her ears but Riley asks her to trust them.
Buffy and Willow decide to go along with it, say goodbye to Spike, and are
disempowered by a machine.
When they leave the Safe Zone Jordan throws the scythe after Buffy, who
catches it but is thrown over by its weight.
Part 2: Ordinary People
Back in San Francisco Buffy and Willow are welcomed by Xander nd Dawn but the
four find themselves watched and followed by drones.
Buffy worries losing her powers will affect her ability to eat large amounts
of donuts, but things get more serious when Buffy during a run in the park
spots a jerk harassing a girl.
The jerk says he knows who she is and that she has lost her powers, that he
fights MMA, and that she should apologize.
They fight and Buffy is more agile, ducks his punches but still lands on the
ground.
When he moves to kick her, she trips him and getting more and more angry starts
beating him to a pulp.
Seeing that she is about to kill him, she breaks out in sobs and walks away.
While Willow tends to Buffy's bruises Riley and Sam Finn turn up saying the
time has come and asking if they are still in.
After some yelling and shouting of course they are in, and Riley hits the
"Send" button on his burner phone.
The next moment one drone is shot out of the air the other is bodily destroyed
by a flying person and Faith lands on the window sill of the apartment of our
heroes.
Much greeting and hugging ensues, and Buffy hands over her scythe to Faith, a
slayer who is still in full possession of her slayer powers.
Buffy and Riley keep the war plan secret and tell Xander and Dawn to drop
Spike's cats at the sitters and go into hiding.
On a mountain road in the middle of the night we find Riley, Sam, Buffy,
Willow, and Faith in a military vehicle driving towards the Safe Zone.
Willow remotely crashes a computer in the Safe Zone and when they show up at
the gate the guard cannot clear them, but allows them to use the facilities.
There Willow crashes all the computers, the lights go out, and the shield goes
down.
While Riley and Sam create a diversion, Faith puts two soldiers out of action,
allowing her Buffy and Willow to get to Lab 6 which houses the disempowering
machine, where ...
Part 3: The Great Escape
... Jordan and nine slayers lie in wait for them, each eager to beat up
Buffy and company.
Faith throws a smoke bomb, allowing Buffy and Willow to enter the lab, but
they find the door to the procedure room guarded by two more slayers.
Buffy takes on both, while Willow locks herself in the procedure room.
While Buffy is losing the fight, Willow operates the machine in reverse, giving
herself and Buffy their powers back.
With one spell Willow incapacitates all nine slayer, after which Buffy and
Jordan slug it out until Jordan lies unconscious and thoroughly beaten on the
ground.
This is the moment for Faith to give the scythe back to Buffy.
But as expected the soldiers return, and in numbers.
Willow casts a cloak of invisibility, which allows them to reach the force
field generator and Willow blows it out of existence with the Hammer of
Govannon.
With the force field gone all left-over inhabitants of the Safe Zone are free
and they make short shrift of the soldiers, with Spike knocking out the soldier
who kept Buffy, Willow, and Faith at gun point.
But the plan back-fires.
The TV reports of bands of vampires, wendigos and other supernaturals
roaming the country and killing people left and right, and they have video to
back it up.
Buffy recognizes Vicki, finds her in a batpire colony under the Congress Bridge
in Austin, Texas, and calls her to account.
It turns out that the victim in the video was dead already that the video was
staged, and that the government is duping the public.
Buffy says to Vicki: you go east drawing their attention, and we go west to
sort it out where it all began.
4. Crimes Against Nature
Buffy, Willow, Spike, and Faith are investigating the caves under the Suthro
Baths at Land's End,
where the government has its Shenlong research facility, when they are attacked
by a cyborg octopus.
Willow boils the monster, and they can enter to building where they finds a
veritable collection of curiosities, reminding Spike of the Initiative, except
that here they take normal beings and turn them into magically enhanced weapons.
His hunch is immediately confirmed when a cyborg man appears who threatens with
lethal force.
Faith jumps him but is thrown off.
Buffy says he is human, but Spike argues that at least she can hack off an
artificial arm, which she does and Faith just pulls off the other.
When Spike pulls out his bionic eye the cyborg falls to the ground, and starts
pleading for help.
He tells them e was a soldier, lost his arms and legs and "they" offered him
an upgrade.
Spike sits with him as he dies.
Meanwhile Willow has drained the local computer of useful info, while
Spike releases all modified beings they leave.
The info Willow has gathered suggests that the vice-president is behind this,
and they decide to kidnap and interrogate him.
They manage to swap him with Xander, who, in his role of vice-president gives a
hilarious interview for the Financial Times.
The vice-president turns out to be a dud, only interested in money for him and
his friends, but he tells them that a satellite with the
magic-absorbing machine will be launched.
Concluding that there is no place to hide for magicals they decide to fight.
Revelations
All hints point to Ophelia Reyes, Secretary of the supernatural being the
mastermind, and "journalists" Dawn And Xander know where she will be at eight
that night.
Our team approaches the Suthro Baths, which they find guarded by two soldiers
and a tank.
(Did anybody notice the two cats on the walls?)
Willow treats them to a "Shock and Awe" spell, liquefies the tank, and they
walk into the lab, where Ms. Reyes just phones for security.
They try to question her but she bursts out laughing saying they are totally
mistaken.
Then they are blasted to the ground by a spell cast by Joanna Wise, the White
House Press Secretary.
Faith attacks her with a sword, only to find it bouncing off bounced off on
the metal under her clothes, and she shows gleefully how she has made herself
into a vessel that can store magic, and she intends to fill it more.
Much fighting ensues, and when Joanna calls up the Shenlong, Buffy tries to
send Willow outside to stop it, but Willow says that that would leave Buffy in
a bad position, so she transfers back to Buffy the power that Buffy once gave
to all the slayers and which has grown enormously in the meantime.
While (powerless) Faith, Spike, Xander, and Dawn hide in an archway and Buffy
and Joanna are having it out at each other, Willow manages to catch the
Shenlong in a net.
Joanna is losing, but she has resources: she walks outside to the
magic-extraction machine, points it at the Shenlong, and starts sucking up its
magic to use for herself.
All the while Xander and Dawn are recording all that is happening on their
smartphones.
One Girl in All the World
While Spike jumps Joanna, Buffy smashes the machine, but Joanna has already
sucked up much magic and starts fighting Buffy and Willow with renewed vigor.
Spike got away with severe burns and Faith tends to them.
Things aren't going well, when Buffy has an idea, and sends Willow away.
Joanna laughs at such cowardice but Willow returns with the Shenlong, points
out to it who has stolen its magic, and Joanna ends up as dragon-food.
Days later our team watches the president on TV praising Riley and Samantha
Finn for exposing the "Wise Conspiracy".
While Buffy is serving blood to a badly bandaged Spike, Willow restores her
wiccan members to their magic.
Willow seems to consider giving up magic because she may be persecuted for it
again, but a black wiccan says: "I'm black, you're Jewish, there is no
guarantee that we won't be persecuted for that either".
Jordan shows up with a couple of (still disempowered) slayers and asks the
question: "What do we have to do to et our powers back? You did it for Faith.."
After some hard words and some soul searching Buffy is OK with it and Willow
performs the magic transfer, and the slayers promise to never abuse their
powers again.
While Buffy and Spike enjoy the moon-rise on the balcony, the others talk about
how Harmony got a role in a movie and the meaning of "medium rare".
Deleted Scenes Among others:
1. In their motel room Spike and Xander are so engrossed in pictures of the
cats on a smartphone they completely miss the moment Willow discovers Ms. Reyes
is behind all this.
2. In their suite in Paris Harmony and Clem are getting a massage and Harmony
has to protest against being touched inappropriately.
ZZ
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