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‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 Volume 2: On Your Own’ – Advance TPB Review

 

Buffy S9V2If you haven’t read Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 Volume 1, then go and do that now. If you haven’t read Season 8, do that first. So, from here on out, I am assuming you are current on the trades and will not offer any spoiler warnings for anything prior to this book.

Seriously.

Buffy is always more interesting when she is dealing with big, personal issues while saving the world. This comic book is almost one of the best I have seen.

The first half has Buffy dealing with the fallout of Season 9 Volume 1, forcing her to juggle the emergence of the zompire and her pregnancy. The story balances the two pretty effectively, and this half of the book is one of the best I’ve seen in a bit. Then, there is a twist, and the stakes (sorry, bad pun) wither like Larry King.

The second half of this comic book works well enough, but it is not nearly as strong as I was hoping. Without revealing any details, the most courageous and interesting choices in the first half are completely negated. The second half still has high stakes and difficult choices, but the world isn’t altered and Buffy isn’t either.

The art is still absolutely rock solid. I have always been impressed with the art in the Buffy comics. I cannot imagine that it is easy to capture the appearance of these characters that we have already grown to love without tracing them off the TV. Both Georges Jeanty and Cliff Richards do an admirable job of remaining true to the look of the show while bringing their own look to the comic.

I would be a terrible person (ed. Too late!) if I didn’t mention the excellent, 8-page bonus comic that closes the book. In Space, No One Can Hear You Slay deals with the catastrophe that ensues when one of Spike’s space bugs is bitten by a zompire. The resulting “multihyphenated space-bug-zompire-thing” is incredible. I will ruin nothing, but this mini comic is worth the price of the whole book.

So, I have raved about some of this book and been ambivalent about other parts. The thing to remember is that, at worst, parts of this book make a good Buffy story instead of a great one, but good Buffy is better than most. And, remember, parts of this are incredible, and an incredible Buffy story is a sight to see.

Four and Seven-Eighths Zompire Nests out of Five.

 

 

Ben Rhodes, Fanbase Press Senior Contributor

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Favorite Book:  Cryptonomicon Favorite MovieYoung Frankenstein Favorite Absolutely Everything:  Monty Python

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