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| Buffy The Vampire
Slayer: Omnibus Volume 1 by Joss Whedon, Eric Powell, and Joe Bennett Dark Horse Comics  as reviewed by Cochaman Peef with additional writing by Bridget Petrella |
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| Buffy The Vampire
Slayer: Omnibus Volume 1 by Joss Whedon, Eric Powell, and Joe Bennett Dark Horse Comics as reviewed by Cochaman Peef with additional writing by Bridget Petrella |
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The
smash TV hit Buffy the Vampire Slayer led to nearly a decade of
amazing comics at Dark Horse-including cool multiple specials,
one-shots, and guest miniseries. This omnibus series is truly the
ultimate compilation of the Buffy comics Dark Horse has published, and
runs along the TV series' timeline. This first volume begins at the
beginning— The Origin, a faithful adaptation of creator Joss Whedon's
original screenplay for the film that started it all. The newly-chosen
slayer's road to Sunnydale continues in Viva Las Buffy and Slayer,
Interrupted. Next, high school, the Scoobies and an English librarian
lead the way into Season One continuity. Plus, The Goon creator Eric
Powell provides pencils to "All's Fair," featuring Spike and Drusilla at
the 1933 World's Fair. This new definitive comic collection of Buffy
Summers’ wild adventures begins at, where else, the very beginning. In
“Buffy: The Origin” creator Joss Whedon’s original screenplay is used as
the template to tell the tale of how Buffy Summers became a vampire
slayer. Re-imagined as the Gellar Buffy, the story has a more serious
tone than the over-the-top campiness of the film. “Viva Las Buffy”
follows Buffy and Pike’s trip to a Las Vegas casino which contains more
than a few secrets (and vampires). The plot involves a side-story of
Angel along with the “first” appearance of Rupert Giles. We also see the
end of Buffy and Pike’s relationship. The last of the three main
stories, “Slayer, Interrupted,” focuses on Buffy’s incarceration in a
mental institution after Dawn finds Buffy’s diary about her slaying and
shares it with her parents. It’s a wonderful look back at events that
were merely suggested in the Season Six episode “Normal Again” as Buffy
contemplates the absurdity of her life.
This
first collection also has a solo Dawn story “Dawn & Hoopy the Bear”
and a Spike and Drusilla adventure from the 1930’s “All’s Fair.” Both
are more curiosities than anything else as they don’t add much, other
than some dark humor, to the collection. One of the intriguing choices
here is including Dawn as a character in these early stories. Although
divisive among fans I personally like the idea of showing “new” stories
with Dawn included. It’s a nice twist to see how her involvement makes
slight changes to the tale and continuity of the Buffy ‘verse. I hope
this trend continues in later volumes. Though not outstanding the
artwork and quality of the edition is uniformly good. Although I would
have preferred a hardcover edition series for the “definitive”
collection, but this nicely packaged 320 page and modestly priced
edition gives you all you could hope for in a trade paperback volume. I
came to the Buffy ‘verse late, I wasn’t a full-time viewer until season
six, and so have missed out on many of the comic adventures of
Sunnydale’s heroine. This collection makes a really nice primer for
those like me who haven’t followed the previous Buffy comics (before
this current Season Eight run), and for fans of the comics it’s the
perfect launching point to chronologically capture and collect all of
Buffy’s fascinating adventures. It’s definitely worth picking up. UB
