Broken Frontier

Sunnydale’s favorite daughter is back as Buffy creator Joss Whedon transfers the vampire-slaying action from the small screen to the comic page.

Picking up after the climactic conclusion to the final televised season of the show, Buffy and a veritable army of Slayers are now a global operation hunting down the vamps with ruthless efficiency. In this opening installment, Buffy’s team discovers a mysterious new threat when confronting what they mistakenly believe to be a nest of vampires. Elsewhere, the American military, believing the Slayers to be a potential threat to U.S. interests, investigate the crater that was once Sunnydale leading to a surprise encounter with an old face.

Ironically, it’s a testament to Whedon’s writing that I almost, and I stress almost, didn’t want to see these characters return. His deft characterization made the viewer care so much about them over the seven seasons of the show that you wanted to believe they really could have driven off into the sunset after that final episode and assumed the normal lives they’d never had the chance to enjoy in Sunnydale. A canonical eighth season of Buffy though, in any format, was always too exciting a prospect to be missed.

We’re reintroduced to a number of the surviving gang in this opener. Buffy’s group is now working out of a castle in Scotland with a more assured Xander heading the operation as her "Watcher." In a nice spot of name-checking other cells of Slayers are mentioned including Andrew’s group in Europe. While we don’t get to meet with Willow this month we do get to check in on Dawn and, without ruining the surprise, Buffy’s little sister has quite literally done a lot of growing up since we last saw her…

Fans of the show will love the little touches. Xander’s endearing geekiness is still there with his comparisons to himself and eyepatch-wearing Marvel Comics superspy Nick Fury. The Summers sisters’ relationship is as fractious and erratic as ever with Buffy jealous how close her sister is to Willow. And of course poor Dawn remains the infuriating nuisance she always was, having gotten herself into yet another scrape by ignoring the warnings of all around her.

It’s hardly surprising, given that Whedon is writing this opening arc, that the characters retain their unique voices throughout. The only disappointment is that the issue ends far too quickly for there to be too much interaction between the cast. Let’s hope that it’s not too long before we get to see Giles, Buffy and the Scoobies all in one room together engaging in that trademark banter we all loved over the seven years of the show.

The comic format allows for a bigger budget feeling to the story and Georges Jeanty, on pencils, makes able use of this with some dynamic scenes of the Slayers’ skydiving into action at the beginning of the issue. It’s also hard to imagine Dawn’s predicament this issue being as well realized on the small screen as it is on the printed page. I wasn’t always as convinced by Jeanty’s facial likenesses of the cast but that’s a minor complaint.

Buffy Season Eight #1 is like catching up again with old friends you haven’t seen in years, remembering all the good times you shared and wondering why you ever fell out of touch in the first place. It’s great to have the gang back.