In many ways, comic collecting is a weird hobby. There are those who just like the stories and characters, but others collect with a sense of ritual. Bags and boards and boxes both long and short all have their purposes; a right and a wrong way to use them. I’ve encountered comics fans who approach their collection with a serial killer sense of meticulous planning. But most collectors agree that comics shouldn’t feel like homework.
It can be hard to see from the inside. I’m so immersed in “X-Men” that sometimes I forget that rambling on about the split between the uncanny line and the adjectiveless line is probably goddbledygook for most people. I remember this whenever I think about getting into “Transformers” or “GI Joe” comics. I didn’t grow up with those series, and my entry point involves reading Wikipedia and Reddit pages to distinguish the difference between “Robots in Disguise” and “More Than Meets the Eye.” When should I read the “Megatron Origins” miniseries? Do crossovers count? Or are they imaginary stories?
The Big Two superhero publishers are famously egregious in this regard. Do a search for “Hawkeye Reading Order” and you’ll see what I mean. Is it possible to understand? Sure, but not without doing a lot of homework. And the other publishers aren’t immune to this! IDW personally drives me up a wall, splintering spin-off after spin-off until I’m just lost in the woods. I stopped reading “Star Trek” comics when the franchise exploded into a mess of miniseries and multiple timelines.
With new comics being published and shipped, we are finally getting some new “Buffy” comics. Where we last left off, there were two series. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” by Jordie Bellaire and Dan Mora, and “Angel” by Brian Edward Hill and Gleb Melnikov. Oh, and there was a fairly disruptive miniseries called “Hellmouth” that introduced Buffy to Angel and stirred up the status quo for both young series. In previous columns, I talked about how troubled and unnecessary the crossover felt. There was little foreshadowing and both regular series had to abruptly put the breaks on their own stories to accommodate it.
So now we’ve got a new issue of “Buffy.” That’s great! Bellaire and Mora are fabulously talented and slowly but surely building a groove together. We’ve also got a new issue of “Angel,” wait I’m sorry. The cover tells me this is something called “Angel and Spike” #11 (even though the press packet assures me that this is just a regular issue of “Angel”). Maybe the hope is that fans of William the Bloody will grab issue #11 of a series they hadn’t yet been reading. How often do you think that happened? And how many times do you think some poor soul got confused and skipped the issue, waiting for the next issue of “Angel.” If I were betting, I’d bet on there being more in the latter category than the former.
Then there’s “Willow” #1, a new series from Mariko Tamaki, Natacha Bustos, and Elenora Bruni. The issue is… well it’s pretty good. Maybe not my cup of tea, but I can see the real merit in its craft. And if you wanted to argue that Willow is the best character in the Buffyverse, I think I’d have a hard time proving you wrong. If anyone is deserving of a spin-off, it’s the good witch Rosenberg. The quality of the book is not the issue!
The real questions are all whys. Why this book? Why now? It’s hard to tell who is steering the ship. Did this spin-off arise from the narrative? Not really. Is it a response to fan demand? Not as near as I can tell. It seems like Boom decided enough people were buying their “Buffy” comics and their “Angel” comics and wanted to see how many people would read a “Willow” comic. And I don’t want to invoke a slippery slope fallacy, but I feel it. Where does this end? There are a lot of characters deserving of a spin-off, but that doesn’t mean more and more ongoing comic series are the answer.
Continued belowThe goal of comics are often… to sell more comics. But it shouldn’t be that way. If you make a good thing, people will want it. There’s a world where the “Buffy” comics are left to do their own thing. With enough popularity, sure, a miniseries here or there, or an earnest spin-off may be in order. There’s a way to organically grow a line of comics to meet the demand of the fans who obsess. But this ain’t it.
If I could end on a constructive note, I think there is one comic series that could be a really good model for “Buffy.” I am talking about “Invincible” by Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker, and Ryan Ottley. The goal of “Invincible” was to put a whole superhero universe in one series, and that’s exactly what it did. Crossovers, reboots, retcons, big Events, all that comic book-y stuff sort of happened, it just stayed in a single consecutively numbered series. Was “Invincible” the biggest seller ever? I’d assume not, but I’d also assume that the current “Buffy” series don’t do much bigger numbers.
I appreciate the aims of “Buffy” to go as big and bombastic as possible. But I’d appreciate it even more if it could take all that cool energy and put it into a structure that was the right fit.
