A terrible fate has been brought upon Earth and Buffy Summers is quite literally the only person who has any chance to save the world…again. Some Spoilers Ahead
Cover by Chris Ario AninditoWritten by Casey Gilly
Illustrated by Joe Jaro
Colored by Joanna Lafuente
Lettered by Ed DukeshireIn the not too distant future, a fifty year old Buffy Summers lives in a world in which the Sun has suffered some sort of black magick ‘death’ and is weak enough that vampires can now live freely among humans, as extra-humans. Killing them is now illegal unless there is enough of a lethal provocation from them to start a fight. A new version of the Watchers’s Council is being formed after a devastating attack left most potential slayers and the previous council dead. Making her way through this almost-apocalyptic world, Buffy has come to accept this situation and is just trying to survive the best she can.
Currently living in London, Buffy is hiding out just trying to make her way without raising any eyebrows. Completely cut off from the majority of her allies, she is regularly training with Anya, staying in an abandoned apartment, just trying to get a drink at a local pub without a ton of vampires recognizing her, and so on. It’s a sad, rough life for Buffy, but she is making the best of it, surprisingly. It’s a somewhat interesting plot idea for a future “Buffy” storyline, but it feels all too similar to other stories of its kind. This issue’s biggest problem is that it’s about twenty pounds of story in a five pound bag. It has so many narrative hoops to jump through just to catch people up. Because this arc is only going to be four issues it has a ton of ground to cover in a very small amount of time to do so.
Casey Gilly’s script is a race to the finish as she has to leap from Buffy’s current situation to the attack that wiped out the potential slayers some years ago, which is shown to us as a nightmare Buffy is having. We are then thrown back into her daily routine – the training, the burritos, and the hiding. We get a look at some sort of coven doing a spell with Buffy’s photo at the center of it, and then more daily stuff until she gets a huge (figurative) bomb dropped on her in the final pages. This is a twenty five page comic with so much plot getting thrown around that after the point of the nightmare sequence it never has any sort of cohesion or emotional weight to it. You are just being dragged along this uncomfortable ride hoping that at some point you’ll be able to catch your breath and new story points won’t be added to this first issue. That said, Gilly does know the tone of the dialogue and wit that should be present in any “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” story. However, the world she has dropped us in is so bleak, it mostly falls flat or feels ingenuine.
The story as a whole almost feels like a bad dream that our beloved Slayer is having. It never feels connected to anything. Maybe I’m bringing my own 25+ year Buffy fandom biases with me as I’ve never fully warmed up to this new version, but I also don’t dislike it. Normally I would say I am confused by this disconnect, but I believe in this instance it is simply far too much story crammed in and it’s having a really hard time figuring out the balance of what is important to be told right now, and what could have been dropped completely. Even for constant readers of the new series, this has to be a jarring and point to be dropped into. The writing is not bad, Gilly knows the story she is telling and is doing her best to keep it on the rails. However, this is a puzzle that is becoming more unclear as more pieces are snugly pushed into place.
The final ‘bomb’ I mentioned before is the introduction of a young girl who seems to be able to hold her own against a vampire, or at least thinks she can. She also believes she is a potential slayer. When Buffy hears this she wants even less to do with the tween girl than she did upon meeting her; until the big info drop happens. She is the daughter of Willow and Tara, and they sent her to find Buffy. It’s a little too cutesy, and on the nose, but is unfortunately the exact kind of device continuously tossed into these sort of future stories.
Continued belowThe artwork drawn quite effectively by Joe Jaro is well done and he really captures the likenesses of our beloved characters. Most notably Buffy herself, Xander, and Anya. They really look like the actors who portrayed them in the show, and those likenesses have carried over from the Dark Horse continuation and throughout this rebooted universe at Boom Studios. His work is really competent and nicely detailed overall. Even without the familiar faces popping in and out of the issue, his work does its best to make even newcomers to this (reboot) universe feel somewhat at home. Joanna Lafuente’s color use is a varied palette that gives plenty of visual storytelling cues. Like Jaro’s illustrations, the visual language her work is speaking is baked into the Buffy DNA. It all feels at home and does its best to welcome you in, even when the plot feels like it is doing its best to push you away.
Is this tied directly into Boom’s current Buffy canon? Is it a completely new alternate universe? Who can say? This over-weighted story juggles a few too many things right off the bat and it feels like it is doing its best to appease original fans and those who did jump on the new series, and is mostly unsuccessful with both. As someone who typically loves all things “Buffy,” I went into this with a completely open mind and came out the other side a little perplexed and honestly exhausted.
Final Verdict: 5.0, An over-stuffed premiere to a miniseries that will definitely have more story than pages to do it real justice.
