Another month, another Buffy book! Buffy tries to get a real job! Well, she’s done that before, but let’s see how she does as a bodyguard in another spoiler-y installment of “Buffy Season Nine!”
Written by Andrew Chambliss
Illustrated by Georges Jeanty
Buffy is trying something new–not Slaying. WHAT?! Enter Kennedy. Slayer. Ex-girlfriend of magicless Willow. Bossy. She’s joined a company that hires Slayers to act as bodyguards for high-profile clients, and Buffy is her most recent recruit. But Buffy is having a little trouble letting go of Slaying. Things that go bump in the night are kinda her forte. Luckily . . . her first client is having some woeful demon trouble that Buffy can’t wait to sink her stake into.
- Executive produced by Joss Whedon!
- Buffy the bodyguard!
- Kennedy returns!
Buffy’s got it rough. She can never get through a single job without her slaying getting in the way. She couldn’t be a waitress, she couldn’t be a barista. Anything within the retail or food service industry just wasn’t a good fit for her because of the high danger factor of her “real” job as the slayer. However, after the Seed was destroyed, Kennedy, Willow’s ex-girlfriend, decided to incorporate the abilities she had as a slayer into the lucrative world of body guarding.
As professions go, that one probably makes the most sense. Any sort of career path that calls upon a slayer’s enhanced strength and speed makes sense. Even when Buffy was tagging along with Riley in the Initiative it made sense to a certain extent (even if the season itself was ultimately disappointing to some). However, Buffy’s messiah complex really does throw a wrench in the machine when she automatically thinks a demon dressed as a bellhop is “disguised as a bellhop.”
Spoiler: the demon was a red herring to distract Buffy from her job; a pretty obvious red herring at that.
While it was a pretty silly mistake to make, it did serve to drive the point home that Buffy’s messiah complex WAS a real problem in this field as well and she needed to rein it in if she wanted to keep her job with the company.
By the way, she’s also kind of racist against demons. I suppose it’s something she’s learned over the years, but this issue isn’t doing much for Buffy’s reputation.
The reappearance of Eldre Koh was a welcome sight as he was introduced in the first arc but was absent in the second arc. However, it might have been a little disorienting because that was 6 months ago so it could be easy to forget that he IS an ally, just one that was MIA for the last arc. Eldre Koh and Buffy have a surprising amount of chemistry as well and it’ll be great to see how it develops in the future. He also provides a counterbalance to someone like Kennedy, who represents what Buffy COULD be as opposed to what Eldre Koh represents, which is the life she’s known since High School.
But while she does have that chemistry with Eldre, her job with Kennedy was the center stage of this arc. They had a job to protect this social media wunderkind who invented their universe’s version of…something. It’s not entirely clear, but it will probably become clearer as time goes on. Based on the name “Tincan” my first instinct is something like Skype, but since Skype itself isn’t a “Social Networking Site” in the strictest definition of the term that might be unlikely. We shall see.
The final panel carried an immense amount of weight as well; it’s actually a bit surprising that it took this long for the Demon Law Firm from Hell called “Wolfram & Hart” to show up on Buffy’s side of the canon. They were one of the most reliable (and best!) villains in either series, so it’s definitely welcome to see them show up again in the pages of the comic, and on Buffy’s side no less. Angel has had enough of Wolfram and Hart in my opinion so it’ll be interesting to see how Buffy would take them on.
Final Thoughts:
Continued below- Is it just me or does the “Mark Zuckerberg” of our story, “Theo Daniels,” look a bit like Tom Hiddleston? It’s probably just the hair.
- You’d think that if police were trained to have a supernatural task force like San Francisco currently does in this series, they’d use a gun loaded with wooden bullets. It works for True Blood.
- We’re probably going to learn a lot more about Eldre Koh in this arc, possibly even who imprisoned him. My guess is someone from Wolfram & Hart.
- Speaking of Wolfram & Hart: I will bet anyone a wooden nickel that Simone found a job at that particular law firm known for their, shall we say “eclectic” fields of employment.
Do you have anything to add? Let us know in the comments!
