Comics
As some of you may already know there are some "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" comics available. My first reaction was to run away saying: "What the Hell is going on?!!! That's surely a stupid book, that has very little to do with original the show. They just want to make some money out of the fans." Much later, I quickly glanced at one while waiting in a store. The seeds of doubt had grown in my head. Was it this bad? After another while I bought the first 4 volumes, specially to make a review on this web-page: I always liked comics and I thought that a review might help people who had the same doubts that I had. So here it is: the review of the first 4 volumes (there should be some more, but didn't found them yet) and their transcripts so you can judge by yourself what the content is worth.
Review:
The format of books is about 10.3/6.7 inches (26/17 cm), on a glassy paper of good quality. The books have 32 pages (except vol. 1, with 36 pages). Out of this, you can pull out 10 to 12 pages of cover, credits, advertisement, merchandizing and letters to the editor.
I'm talking about comics here so let's talk about the graphic aspect of these books. As I told you I like comics and in general I don't really like the American comics (if you just got an heart attack, sorry, but it's justify...), except Frank Miller or Todd McFarlane, Japanese and European comics have very often highly detailed and precise drawings. These comics aren't an exception to that rule. Some pics are interesting but the overall quality is poor. Hopefully, the colorist is better (I thinks he saves these comics), so if you go quickly through the stuff you won't notice too much the low details. The positive point is that it still has a better quality than the Marvel and Nova I used to read, long ago, where the colors were splashed in the middle of junk drawings, ...the whole on cheap paper.
After the image quality in itself let's go through what they represent. You will find all the characters from the show in there. But if they respect the general appearance don't expect to see Sarah, Alyson, Nick, David, Seth, Charisma, Kristine nor Anthony. Seth is kinda representated (by the hairs), but otherwise the artist didn't draw exactly the actors (or at least I hope for him...). What really bug me is Willow. The dressing is okay, but her hairs are too brown, she is too much like Cordy (except the clothes and the attitude). What about the vampires? They piss me off! When the men change into demons they are all green, their face is more like those of Machida or Moloch (without the horns). But the women have just longer teeth. Not that I don't enjoy seeing hot chicks staying hot...but it's illogical that they don't transform the same way. Except to please male teens who usually buy comics naturally. Remark that in the volume 3 the she-vampire is all green (whereas she was still a hot-vampire in volume 2). There are no she-vampire in volume 4, so I don't know if this default was corrected. One last stuu that bugged me bad: the Bronze Club! You see that picture it's like one of those huge buildings with statutes in Gotham city! Yeah, they have some nice places in the dangerous part of Sunnydale...
I'm done with graphics, let's see the dialogues. You know what? There not that bad! I even suprised myself to smile couple time to some lines. While doing the transcripts I noticed a bunch of gonna/wanna, but you have to keep in my mind that they can't cover the page with text. Plus it's not chocking coming from teens and they carefully avoided that Giles use such idioms. So I like the text, it respects the spirit of the show.
What do we have left to review? The scenari. Being developed in about 22 pages don't except a scenario has developed as in the show. So basically the plot is supposed to take place in the season 2, before Angel lost his soul (according to the editor Scott Allie in an answer to a reader in volume 4). I spotted a mistake: in the volume 2 (Halloween), the action is one year after Halloween (the TV episode) [Buffy, to Xander and Willow about the 'trick-or-treat': "What are the chances of a replay of last year? Oh, yeah...Hellmouth."]. Since Halloween is part of season 2, that mean the plot of the comics is now in 1999, which is basically season 3. Let leave this error aside and discuss the scenari in themselves. There are a lot of reference to the show, and don't expect any attempt to present the 'Buffy world'. That sucks for the readers who don't know the show, but fans should appreciate. In the volume one it's okay, then it goes worse and worse. Volumes 2 & 3 are kinda following the same plot and are just: "not bad". But the volume 4 is lame... Common Buffy slaying a huge ice-elemental by reading a text in a manuscript in some kind of weird alphabet! I also noticed that volume 5 is called Puritan Style, it surprised me because after Halloween, Cold Turkey and White Christmas, we would have get "Bloody New Year's Eve", "Dead Valentine" and "St Patrick Killing Spree". But it seems they have broke the serie of celebration day scenari... it sucks I hoped to sell them some good titles, damn!
Now it's time to conclude. These comics are not bad, nothing more. It's getting worse as time pass by. I told you I didn't read anything after volume 4. When I'll find them, I'll buy them (even if they totally stink, now I'm obliged to criticize them -in good or bad), read them, and up-date this section. My advice is that if you only have $10 in your pocket go see "the Matrix" and buy those later. If you have $10 in extra, you could buy them. Check out the transcripts first to get an idea, or read them in the store: may be you'll prefer to see "the Matrix" again...
Transcripts:
If you find any mistake, just e-mail me to tell me about it
Volume #1: Wu-Tang Fang -- Transcript --
Volume #2: Halloween -- Transcript --
Volume #3: Cold Turkey -- Transcript --
Volume #4: White Christmas -- Transcript --
