Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 Volume 1: The Long Way Home [Paperback]

 

 

Create your own review

After having to subsist on reruns and post-"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" novels that existed outside the canon, there was occasion for great joy when Joss Whedon agreeing to script a new "BtVS" comic book that would reveal what would have been the next season of our favorite television series. As soon as I read the annoucement regarding this comic book I told my local comic book store to put me down for three copies of each issue, not because I was salting away alternate covers in mint condition but because I was getting copies for each of my daughters, thereby scoring major parenting point. "The Long Way" home is the first story-arc, which covers issues #1-4. If you do not have a local comic book store where you can go and pick up each issue of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8" (and now "Angel: After the Fall," which covers Season 6 of the "BtVS" spinoff series), then waiting for each story-arc to be published as a trade paperback is quite appropriate.

We begin "in media res," which is to say that we do not begin "Season Eight" right after the final scene of the series finale with Buffy and the Scoobies standing at the precipise of the giant hole in the ground that used to be Sunnydale. After all, we do have some specific references to Buffy and the gang during the fifth season of "Angel," although Whedon is already engaging in revisionist interpretation (the Buffy partying very publicly in Rome "and supposedly dating some guy called 'The Immortal'" turns out to be a Slayer set up as a decoy when it became clear Buffy was a target). It has been a long time (technically the end of Season 1) since there has been only "One girl, in all the world, a Chosen One" yadda yadda yadda. Now there are eighteen hundred, with five hundred of them working with Buffy in ten separate squads.

The vampires in this world might be gone (all of the soulless ones, anyway), but there are still demons and Buffy is still fighting the good fight. Buffy has a new Watcher (well, she thinks she does anyway) as a result of one of Whedon's patented character upgrades and all I can say about Dawn is that she certainly has grown up. But the big development is that the U.S. government has noticed that giant pit where Sunnydale used to be. What Buffy calls "squads" the military thinks of as "cells" (as in "terrorist cells"), and what they see is an army with power, resources, a "charismatic, uncompromising, and completely destructive" leader and "a hard-line ideology that does not jibe with American interests." No wonder Buffy is in Scotland.

Whedon does the scripts, with pencils by Georges Jeanty (Marvel's "Weapon X"), inks by Andy Owens ("Fray"), colors by Dave Stewart, and letters by Richard Starkings & Comicraft's Jimmy. The gorgeous cover art is by Jo Chen. It becomes clear that one 24-page comic book does not exactly translate into the equivalent of one episode of the "BtVS" television series, although each of the first three issues ends with the sort of full-page shocking revelation that fades to black with a "to be continued" on television. Not everybody from the final shot of the television series shows up in the first issue, but most of them make their appearances in due course. Remember that Spike has an excused absence since he is still busy with Season Five of "Angel" (at least that is my assumption for now). Also, you need to be forewarned that not all of the obvious questions that pop up as you read this storyline are going to be answered by the last page. Some of them (e.g., DAWN) still have not been answered and we are almost done with the second major-story arc).

I was happy to see that "The Long Way Home" ends with the "Big Bad" coming from what I thought was the most interesting sub-plot from everything Whedon was laying out in these first four issues, even though it was a relatively minor part of these early festivities. Ultimately, there is a sense here that everything that has happened in these first four issues is but the prelude to what is to come. I have to think that down the road we will look back at this initial story-arc and it will make more sense than it does today. I know that my expectations for this title are sky high, but at this point from my perspective things are going good and not great. Still, I have to round up because "The Long Way Home" is a must read for everybody that has all seven seasons of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on DVD.

For every fan of Buffy, it's something that you don't want to miss to see what may have happen if a real season 8 was made on TV. The only problem I have with this is you go from first to last page in an hour or so. But it's the only negative point I've got, the story is really good and you want to now what will happen next. 4,5/5

Highly entertaining, it's great to see the ol' scooby gang back at work, but I read the whole book in so short a time that it hardly seems worth the cost. But for hard core Buffy fans like me, unfortunately it's not going to stop us from buying more issues!

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 5 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

 

5.0 out of 5 stars Season 8 better than the omnibus volumes
This makes me wish that there had been a season 8 on television. It dovetails nicely with some events in the final season of Angel which aired when season 8 of buffy would have... Read more

Published on Feb 9 2009 by Catherine Phillips

5.0 out of 5 stars Buffy's Adventures Continue
Being and avid Buffy fan, I've found great joy in learning of Season 8. The other review gives an excellent breakdown. Read more

Published on July 30 2008 by Slayer Fan

Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

› See all 5 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

Search Listmania!