Buffy and Willow are back from the magical creature holding zone and trying to fit into life. This is proving to be rather difficult. This review contains spoilers.
WRITTEN BY: Christos Gage
PENCILS: Rebekah Isaacs
INKS: Dan Jackson
PUBLISHER: Dark Horse Comics
First of all I have to say sorry for not reviewing any of this season of Buffy yet. If you haven’t been reading season 11, I think you should really rethink that decision. So far it is pretty awesome I reckon. Let me give you a quick recap about what has happened so far.
Familiar Politics
In the aftermath of a big invasion of San Francisco where a lot of people died, the politicians have decided that all magical beings, be them human or demon (or anything else) are to be deported and set to live away from the normal humans. Buffy, Willow and Spike are sent away to live in some sort of magic refuge camp whilst Xander, Dawn and Giles are staying in San Francisco. Ok both Giles and Dawn are really magical beings too, but the government doesn’t know this, so all is good. The military who run the camp are not really a friendly bunch and the Scoobies quickly cotton on that something isn’t right. Buffy takes a job as a Trustee ( more like some sort of Sheriff) so she can have a snoop around. Other Slayers are working there too, not a friendly lot. Willow hangs around with the wiccans and gets asked if she could drain the power of one of them, so this woman can leave and live in the normal world. She agrees to do this, but feels very weird about it.
Bloodsucking sucks
Spike is struggling, the blood rations for the vampires of the camp is low, so Buffy has resulted in letting him feed on her. There is a lot of backstabbing and fighting going on in the camps, with the army puppet mastering a lot of it from the outside. In her sleuthing Buffy figures out that the Army is building a machine to drain the beings of their magic. They see this a positive solution, no magic and people can live in the normal world. The only problem being that some creatures, such as vampires are only alive because of magic. Drain that and they die. After much thinking Buffy and Willow take the deal. They decide to be drained and turned normal to go out and fight from the outside and try to come up with a plan to save Spike.
So in this week’s episode…
In this comic Buffy and Willow are struggling on the outside. Buffy being a public figure with a record of fighting bad guys and a big target for angry criminals. Buffy gets into a fight, and finds out that even though she still has all her skills, she doesn’t have all the power. Even wielding the scythe is hard due to it’s weight. But she takes the guy down, and can’t stop herself, then freaking out that
she nearly killed him, him being a mere human not a soul-less demon. Willow is going headlong into computer geekery instead, trying to replace the magic with ones and zeros. I don’t think it quite fills the hole. Xander and Dawn worry that both Buffy and Willow seem to have given up on their plans to fight this thing.
Ding dong who is at the door?
One day Riley and wife Sam show up and the Scoobies are not sure if the can trust them fully or not. But they insist they are on their side and even end up giving Buffy and Willow are reversed pep talk where Buffy insist they still can fix the situation.
Ding dong who is at the door ( again)
Well, lookie here, Faith is showing up. If you like me wondered what happened to her after Angel and Fred set off time traveling,
it is nice to be reunited with our second favourite Slayer. This one with her magic powers still intact. What will happen next? To be honest I don’t know? The government is up to fishy things with that harvest machine they are building. And how will Buffy and Willow
get their powers back. And how will they get Spike out of the so called “Safe zone”?
So many questions!
But don’t get me wrong, it is very interesting, I am really enjoying the settings and the problems the Scoobies are facing. It all feels rather topical in a world that is more and more making it hard to live together side by side with people/beings that are different from you. Hopefully love will trump hate and Buffy and the gang will find a solution. I fear we might struggle a bit more in the real
world, but who knows maybe we can learn something from the Scoobies.
