Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #19

It’s incred­i­bly hard to review this issue of Buffy. The pre­vi­ous issue shipped nearly 3 months ago so I’ve for­got­ten nearly every­thing that’s hap­pened in this sto­ry­line. All I remem­bered when going in was Buffy was 200 years in the future with Fray (the last Slayer), Dark Wil­low was again the Big Bad, Nice Wil­low was try­ing to get Buffy back and Dawn was in the for­est with Xander.

To prop­erly review this issue I’d have to go back through the last few issues to catch up. Due to poor fil­ing skills thats not going to hap­pen, so I’m stuck read­ing this book with only a vague rec­ol­lec­tion of whats come before.

So, the story. Buffy fights Fray. Fray fights Buffy. Dark Wil­low tries to kill Buffy “to save the world”. Dawn and Xan­der fight ghostly goblin-things with some help from mag­i­cal for­est sprites and a hand­ful of Slay­ers. Buffy kills Dark Wil­low. Buffy returns to her present. Oh, and Riley makes an appear­ance at the end with a Twi­light scar on his chest.

So Twi­light is the Ini­tia­tive? This and many other ques­tions remain unan­swered in this issue.

The art serves the story well. While the char­ac­ters are not hyper real­is­tic like in the ongo­ing Angel series, I was still able to recog­nise Riley easy enough.

The 3 month delay is a real shame, because up until this point Sea­son 8 has been a lot of fun to read. I’m wor­ried that the huge delay shook a few read­ers loose. I’m sure this sto­ry­line will read a lot bet­ter in trades. So some­one Jefah should enjoy it a lot more than I did.

Dou­ble shame is the con­sis­tently bad Jeph Loeb is writ­ing the next issue. It makes me won­der if they’re inten­tion­ally try­ing to lose readers.

Thor: Man of War

How do you sur­pass the Blood Colos­sus — a venge­ful giant made from the blood and flesh of fallen vikings and pow­ered by a god — that appeared in Thor: Reign of Blood? The short answer is “you don’t”. But Man of War doesn’t suf­fer from a lack of Blood Colossi at all.

This, the third (and last) book in Matt Fraction’s series of Thor one-shots is a great yarn about what hap­pens when gods get pissed off at humans, other gods and exis­tence itself. While a lot darker and grit­tier than Reign of Blood, or Ages of Thun­der before it, Frac­tion still man­ages to weave a lot of black com­edy (the best kind of com­edy!) into the story.

The book is divided into two halves with a dif­fer­ent artist han­dling each part. Clay Mann (really?) does a decent enough job on the first half, right up until the Storm Giant shows up. The next few pages of bat­tle were incred­i­bly hard to fol­low, until I spent a few min­utes star­ing at each panel and try­ing to suss it all out.

The final part, drawn by “artist” Patrick Zircher, is a lot eas­ier to read. Maybe because he didn’t feel the need to invoke the z-axis like Mann. Odin and Thor’s final bat­tle has just the right amount of bloody Viking action to keep me want­ing more. But sadly this looks like it for Fraction’s Thor. You will be missed.

Wolver­ine: Ori­gins #30

It feels a bit weird to be review­ing the last issue in a two book crossover. But after last week’s far too happy reviews I needed a book I knew would be bad. Of course I wasn’t count­ing on Buffy drop­ping the ball this week.

Any­way, on to this issue. It begins with Wolver­ine squar­ing off against against his *shud­der* son Daken. At least it lets Mike Deodato draw the one good panel in the entire book. A worm’s eye view of the two, claws out and ready to get slic­ing. While this is hap­pen­ing Pro­fe­sor X lies dead on the floor. vic­tim of a psy­chic bomb planted deep in Daken’s mind. Oh, whats that? He’s not dead just uncon­scious? It seems the dam­age from the bomb trig­gered in the last issue was inef­fec­tive against the “frac­tured nature of his mind”. Uh, right.

Wolver­ine retreats to his happy place in an attempt to hold back the beserker rage he’s well known for. But then his “Julie Bowan in white lin­gerie moment’” quickly becomes “Grandma mak­ing out with Shooter McGavin while wear­ing a KISS mask” and the fight is back on.

Pro­fes­sor X brings them both into Wolverine’s happy place and explains that Daken draws his rage from the same place. Back in the real world Daken stabs Sebas­t­ian Shaw before he can kill Pro­fes­sor X. Then Daken and Wolver­ine wan­der off to rejoin their own sto­ry­line. Phew.

Deodato’s pen­cils are fine, but hey’re let down by sub­stan­dard ink­ing. The less said about Daniel Way’s writ­ing, the better.

Com­plete Pull List:

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #19
Legion of Super Heroes #48
Trin­ity #26
Ms Mar­vel #33
Run­aways vol 3 #4
Thor: Man of War
Ulti­mate Ori­gins #5 (of 5)
Ulti­mate X-Men #98
Wolver­ine: Ori­gins #30
X-Force #9
Wiz­ard Mag­a­zine #207

From: Spring­field Punx