Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #25

I’ve men­tioned this back when Jane Espen­son had her turn in the writ­ing seat, but the big prob­lem with bring­ing in ex-writers of the Buffy TV series is that, while they may be pretty damn good at screen­writ­ing, they’re just not that good at putting together a story in comic book format.

Case in point: In the open­ing pages of this book, Doug Petrie writes a con­ver­sa­tion between Xan­der and Buffy that, spo­ken by actors would be incred­i­bly snappy, how­ever on the page it reads more like Yoda with multi-personality dis­or­der. It’s frus­trat­ing to read.

I’m not sure how long they intend Sea­son 8 to run but right now the series just seems to be drag­ging it’s feet. It’s time to start wrap­ping it up, boys and girls.

Power Girl

I really, really like this book. It’s every­thing main­stream super­hero books aren’t right now. It’s fun, whim­si­cal, fea­tures a solo female as the pro­tag­o­nist, has an ape-with-a-human-brain as the antag­o­nist and doesn’t co-star Wolverine.

Amanda Conner’s art helps to raise the book even higher. Char­ac­ters actu­ally show emo­tion (Ed Benes take note) and she does a good job of mov­ing the cam­era around in a way that doesn’t obscure the story (Ed Benes).

I hope DC aren’t hing­ing it’s future on a some incred­i­bly large sales fig­ures. Power Girl is prob­a­bly too much of a niche book to edge into the monthly top 10. To my knowl­edge Ms Mar­vel, Marvel’s equiv­a­lent female super­hero, has never even hit the top 20 and it’s at #38 and quite hap­pily chug­ging along.

New Mutants

This should go with­out say­ing, but when you’re try­ing to hit the reader with the shock return of a long dead bad guy you prob­a­bly shouldn’t fea­ture that char­ac­ter on the wrap-around cover.

Just say­ing.

Com­plete List

Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer #25
Flash: Rebirth #2 (of 5)
Power Girl #1
Trin­ity #49
Agents of Atlas #4
New Mutants #1

Well I didn’t make it to the 100 page mark again this year.

I was all geared up to cel­e­brate mak­ing it past last years page count, but after count­ing up this year’s script I dis­cov­ered I’d hit the same damn page count as last year. So at least I’m fail­ing consistently.

There’s a few things I would’ve done dif­fer­ently (and prob­a­bly should’ve, hav­ing already been through the process once before). Nevertheless:

• Started plan­ning earlier.
• Would not have com­pletely for­got­ten about Script Frenzy from the 13th to the 20th of April.
• Started plan­ning earlier.

Yes, once again it was the lack of plan­ning that let me down. Add to that the inher­ent pro­cras­ti­na­tion and I’m sur­prised I got any­thing down really.

Unlike last year I’m not going to be throw­ing the rough draft up here in PDF for­mat for peo­ple to pull apart. Not yet at least.  Not because I’m shit-scared of feed­back, but because I have far grander plans for the embry­onic script.

I’m going to fin­ish it. First draft, sec­ond draft and then: Final Copy.

I won’t be hold­ing myself to a time­frame though. I’m not that crazy.