Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 Volume 8: Last Gleaming (Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Dark Horse)) [Paperback]

THe first half of season 8 was pretty good. What could never have been done on the show was done in comic books - incredible sweeping epic scenes of an army of 500 slayers fighting evil all over the globe. A great new villain called Twilight.

Unfortunately, the second half fell flat. "Retreat" made no sense, Twilight was a bit of a letdown, and now we have Final Gleaming. The plotline (SPOILERS!) is that basically Buffy and Angel have been manipulated into helping give birth to a sentient new Universe which wants to replace our current universe. Buffy and Angel join forces to stop it. but then Spike appears to throw a spanner in the works. Putting Xander with Dawn feels like its just there to give Dawn something to do. Giles wants to encourage buffy that she doesnt need him anymore. Buffy and Faith still dont get along.

erm haven't we been here before? Angel Season 4 was all about him and his team being manipulated into helping two powerful beings (ex demon/link to Powers + miracle child of two vampires) give birth to a rogue Power who wanted to take over the world.

Twilight itself was not a v compelling villain, and the return of one of Buffy's arch villains for a bit role was really scraping the barrel. Plus we have a shocking end to the battle which really just felt flat.

So the final issue ends with Buffy being blamed for possibly ruining things for everyone, instead of being thanked for saving the world yet again. I am in two minds as to whether I'll be interested in a Season 9. It has been an interesting experiment so far, if not an entirely successful one.

So, with Buffy: Last Gleaming (Volume 8) Season 8 of Buffy the Vampire comes to a close, and it's been a bit of a bumpy - if ultimately enjoyable - ride.

It can be tough to translate TV shows or films into comics - some of the early Buffy spin offs are fairly abysmal - but creating a `season' of books following the end of a run reduces a lot of those problems. For a start, you don't have to fret about fitting into continuity the way you do, say, if you're doing a Supernatural spin off that has to be fitted into the structure of an ongoing show. It helps, too, that Josh Whedon is a skilful and experienced comics writer (if you haven't read his run on the Astonishing X-Men, go buy it now. Go on, I'll wait). There's also of course no budget to contend with, no network bodies to chop around your show, no actors deciding what they really want to do is direct, no having to shoot half your scenes from the neck up because one of your leading ladies got pregnant and you can't work it into the script. If you can write it, you can have it - even the sky isn't the limit. But as another comic hero is so keen to keep reminding us, with great power comes great responsibility, and as Whedon himself admits in the sign off to the final volume, he perhaps got a little too carried away with the freedom to know when to rein it in.

Of course, there is no harm to giving flight to an imagination as fertile as Whedon's, and season 8 has much to love. Inhabiting a world where Buffy is at the head of an army of slayers (the Angel episode that saw her partying in Rome is dealt with in a clever piece of retrofitting), coping not only with the everyday threat of vampires, but with the return of old enemies and the emergence of a new, anti-slayer force called (I kid you not) Twilight. Freed from the restrictions of budget, this Buffy is as likely to time travel, head into space or fight giant monsters in Tokyo Bay as she is bash a vamp in an alley, and there is fun to be had in the cast of thousands and the globetrotting. Although he didn't write the whole season, Whedon's trademark wit and razor sharp writing is much in evidence - there isn't a single line uttered that you don't believe would come from these characters - you will quite often find you hear the actors voices in your head as they speak - and there is humour and tension aplenty. (You can tell that much of the writing comes from Buffy alumni - now BSG and Torchwood scribe Jane Espenson.) There's also a lot of clever storytelling, and an acknowledgement that the cultural language around vampires has changed in the years since Whedon himself help create it - both in the fact that Harmony becomes a superstar and the obviously non-accidental Twilight references. I actually gave up on Buffy after about season 6, but picking up these books reminded me how much I really loved these characters, and there can't be much higher praise than that.

But blowing up the slayer story to a global scale somehow diminishes it at the same time. I found it increasingly hard to care as Buffy and her band (including some very welcome return faces) fight more and more monsters, and a story that includes Buffy literally shagging a new universe into existence was borderline embarrassing. Whedon is also, as ever, a little too casual when dishing out death among longstanding characters, with one particular demise very shoddily handled - to my mind, it shouldn't have happened at all, but if it did, Whedon didn't need to go all JK Rowling and barely give it blink time. The artwork, while generally decent, occasionally fumbled, too, so that sometimes I found it hard to tell who people were supposed to be, though covers are a thing of utter beauty and worth the price tag alone.

The success of the books has proved that even in these pro-vampire times there is still an appetite for the Slayer to kick fanger ass, and Season 9 is on the cards - though it is interesting that Whedon has said that it will be more a back to basics book, presumably now he has got all the `they'd never let me do this on the telly' fireworks out of his system. (Face it, the budget he's working with on The Avengers could pay for dragons in space if he wants them). So, even if you're not sure you're a comics fan, Season 8 is a worthy follow on to one of the most groundbreaking shows on TV. Give them a go, you won't be sorry.

Buffy season 8 had a promising start. There was a lot to get used to, Sunnydale having been destroyed, Buffy's new home and the slayer HQ is a castle in Scotland. This turned out to be a nice setting for Buffy and her new slayer army and the season grew on me a lot. There were certain things I chose to grin and bare in the first few volumes: Examples- Dawn is a giant, huge Godzillaesque robots and an unexpected lesbian experience... but I overlooked these, telling myself "It is a comic, remeber that" and everything else was pretty good, staying true to the characters and being a believable continuation. Then we get to the last couple of volumes. Oh dear Joss, what were you thinking? Every old character (with the exception of some that have died) returns, so many that it's just plain unrealistic. There is a lot of stuff that I can only assume is explained in the Angel comics because I had no idea what was happening, especially with Spike! (If this is the case, we never had to watch Angel for Buffy to make sense or vice versa... they explained it if needed). The story becomes so over-complicated in such a short space of time, I seriously considered putting the comic down. It is a huge build up (not in a good way) to a pretty short, abrupt and downright depressing ending. I suppose I shouldn't judge it along with the series, but if I did, I would say that season 8 is the worst series of Buffy. It didn't take long writing comics for Joss to change Buffy from the much loved slayer, into a weird superhero sci-fi goddess. I expect this will gain him many new fans, but I imagine he will lose a lot of loyal fans from the TV series. It just stopped feeling like Buffy :(

So I give it 2 stars. One for a decent start. One for pretty good illustrations.