Buffy S8.9

[hazelk]

There were very few episodes of the TV series with such a strong focus on a character not Buffy and yet this four-issue Faithorama immediately followed a one-shot in which Buffy had no physical presence at all. Comics are different, although in this case I don’t think it’s the medium’s lack of location constraints driving the change so much as the story reflecting the altered world order. Buffy is one of many now. Even so the meta seems ahead of the characters on this point with all the references to queens and leaders, role models and heroes. I like that contradiction.

Returning to the original point No Future resembles both Fool for Love and Selfless in its use of flashbacks although in the comic the flashbacks are to scenes resembling or immediately following those already shown in the series albeit transformed by memory and the addition of a commentary track. Call-me-Richard seems very much himself in this one but I really liked the way Jeanty exaggerated his tendency to draw faces disproportionately for Faith’s remembered self. Her outsize head gave the impression of being pasted onto the demurely clad body, like one of those seaside attractions where customers poke their faces through a cardboard cut-out painting of a body-builder or a music hall star.

Switch to the present and the fight choreography is to die for, an expression Gigi would likely despise me for. She is drawn very Britishly, the way her lip curls in the panel when she makes the crack about New York is beautifully done. Her dialogue less so, Vaughan is serviceable but no Henry Higgins. Still I’ll buy his demented duchess and her viscous obsession with rank. Blame the inbreeding, Fuschia Groan banned from Rodean, self-tutored by internet gossip magazines and blood-filled nightmares until Roden came.

Interlude in which Giles’s phone manner is lacking and the story takes an almost Zeppo-like turn in its Faith-centric view of Buffy. In the real Zeppo the distortion field was deliberate but, since it holds even when Faith isn’t there to witness it, in this case I suspect writer over-identification to be the cause. Buffy being angry with Giles for withholding and reminding her of the limitations her current status imposes was believable. The jealousy of Faith and focus on the attempted drowning was jarring though. Part of the whole tragedy of Faith was how far down the list of personal nemeses she came in Buffy’s book. But it ends well, it makes me want the coming Buffy n’ Willow show.

Back to what Vaughan does best. Gigi dies and I forgive him everything for that. Faith comes full circle with an accidental killing. The first one precipated her Raskolnikovian fall, repentance, reform, redemption but she never looked at what made her such a sinner. Buffy has an inferiority complex about her superiority. Faith had the reverse problem. Wilkins encouraged her ubermenschlich delusions and her redemption mostly involved letting the underlying self-loathing return to the fore. Watching Gigi she’s dragged back through the memories of how it all began, all the way back to that very first act. But this time she doesn’t run, doesn’t bury the body, doesn’t fall for the first guy to make her an offer.

Giles’s spell uses the same three words that Willow’s transportation incantation did. Plus one. That was gross.

Speaking of Giles he seems very quick to abandon being “to all intents and purposes the Watcher’s Council” for a new life as a peace-keeping Avenger. It makes sense if you think about it that his original offer to Faith could have been nine parts projection. First we see of Giles he’s directing a mass training exercise with a face like a slapped arse, none of Buffy’s enthusiasm. Then he’s visiting demons and going on motivational lecture tours selling Buffy’s name and the brave new message of sisterhood that neither he nor Faith feel they deserve to belong to. It’s better than S7 when he was harvesting girls one step ahead of Caleb and not always that, but the very youthfulness of the young can be wearying. Still the two of them taking themselves over-the-hill and out of the game felt a little pat until the final pages recast it as part of the enemy’s plan.

Twilight falls. And lands with his feet on the ground. I loves me a smart chess-playing villain.

Comments

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

From me having only a passing familiarity with comics and a mental filing system that lumps together everything beginning with 'R.' Apologies. So who is R'as Al-Ghul exactly?

[bloodbath12.livejournal.com]

Batman villain. Not very well known, but was in Batman Begins. Look him up on wikipedia.