Buffy season nine discussion thread

A&F #1 was really good.

 

Faith is perfect for Angel right now...and I see what Allie and company were talking about regarding their relationship (if they are going to be romantically entangled or not). I suspect they're going to be playing around with this a lot this season.

 

I finally read FRAY fantastic book. I was just wondering a few things?

• one the scene in season 8 where buffy goes to the fuure and meets fray and will is that the sequal ?
• two, will we see more of fray in season nine?

 

Yes the arc in season eight is considered a direct sequel which is why Karl Moline was brought in to do the art work. Joss stated at SDCC I believe that we will not see Meleka in season nine since the tone of the season is different than eight.

 

do you think there will be a second series done for FRAY? she's awesome!!!

 

I would like to see another volume but Joss has remained mum on the subject. We're lucky to have seen her in the crossover in my opinion. That would have been bonkers to seen on television (although it most likely wouldn't have happened due to budget restraints).

 

well thanks for the recomendation I loved it. I agree that would have been bonkers to see on tv. I reminded me of shadowrun.

 

CBR gives Angel and Faith #1 4 1/2 out of 5 stars.

 

^ It deserves it. It has to be one of the top five comics I've read all year. It was that good. Buffy Season Nine has some competition ahead of it's self.

 

We're less than a week away to the season nine premier! Can't believe after all this waiting it's finally here. I'm pretty stoked.

 

buffy is back baby.

 

Some thoughts about Angel & Faith #1 (are we going to spoiler tag any of it or not? I suppose not, since this is a discussion thread? Spoiler tags for stuff for preview pages and interviews, but not for actual issues?):

Rebekah Isaacs's art is great. So much better than Jeanty's. She can actually make the characters look like themselves, and they actually look like adults. Jeanty is good at conveying emotions, but his child!woman Buffy really hinders my enjoyment of the comics (except on few occasions when he gets her right, as in #40). I'm still waiting for Jeanty's Buffy to consistently look older than 13, and Jeanty's Spike to look actually attractive. Not to mention that some people like Andrew are even hard to recognize without clues in the dialogue and context. I have no complaints about Isaacs, Faith and Angel are both perfectly drawn.

Everything in the story makes me happy. They followed on season 8 perfectly.

I'm so glad to see it confirmed that the Whistler and, presumably, TPTB were in favor of the Twilight plan and that they aren't the good guys that some people believed without any evidence. Whistler was honest about what he was, he always made it clear he was a balance demon. Which means, when the evil is too strong, he helps good; but when the good is too strong, he helps evil. TPTB don't mean bad to humanity, but they are just too removed from them; even if they want to keep humanity as a whole (or possibly some new, 'improved' version of it), they don't care about individual people. So if they decide the world needs 'evolution', they don't care how many people die.

This however opens some questions. Does this mean that the Whistler introduced Angel to Buffy in the first place because he had the Twilight prophecy in mind? Of course, that would be a big retcon, but it wouldn't be the first one in the verse. We never learned before why he showed Buffy to Angel in the first place. He said to Buffy in S2 that nobody expected the two of them to fall in love, but that doesn't sound convincing to me. I mean, come on, you've got a guy who's totally lost and has no friends or purpose in life, and you show him a beautiful teenage girl who looks a bit like his ex that he spent 150 years with, and tell him that she's his life purpose from now on, and you never think he just might fall for her? Or that a teenage girl might perhaps fall for a handsome, mysterious, older stranger who's also one of the very few people who can share in her new life as the Slayer? In season 8, Whistler said something quite different to Angel, that Angel and Buffy falling in love was "a long shot that paid off" - which means that it matchmaking was what he intended.

If that was the case, it's easy to see why Angel was picked, as the only vampire with a soul at the time, but why Buffy? How did TPTB know that she would turn out to be more special than most other Slayers? Was there a prophecy about her?

In any case, Whistler aligning himself with Pearl and Nash should clear that he's far from the good guy some people assumed he was. That panel was really gruesome.

Good to see Angel's crimes from S8 addressed, not just the death of Giles, but the deaths of many Slayers that he allowed to happen. Faith is going to be in tough spot now, how long can she hide Angel and the fact she's helping him, from Nadira and the other Slayers?

Funny that Nadira thinks that going from Slayer general to waitress is punishment enough for Buffy. I think it's rather a blessing for Buffy.

Angel's exposition opens some questions, especially about the extent of Twilight's influence on him before the possession. He says he doesn't remember the incident Nadira describes, how come? But it's good to see that he's taking full responsibility for it all, including the death of Giles, because he knows he could have walked away many times, just like he takes responsibility for the death of Jenny in S2, not hiding behind the 'it was Angelus',' I didn't have a soul' excuses. While Faith is still trying to disassociate him from "Twilight" and "Angelus", much like Buffy used to try to disassociate him from "Angelus" in S3. I was thinking that Faith could be the one that accepts all of Angel, but it seems the things he's responsible for are too much even for her.

Great to see Giles in a very interesting flashback, I hope there will be more of that. He lost one of his best days - a happy day with Jenny, presumably at the beginning of their relationship - and it's an interesting turn of events to give it Angel, connect him stronger to Giles. The loss of memories comes up a few times - nobody remembers what happened in After the Fall, apparently, except Angel; and

Spoiler: upcoming issues

a Mohra demon is set to appear soon. That brings to mind the occasions when Angel decided to, or went along with wiping out other people's memories - taking away one of the happiest days of Buffy's life, in IWRY, and wiping his son's and his friends' memories in Home. I hope the latter will be addressed when Connor turns up in Angel & Faith.

In a way, Angel remade Connor into a 'new, improved' Connor, just like TPTB were going to remake the world into a 'new, improved' one.

Angel should learn that you can't just erase your mistakes. But obviously he has a long way to go, since he is making another boneheaded, easy-fix decision - to resurrect Giles. This is not going to end well.

 

well I would like to see them fill the gap from:

ANGEL: The WOLF, The Ram and The Heart and buffy the vampire slayer season 8.
find out how and why and when he started twilight.

 

^ We're most likely going to be touching on that very subject. Besides which we already know Angel's motivations for becoming Twilight. This was explained in the issue and in the "Twilight" arc. We just don't know how he became Twilight.

I agree wholeheartedly about the Rebekah Issacs art. Georges Jeantry's cartoonish like style would work for a Buffy animated comic (wouldn't that be awesome?) it's too bad that Jo Chen is merely a cover artist. Issacs though is highly stylized but detailed. I actually see David and Eliza when I look at Angel and Faith. I see Tony Head when I see Giles. I don't get that same feel about the characters with Jeantry's art. Especially his detailing of Dawn. I don't see Michelle Tractchenberg at all.

I marked out when I saw Whistler. I always got the impression anyway that he was more than he appeared to be. There was an obvious purpose for guiding Angel in the first place towards Buffy. As often with Joss's characters not everyone is simple.

 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (FREEFALL) part 1: awesome way to start a book.




I give it: fantastic read.

 

Well I hate to say this but I was disappointed with the first issue...I really dislike Jeantry's cartoony style art. There were some nice moments, still kind of confused about the Xander/Buffy moment and what it was attempting to imply...I'm guessing they just were talking (I hope so). Angel and Faith got off to a better start.

 

if it has a good story I can get past the art, I enjoyed it. all so loved the ending I am thinking this will have a season feeling to it.

 

What does "have a season feel" mean? Do you mean a specific season? It kind of reminded me of a cross between season three and four. The ending was hilarious, especially Spike's reaction.

 

sorry, yeah I meant it had season 4 feeling to it. and spike is just awesome no matter what.

 

I don't think it implies anything other than Xander having something bothering him, which he doesn't want Dawn to know, but which he might or might not have told Buffy about. The quasi-shippy vibe was a mislead - they tease readers a lot, like in the morning after scene where Buffy first believes she slept with Willow. And the rest of the issue seems to play with teasing who she might or might not have slept with. I bet the answer is, nobody. It sure isn't Spike either - I think his "after last night" comment is just teasing her about having acted in an embarrassing way and maybe having come onto him drunkenly beyond her attempt at flirting when he first came to the party ("Is there any chance I could make you beg?") and how she's not the one to call him "Stalky the Clown" after that. There's no way anything really happened between them, and as for Riley, Buffy might not have even made a pass at him - she doesn't even remember if she did, and if she did, it wouldn't have gone anywhere. They also tease us that she might have slept with the neighbor, but I doubt that's the case, either, and it certainly wouldn't explain why everyone talked about "last night". It's probably just Buffy doing things like dancing on the tables and such (maybe she did take her clothes off at some point as someone suggested...).

Regarding Xander: her greetings at the door could be as a bit flirty, but I don't get the impression for a moment that Buffy is trying to steal him from Dawn, and the scene in the bedroom doesn't read as explicitly "shippy" to me. Buffy and Xander are old friends, they have had a bunch of intimate conversations about their problems, they've hugged a lot of times in the show, so holding an arm is hardly shockingly intimate for them. No doubt that the scene is deliberately teasing us into thinking that something happened between them with the B: "Dawnie" - X: "Doesn't need to know" dialogue, but I really don't believe that's what it's about. First, neither of them would have done it, IMO, second, if Buffy is feeling terrible over the possibility that she might have made a pass on a married man, why isn't she upset at all over supposedly sleeping with or trying to steal her sister's serious boyfriend? And third, how would that work, they sleep together and then Xander is depressed over it but Buffy is OK? Meh. No way.

Now, what is really going on? Xander has a secret, and it's something that's bothering him. Some have speculated that it's about Dawn's safety, about Dawn becoming a green ball of energy or whatever, but I don't that's likely, because in that case, shouldn't Buffy be more concerned about it as well? Xander also seems to have some resentment at Buffy - probably over the way things went in season 8. His jab at her is that she isn't good at making plans of any kind, except for fighting: does this refer to her current life or to her actions in S8 (implication being that fighting is the only thing she does well). There are plenty of things that this secret could be about... someone on BF speculated earlier that he made some kind of deal with the army/government to get them all off (but how would that work with Buffy knowing about it?), others are thinking that he hates his job and the normal life he has now but has to work to pay for Dawn's college. There are lots of things it could be about, but it is being set up as a new mystery so we probably won't find out immediately.

He used the phrase "It's a wonderful life" - it is a coincidence that it's the title of a film about a man who thinks he's a total failure and wants to commit suicide, until an angel shows him that his town, his friends and family would be much worse off if he never existed?

OTOH, good to see Willow well-adjusted, with a job and girlfriend. Unless it's a cover for sadness that Dawn believes she feels. But at least she seems to be doing well instead of moping. The issue subverted the expectations with Xander and Willow - most fans expected him to be happy and well-adjusted, and her to be a wreck. She's dealing pretty well with not one but two insensitive remarks about her loss of powers.

Buffy on the other hand is trying way too hard to appear happy and have a good time, but it's obvious that she's a mess and doesn't know how to deal with the fallout of season 8, her feelings or her role in the world, which she is unsure of. The issue is called Freefall and it's obviously about Buffy coming apart at the seams - Steve Morris's cover makes that even clearer. There is a sense of underlying despair in the party flashbacks. She's trying to bond with everyone and anyone, trying to convince herself she could do this or that job: make hats, be a cop, or even "win" at a hack circle, even though she doesn't even seem to understand what it is. And when you're feeling morally inferior to Andrew (who started a relief organization and gathered Slayers who still trusted him - something Buffy wouldn't be able to do even if she had thought of it), things are really bad.

The panel where she's talking to her boss, or listening to him talk about the hack circle and not really following what it's about, is particularly loaded with meaning: it's no coincidence that it shows everyone else paired off and smooching someone, including Spike who is making out with a random girl at the party, Xander and Dawn kissing, and Willow kissing her new girlfriend. It's like everyone else is leading their own lives and she's in the meantime sitting on the table looking miserable and supposedly listening to the story about hack circles but not getting it.

It seems like Spike and Buffy haven't been seeing each other that often, since she says the last time she saw him, he gave her a pep talk (probably a reference to the fire escape scene from #40). His line when he blows off Buffy's flirtatious "Any chance I can make you beg?" with "Not this year" seems a meta comment on what we can expect from their dynamic in S9: he isn't going to be making any romantic overtures (just like he wasn't doing it in S8, either).

How funny is it that Buffy's roommates think she has a way of "drawing people in" with her charm, when she notably hasn't been able to do that or be popular since the Hemery High days? It seems that drunken Buffy, who comes off as a ditzy bubbly party girl, is a lot more liked than the strong and responsible Slayer Buffy.

My theory about the dead girls that the police found is, based on the hints and covers for the next issues,

Spoiler: next 3 issues

that she is a (former) vampire. There is a new character, Severin, who is supposed to have a new way of slaying vampires. The cover for #4 suggests that what he does is separate the demon from the human host (for lack of a better word). But if you remove the demon from the vampire, they probably die, because their bodies are dead in human terms and only animated by the demon.

The girl has no signs of trauma, no wounds, and she looks "beautiful", which seems to be a big hint that she's a vampire. As a vampire, she was healing quickly and had no human illnesses, until the demon was cast out and she just died, if my theory is right.

El Draco (that's apparently the name of the big demon released from the mystical prison when the Seed was broken) sure has a weird way of talking! Did he forgot to talk because he was imprisoned for too long? His task is to "kill all". All as in...? Humans, demons, or just everyone? How long was he imprisoned, anyway? Could be thousands of years for all we know.

We were lead to believe that Simone was out to kill Buffy, but she seems to be planning something much bigger than that.

I like the roommies. I wonder if we'll get to see Heinrich the neighbor?

Some other funny moments:

Buffy: "Do you have porn?" In The Long Way Home, she said that porn wasn't real attractive. That's a change. Riley": "You're into porn?" Buffy: "Gross! But don't you think I should start?" She's getting used to being single and horny...

Tumble wants to be in a band with Spike. Reminds me of: "I'm... in band! With Spike!" But would A Dirigible Run by Insects be a good idea for a band? Well, it would attract attention for sure...

The demon reveal thing was cute, but it's a bit weird way to end the first issue, if that's the one that is supposed to hook people up. OTOH we do get the setup for legitimate threats - El Draco, Simone and possibly whoever killed that girl, though I think that one is a mislead.

Not a bad issue, a bit fluffy but there is an underlying feeling of despair and aimlessness. I guess the issue is also making fun of the epicness and OTT stuff that season 8 delved into (though it sometimes looked like an epic farce more than epic drama). I would probably give it a... 3.5 out of 5 stars.