My Weekly Book

It’s an unexpected thing when you find a shelf in your small local branch library stuffed with really excellent graphic novels. They have the lot – Swamp Thing, Hellraiser, Batman, stuff by Warren Ellis, Watchmen, Tomorrow Stories, stuff by Neil Gaiman – all sorts. And I’ve been working my way through it.

They’ve also got a surprisingly good selection of Buffy and Angel comics. Now, however much I might wax lyrical about the graphic novel as an art form, since each of these takes about 20 minutes to read I can’t in all conscience count them towards the 50 Book Challenge. Especially since I’ve been trying hard not to artificially inflate the total so that the bar’s set at some impossibly high level for next year.

And, to be honest, I’ve lined myself up a bit of a heavy month in July. I was only supposed to be reading the one book - the 1,000-page Don Quixote - but had a fantasy novel, The King of Elfland’s Daughter, left over from June. It’s a good read, but not a particularly easy one. So none of these detective novels you can polish off in 48 hours and feel smug about for me this month. That means that a few comics came as welcome light relief.

[Buy Ring of Fire from Amazon] [Buy False Memories from Amazon] [Buy Oz from Amazon] [Buy Angel: Earthly Possessions from Amazon] [Search for all these titles on eBay]

The first, Ring of Fire, was my least favourite of the three, although that shouldn’t be taken to mean that I didn’t like it. The story was set firmly in season two where Spike, happily esconced in his wheelchair, is variously described by Angel as “Hot Wheels,” “Hell on Wheels” and someone who’ll soon be “jumping - sorry, spinning - for joy.” Spike is less original but more forthright: “Come on then, you wanker, let’s make it a party.” From this you can probably work out that I thought the vampires were by far the best-drawn and best-realised of the regular characters. There is, for instance, a wonderful rough sketch reproduced in the back of Drusilla drawn in the style of Gustav Klimt. I felt it was true to the world and the dialogue was right on the nail - but the story was a little confusing and I didn’t feel the Scooby Gang came across as well as they could have - quite apart from Kendra’s character being well-nigh unrecognisable. So, one down, and the verdict is a good half an hour’s escapism.

Next up was False Memories which I was expecting not to enjoy at all since the whole Dawn gig in season five is not, in my opinion, one of the series’ finest moments. But, do you know what? This was easily my favourite of the three. Once again, really cracking dialogue, which got the relationships between the characters just right. A lovely, impressionistic drawing style which doesn’t seek to tie down every last detail of their features and therefore is far more successful in capturing them than more literal artistry. A story which is an ensemble piece showcasing all the characters and which has a satisfying beginning, middle and end. In short - highly recommended. Particularly for the picture of Buffy brutalising Spike at the front of the comic.

And the last was somewhere in between. Daniel Osbourne has never been one of my favourite Buffyverse characters - smug little git. He seems to me to be strangely one-dimensional for one of Joss Whedon’s characters and maybe the Oz comic is an attempt to redress that. It follows him to Tibet on his quest to learn how to control his werewolf nature and is easily the most ‘mainstream’ of these comics, both in terms of its art, its storyline and the long procession of monsters that turn up in the narrative. Again, a good read, half an hour well-spent, nothing really special.

I think the Angel comic Earthly Possessions, which I read quite a while ago, was easily the best of this bunch. I always preferred the early seasons of that show to Buffy; the whole noir detective-story thing is far more my cup of tea than high-school horror and always will be. I loved the way the world translated to the new format and the way the characters worked as *comic* characters - the Buffy lot, with the possible exception of Oz, seem much more like reproductions of their TV-series selves. If I was going to start buying and collecting, I would definitely start here.

Comics I read:

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Oz (Christopher Golden, Logan Lubera et al, Titan Books)
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Ring of Fire (Doug Petrie, Ryan Sook et al, Titan Books)
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: False Memories (Tom Fassbender, Jim Pascoe, Cliff Richards et al, Titan Books)
• Angel: Earthly Possessions (Christopher Golden, Tom Sniegoski et al, IDW Publishing)

Links:

• Angel comics on Wikipedia
• Dark Horse Comics on Wikipedia
• Buffy comics on Wikipedia

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 at 8:39 pm and is filed under 2006 - Also read. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.