Issue #2

Issue #2 starts off simple enough. Giles and Buffy doing the whole training thing. Xander listening to Dawn cry about how unfair everything is, how much Buffy hates her, how people act like she's just in the way, blah blah blah... She's just as annoying as ever. Then Buffy tries to get Xander to go to bed with her and the Buffy world, as we know it, begins to fall apart. Xander's head falls off when she kisses him, Buffy gets sucked out a window, impaled on the claws of a giant demon who then engulfs her in a ball of flame. As we turn the page we see Xander and a small group of slayers busting into Buffy's bedroom only to find Buffy tied to a bed with Amy about to shove a knife into her chest. I have no idea what the hell is going on.

Now, instead of killing Amy, Xander and the slayers decide to just stand around and have a very normal, "Buffy is in no danger" conversation with her. This gives Amy the chance to play the role of the typical scooby doo villain and explain to us her plan. Buffy is asleep and living in a nightmare brought on by magic. Only the kiss of true love can save her! Oh yeah, did I mention that the castle is now under attack by zombies? Apparently Amy has gotten pretty damn powerful while she was buried in the rubble of Sunnydale. It's gonna take some pretty serious magic to put her down. But who is up to the challege???

Let's pretend we don't know who's gonna show up on the last page, shall we? It's Willow!!! Bet you didn't see that one coming! So this issue leaves us with quite a cliffhanger. We're gonna have to wait for issue #3 to see the royal rumble between Willow and Amy.

The art of Georges Jeanty is a great fit for this book. The characters look like everyday people. Every female is not built like Wonder Woman and the men don't have muscles like Superman. This is a very hard thing to find in today's comics. But there is a pretty big difference between the scooby gang and the Justice league. And you need a different comic artist to show this. Whedon and Dark Horse made a great choice.

Whedon, on the other hand, is not doing so well. The dialogue that worked so well on the show doesn't seem to be a good fit for comics. It's like reading a very bad Brian Michael bendis comic. It's just too jumpy. It doesn't really have a good flow to it. Let's see if he can adjust in later issues.