Twilight

And no this has nothing to do with Stephenie Meyer! I presume that Joss Whedon chose that name for the big bad in the Buffy season eight comics on purpose for the joke / irony / Google search optimization.

It's been a long wait but my copy of the volume seven TPB finally arrived this morning, compiling issues 31-35 and a Willow one-shot. Last time we were with the Scoobies things were not looking good with big battles taking place in Tibet and Slayers dying everywhere. Here we pick up after the battle is mostly over apart from some giant genie things. Those are taken care of pretty quickly as Buffy seems to have developed some extra superpowers. The remainder of the issues are about the identity of Twilight and the nature of the universe.

As with the majority of the series these issues are drawn by Georges Jeanty & Karl Moline and their work remains excellent. It's never going to be possible to get a 100% likeness to the original actors given the timescale these guys have to work at. However they do manage to consistently capture the essence of the characters so I never have a problem telling people apart. Some of that credit has to go to the writer too for making sure the character has the right voice. In this case it's Brad Meltzer writing the main issues, while Joss himself handled the Willow one-shot.

Brad Meltzer is not someone I've heard about before. This is his first run on the Buffy season eight comics. A quick Google search tells me he's a bestselling author and has written other comics before. I guess he's a fan if he took the job in the first place and he seems to know the characters and back story well.

Finally there's 'the sex issue'. I generally try to avoid spoilers but it's tricky when the single issues come out so long before the trade paperback compilations. However I remember people talking about this on forums with all sorts of opinions. It seems pretty tame to me to be honest. Buffy and Angel have one of the ultimate forbidden loves and in the seven years of the TV series it only happened once. They deserve a little happiness now and then. Of course this is Whedon we're talking about so it does mean that someone is going to die horribly before the end. I wonder if some of the problems people had were due to the circumstances rather than the content. But really when you give an issue the title 'Them F#©%ing (Plus the True History of the Universe)' it is a bit like you're asking for controversy on purpose, when if you actually read the book it's not that bad.

I'm still enjoying the series and am looking forward to the next one, it's just a shame that won't be until next year!