Broken Frontier

Well, if Buffy wants my readership, she’s gonna have to try way harder than this!

I can’t say I’ve ever been a Buffy fan, not since the 1992 film anyway.  And I went to the high school where they filmed the television show!  Although Whedon has a loyal audience, I’d be curious to know how many fans of the Buffy comic did not watch the televised program.  I would argue there is an indisputable correlation between the two…  

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer #25, we find Buffy and her cohorts (about 50 other slayers) preparing to search for her sister, Dawn.  Unfortunately for writer Doug Petrie, this story never leaves the compelling-story station.  Some quick-fire dialogue takes place, a lackluster confrontation occurs, and two sisters share their feelings.  At best, #25 is a filler for a larger arc; At worst, it is a comic full of empty dialogue and aimless direction.  It doesn’t help that I had to reread nearly every dialogue bubble two or three times to figure out what Petrie was trying to write. 

Now before you start directing pithy emails my way, I know Petrie is a veteran of the so-called “Buffyverse” and I understand the intentions of #21-25 to be repeating story arcs from different perspectives.  Of course, none of this would matter if the story wasn’t solely written for the uber-fan.  Not to mention the uninspired artwork of Georges Jeanty… 

I suppose my opinions could be weighed as conjecture, but Jeanty’s work lacked a complementary realistic style that Season 8 began with.  Part of the lure of the comic-continuation is that it resembles the Sarah Michelle Gellar program so thoughtfully.  Don’t get me wrong, Jeanty is a talented artist, and his work is on par with many others in the field.  But therein lies the problem; the art was strictly a par effort.  Fans would agree that Buffy deserves more.  

My biggest problem with this book is the lack of detail or creativity by Petrie.  This arc may read clearer if one has the background of the other perspectives from #21-24, but a story should make sense!  I would read five panels of a conversation and get thrown into another situation two panels later, only to find the previous characters had moved onto something else.  And if you’re gonna write a phrase backwards as a clever way to create a magic phrase, don’t borrow from Mortal Kombat. I’m just sayin’.

Fortunately for us, this is just one version of the arc, so it doesn’t have to stand on its own merits.  Even so, I would not recommend this book for anyone other than absolute Season 8 Buffy fans.