News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

In the buff(y)

9:52 PM / Books / 2 Comments

I gave up on Joss Whedon's Season 8 comic book continuation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer after Issue 14, having been thoroughly disappointed by this official follow-up to the television series. I genuinely didn't think it would be possible to sink any lower than Seasons 6 and 7 of the show, but somehow Whedon and co managed it. That said, morbid curiosity has meant that I've continued to keep an eye on the series from afar, reading synopses of the subsequent issues, just to see what's going on in the world of my favourite valley girl vampire slayer (it seems to have got even more ridiculous, if that's possible*), and also because I'm in awe of the magnificent cover art by Jo Chen, in my opinion the series' only real redeeming aspect.

Chen is a truly gifted artist, with the uncanny ability to recreate not just the appearance of the characters and the actors playing them but also their "essence". The paintings on the covers of these comics don't just look like the original characters - they actually seem to exude their personalities.

Of course, that doesn't mean certain liberties haven't been taken. For instance, I'm pretty sure Willow was never this, erm, endowed on the TV show:

Source: Things From Another World

* The latest, apparently, is that Buffy has decided she has an interest in Xander, who is now busy getting it on with Dawn. Those who have any knowledge of these characters and their established relationships and have any degree of personal investment in them will doubtless be wishing extreme harm on a certain Mr. Whedon. (Well, except the sycophants who lap up everything he produces without questioning it.) Myself, I like to think I've become so jaded and detached that I just don't care any more. Still, a little part of me did inwardly cringe when I read about this new development.

2 Comments

 
To combat spam, commenting is automatically disabled on entries older than 30 days.

Did a comment you tried to post accidentally get eaten by the spam filter? It happens from time to time. I get upwards of 200 spam comments every day and unfortunatley don't have the time to weed through all of them in case something genuine ended up there by mistake. If one of your posts gets incorrectly flagged as spam, email me at whiggles[at]ntlworld[dot]com and I'll do my best to retrieve it.