I'm Back!

[thedeadlyhook]

... from the Palm Springs trip, and it might be awhile before I'm fully caught up, but first off, a huge THANK YOU to herself_nyc for the extra months of paid LJ time - the best motivation there is to get me to do more writing. You're the best, sweetie! (smooch)

There'll be more to come about the desert-y trip, along with a few pictures, but in the meantime, I'm sure you've all been breathless to hear my reactions to the Buffy Season 8 comic.

Um. Okay. Let's bullet point it. It'll be faster.

• Resurrected Skinless Warren as the new Big Bad? Right, I've seen that movie already, and it's called Hellraiser. Also, now I'm REALLY wondering why Amy AND Warren would be after Buffy and not Willow.

• Buffy's dream. Oh, wait, not a dream. Dreamspace. Which has never been mentioned before in the entire run of the series, despite the fact that Buffy's once-important Slayer dreams would've been a great window into this idea. Oh-kkaaaaay. Unproductive, but whatever. Let's move on.

• Ethan Rayne. Well, that was... lame. Dracula would've actually been funny, and given the "my love" comment some meat, rather than just making a weak joke about Britishisms. And allowing for some slight 'shipper bait with Buffy reacting to Ethan's use of 'pet.' Eyeroll.

• The Threesome. Riiight. Look, I'm not going to go into huge detail analyzing the content of Buffy's dream - yeah yeah, I'm sure you've all seen the picture by now, Buffy in a sandwich with her two hot vampires - and I don't think it was meant to be analyzed. It's meant to be laughed off, like everything else to do with Buffy now, apparently. (I'll get to more detail on that in a minute.) But two things about it: 1) Unless someone can show me an Alan Moore-style script detailing every item in this image, it's a picture, which means you should credit the artist for its specific content, not Joss (including every piece of wank about whose hands are where and who's looking at who - that's the art, folks, the art) and 2) maybe this is just me being aware of the comic audience not being the usual fan space, but it seemed to me that as of this issue, Joss is really going out of his way to encourage some Beavis & Butt-Head-style gratuitous snickering over Buffy, the Vampire Layer. Again, it's the artist I can probably blame for the specific imagery (Elmer Fudd cherubs? Exploding volcanos and a train going into the tunnel at both ends?) but Joss gets to take the credit for presenting this fantasy, for all its chains and the naughty-nurse outfit, as something from which Buffy does the big scaredy runaway, which doesn't do a ton for her characterization as a sexually emancipated female any more than her dream of popping Xander's head off did. At best, Buffy is coming off as kind of childish here. For truth in advertising, this comic really should be called "Willow the Witch" or "Xander, International Man of Mystery" for all that Buffy seems to be the resolute, action-packed star.

• On that note: also color me not thrilled that Buffy now needs Ethan Rayne to provide a tour of her own subconscious. Because self-guided tours apparently aren't enough for some girl to understand the landscape of her own mind, tee hee. She needs it explained to her. By a man.

• You may have started to notice I'm still having the feminist issues. Wow, Buffy funny! She hit her head on wall, GO BOOM!! So silly! But Xander shout orders and take charge! Ethan Rayne deliver a big long intellectual lecture! Amy get steppped on!

Seriously, though, who in this issue is talking on the phone, having plotsy conversations? Why, Giles and Andrew, of course! (The art is still with the unrecognizable on both of these characters, but at least Giles's glasses are helpful - Andrew desperately needs some identifying marker, like a new nerdy T-shirt per issue.) So far, Willow seems to be the only female character with an all-access pass to being powerful without being made fun of, although I can't say I was pleased by her characterization either. She makes a crude sexual joke at Dawn's expense, and then a cruel joke about Kennedy being dead - hey, just checking, wasn't Willow supposed to like Kennedy? There's fan bait, and then there's stuff that just makes the characters look bad, and that's what I'm getting here, and ditto with Xander's skeevy joke about how he wants in on the "girl parts." Xander, you're creeping me out.

• Actually, there's a fair amount creeping me out in this issue - we got two Make Love Not War! joke resolutions: the 'may I have this dance' ending to a zombie attack story (LAME. Plus, there's nothing icky about that zombies suddenly being all gentlemanly, all Prince Charming at the ball, for a throwaway panel, is there? IS THERE?!?), and the "true love" kiss. Right, fine, I'd expected all along that we'd get handed a fakeout for that one, but dude, that was even weaker than I expected. I mean, visualize a room that's 99.9% full of women and a .1 male remainder, and if you close your eyes and imagine somebody truly in love kissing Buffy, you have two options. One of them makes a lot of young men do the aforementioned Beavis & Butt-Head. Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh.

Joss, my dear, I'm already getting tired of your inner 15-year-old boy. Especially since MY inner 15-year-old boy would've liked to have seen more butt-kicking girls fighting the zombie army.

• And Andrew is so NOT GAY, PEEPULS! HE'S UP IN UR ROOM, STRIP POKRING WITH UR SLAYRS. Because all hot superhero chicks REALLY WANNA take it off for Star Wars trivia-spouting supernerds. I've seen it happen at Comic-Con, ALL THE TIME!!! GIRLZ GONE WILD!!!

You may get the impression that I wasn't too impressed with this issue.

Yeah. Well. I wasn't. It was not terribly well paced, there were a lot of ass-pulls on the dramatic wrapups, and it feebed out on nearly every opportunity to reveal something actually interesting with the characters. Buffy still isn't the hero of her own book - she seems to have been completely reimagined as a hybrid of Gunn and Dawn, the fighting muscle who is also menaced in order to get the plot rolling along. And I gotta say, Buffy's-in-jeopardy-it-must-be-the-Wednesday-of-the-month-when-new-comics-get-shelved doesn't quite have the same postmodern ironic ring.

And the weirdest thing about all this is that I can't help but think that if this story were done by any other writer except Joss, fandom would be up in arms. It's only because it's Joss that he can get away with reducing them like this, making Buffy look silly and having the Scoobies make masturbation jokes. Other writers would likely have too much respect for the characters... or might have, before this. Now it's okay.

I dunno if I'm going to be following much more of this. There's "adult" content here, if you count Buffy's nekkid dream imaginings, but not an adult story - the TV show was written at the level of Joss's inner 25-year-old at least, while this feels inescapably teenaged. And while I can applaud Joss's insistence (in an interview I could probably dig up, if I googled it) that comic Buffy be drawn as a bubble-breasted, thong-wearing supermaiden, he shouldn't break his arm patting himself on the back TOO hard if the only replacement for that is objectifying her in other ways, making her out to be an airheaded ditz that actual effective people either target or protect. There was the same bad taste in my mouth after this issue as the episode "As You Were," where Buffy was presented as someone to feel sorry for.

Canon arguments aside, I'm really not seeing a lot of college-level courses having quite as much to say about the feminism of these comics in the future as there has been for the TV show. Unless it's subject like "How the Feminist Backlash Has Co-Opted the Icons of Modern Feminism."

Huh. Maybe *I* oughtta write that paper.

Comments

[shapinglight]

Heh! Your thoughts are much deeper than mine. Mine just amount to, that was all very silly (the comic, that is, not your post).

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Hee! Your description of the picture made me laugh more than the picture itself.

And can't you just imagine the notes Joss passed to the artist? "Make some sort of kinky three-way with Buffy in a vampire sandwich. Throw in some Freudian stuff too if you want."

And, yes, Joss's predictability has gotten old. He brings nothing new to this story, and that's been my argument all along for why he probably needed to leave the 'verse alone.

[liliaeth]

And it'ts all that that's making me extremely happy that Joss will be taking the hands off approach with the Angel s6. I just really don't want him anywhere near it. Hell, he has me worried enough that he might ruin one of my fave comics (Runaways) as it is.

[fredsmith518.livejournal.com]

yesterday a friend of mine posted about this, so, well, pleased isn't the word, curiosity satisfied, yeah, that, to have read your post
much thanks

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

I liked your review! So many people were squeeing over this issue that I felt like I had just arrived from the planet Curmudgeon. I had liked the first issue but these last two don't seem to be going anywhere.

Honestly I wouldn't have thought Buffy and Astonishing X-Men this month were from the same person. When did Buffy end up being you know, for kids?

[ruuger]

Oh thank god I'm not the only one who didn't like it. I guessed what "the image" would be B/S/A from my f-list's reaction and I was rather excited about it, thinking that Joss suggesting that Buffy's solution to her vampire problem would be to let her love both Spike and Angel (because I could have easily imagined Joss - the old Joss, at least - going for the threesome angle), but then I saw the image and... Beavis and Butthead, indeed.

I enjoyed this issue more on a totally brainless level, but as soon as I started thinking about it, I couldn't help wondering where's the Joss we love and why has he been replaced with this podperson.

Unless it's subject like "How the Feminist Backlash Has Co-Opted the Icons of Modern Feminism." Huh. Maybe *I* oughtta write that paper.

Do it, or I will ;)

Seriously, though, what worries me most is how uncritical people have been of the comics in places like Whedonesque. Sure, there's been some complaining about the art etc., but most of the critique about storylines and characterization gets countered with "Oh, it's just a comic" or "You just hate it because it doesn't have Spike in it" or "It's been just two (three) issues, you can't judge the comic by that".

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

Joss, my dear, I'm already getting tired of your inner 15-year-old boy. Especially since MY inner 15-year-old boy would've liked to have seen more butt-kicking girls fighting the zombie army.

High fives you for that one.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Interesting but I'm a little confused on some points. For example:-

You want to see more girlz kicking zombie butt then complain that Buffy’s reduced to being the muscle.

To qualify as sexually emancipated a woman must embrace even her cheesiest fantasies with due reverence but heaven forbid people make jokes about sex?

Isn’t it a little rash to assume that the man in a woman’s dreamspace is an all-knowing guide? Even when he gives her no information that can help them escape and she’s the one to figure out what he cannot?

I liked Buffy in this installment. While Willow and Amy go back and forth each playing the other’s strength against her jujitsu style, Buffy holds back and uses her brain. She’s well aware that Ethan shouldn’t be there, she identifies Amy, she points out they’re being played and she makes the connection between the not!Initiative and some as yet unspecified cavern, which I suspect is going to be important in the denouement.

[missmurchison.livejournal.com]

I'm acting pretty immature, because I haven't read the comics, and I haven't decided if I will, so I've been passing over most posts. about them. But the word "threesome" got me here in record time. I am so shallow!

Your review makes me wonder again if I should bother reading when it comes out as a graphic novel. If it hasn't already.

*really must pay more attention*

[makd.livejournal.com]

We're all fortunate that some of the fans who've been buying the comic have posted spoilers and pics for the rest of us.

I decided before the series came out that I wouldn't buy them. Nothing I've seen has changed my mind.

IMHO, this is just another way for The Jossman to make more money on The Franchise and simultaneously destroy any feminist allusions we thought he had.

[powerofthebook.livejournal.com]

Word.

Love this - bit deeper than my own, but I'm really hating the comic characterizations. Everyone's becoming a parody or an archetype, in a show that once began and thrived on breaking archetypes.

[prophecygirrl.livejournal.com]

My reaction was similar, I think. I felt kind of used and abused. And not in the fun way.

[simplefangirl.livejournal.com]

You have said it much better than I could have, but I'm over here nodding right along with you. I read the 1st issue with a big geekygirl grin on my face, but the grin is fading fast. I want to shake Joss and yell at him, "TELL THE DAMN STORY ALREADY!". Quit jerking shipper chains and futzing around and give me a story I can respect and be interested in and I won't give a darn who you put Buffy with, (not entirely true but willing to say it for the sake of argument!). And you're comments regarding the childishness of it all are spot-on. I felt very much like I was the wrong demographic they were going for in this issue.
Sorry, hope you don't mind me sticking my two cents in!

[st_salieri.livejournal.com]

Excellent review. You've done a great job of summing up so many of the things that are bothering me about the comic. Must go off and think deep thinky thoughts now!

Oh, and a belated happy birthday! :)

[herself_nyc]

You're welcome!

And I dig your thoughts on the comic, though I had the impression that Andrew was oblivious to the half-naked slayers, thereby again demonstrating his gayness, as in “Storyteller” when he zooms past the necking women to focus on Xander's woodworking.

[ncvids.livejournal.com]

How does Andrew being bored in a room full of half-naked women make him not gay?

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

You've managed to nail on the head my difficulty with how Buffy has been coming across in the comics and why she feels completely off to me. I've been trying to figure it out. In the series, Buffy was the hero, the proactive one, mature, rolling her eyes at Xander. Here....she feels hollow somehow, off, like a side-kick.

Xander and Willow are oddly the cool ones. Xander with his Nick Fury 'tude and Willow with her wicked powers.

The whole thing feels and reads like a fanfic. And it is odd, because Whedon's other comics - Runaways and The X-Men - where he is writing for characters others created, don't read like that at all. He appears to be taking the X-Men seriously, but not his own characters?

My hunch is that Whedon is spending far too much time reading Whedonesque for his own good. The dream image of the threesome was something I've seen posted as a joke on more than one fanboard including Whedonesque. And read more than one fanfic that had her dream it. Making me wonder if Whedon is reading fanfic online? Surely not. But there are a few things in this issue that are making me wonder...

The picture of Angel/Buffy/Spike by the way isn't entirely the artist - comics work more or less the same way as a screenplay - except in a comic book the writer is also the director and he tells the artist/cinematographer exactly what he wants and approves it before it gets published. So...Whedon was behind that drawing. I read some of the spoiler pages - and saw him write "here Willow appears with bugs crawling all over her"...so I'm pretty certain he wrote:"Here Buffy is in a nurse outfit between Angel and Spike, with volcanoes in the background and funny look cherubs with Elmer Fudd's face".

I wouldn't give up on the series entirely though - we got some other writers coming up to plate, who may do the story a bit more justice. Apparently the Faith arc is supposed to be a bit more adult in tone and darker.

[namastenancy.livejournal.com]

Finally, an intelligent review. Well, you agree with me - or me with you--- so obviously it has to be intelligent. Sometimes I wish that they would just leave well enough alone. We had a great run, it was fun while it lasted so don't try to squeeze more money out of it. My main thought while I was looking at the comic was "how far back feminism has been pushed."
Le sigh.