D'oh, and then I forgot to mention about the Spike comic.

I'd really wondered for awhile what the magic difference was between the two books that made me like Spike's more than Angel's, and I do think that's it - that he's not portrayed as having some magical aura of leadership. That could well be ruined, I suppose, depending on how future issues treat this warrior-girl gang (it seems a little too winkingly meta to me to play him as having unique power over women; this doesn't actually appear to be true in-universe), but we'll see.