(warning: spoilers!)
Buffy Season 8 comics continue their downward spiral with this latest collection.
This is a series of one-shot stories designed to set up the environment for the next big arc. You can almost hear chess pieces being moved around on a board. The problem is that the chess players are on drugs.
Briefly, the episodes can be summarized as thus:
1) Harmony creates a reality TV show on herself as a vampire - and suddenly the world falls in love with vampires and considers the slayers a menace, who must go into hiding(!?). No, I don't understand it either.
2) Lesbian Slayers Kennedy and Satsu discover a race of robotic toy vampires created by Twilight who temporarily de-gay Satsu (no, I am not making this up)
3) In the only half-sane plot, Buffy and Andrew bond as they track down a cell of rogue slayers. There is a demon, among other things, and wackiness ensues.
4) Giles and Faith discover a town with a nasty secret concealed by the only other surviving Watcher.
5) Dawn is in trouble. Again. Buffy rescues her. Again. The Summers Sisters reconcile. Again.
The comic concludes with two short stories on Harmony and the robotic toy vampires. These are intended to be humorous but come across as completely lame.
In fact, that is the problem with this whole collection. The plots are so thin, weird and contrived I can't believe they were meant to be taken seriously. The writers must have been going for wry amusement instead. Strangely, I am not amused. I have seen better writing from teenage fanfic.
Oh, the art hasn't improved either. It remains passable at best.
I'm not sure what the problem is at Whedon enterprises. Was everybody having a bad couple of months? Has this little season 8 shindig run out of steam (and ideas, and credibility)? All I can tell you is that if the next collection is this bad, I will be sorely tempted to cut my losses and stop buying further issues.
