Jul 19 2008
Comics
Wolves at the Gate
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, “Wolves at the Gate,” was written by neither Joss Whedon nor Brian K. Vaughn (who wrote the Faith story arc) and the story-telling is the poorer for it.
The story was okay, but it wasn’t what I hoped for.
The tragedy was done well enough but there were moments where it seemed writer, Drew Goddard, tried to awkwardly parody the story and its characters, and while Joss Whedon has successfully done this, most notably in Season Six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, episode seven, “Once More, With Feeling,” Drew Goddard takes interesting ideas and set-ups from previous issues and turns them into setups for frivolous gags. Some of them work, most of them do not.
I’ve heard plenty of people say they enjoyed the battle in Tokyo between Dawn and the giant robot built by the Japanese vampires, Mecha Dawn. Pretty funny in summary; pretty lame in execution.
Xander’s new girlfriend is murdered shortly after their first kiss. The actual murder scene and the first page of the comic following, were done very well and it was touching. And then, Mecha Dawn and her amazing ability to point out the obvious while battling Dawn: “I’m a teenage girl.” “I like blue jeans and irony.”
This could have been funny, but it was out of place.
And so is the character, Andrew. He never quite belonged, and that was a nice set-up for comedy, but he’s just annoying in this issue.
I don’t want a touching, almost-heartbreaking moments followed by a fanboy and his trite one-liners, or a deus ex machina. Both remove you from the story; both ruin a moment.
