By Christopher Golden, Hector Gomez & Sandu Florea (Dark Horse/Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-163-7
These days a ingenuous girl loving an undead bloodsucker is so trite and overused it is a subject of parody and jest, but not so long ago the concept was relatively fresh and enticing…
For an entire generation, their first brush with the idea came courtesy of a landmark TV show. Buffy the Vampire Slayer began her charismatic career after a clueless cheerleaderValley Girl teen suddenly turned into an indomitable monster-killer: latest winner of an unpredictable mystic/genetic lottery which transformed unsuspecting mortal maids into human killing machines and martial arts masters…
The cult series and its assorted media spin-offs refocused the zeitgeist and, since Dark Horse Comics’ clever, witty graphic interpretation is what interests me most, here’s a look at one of their earliest sidebar projects.
Once the company secured the strip licensing rights, they began generating an engaging regular series, a welter of original graphic novels, spin-offs, specials and numerous miniseries.
Buffy Summers lived in the small California hamlet of Sunnydale on the edge of a paranormal portal to the Nether Realms dubbed The Hellmouth, where she and a small band of friends battled devils, demons and every sort of horror inexorably drawn to the area and whom/what/which all considered humanity an appetiser and planet Earth an irresistible eldritch “fixer-upper†opportunity.
With Rupert Giles, scholarly mentor, father-figure and Watcher of all things unnatural, Buffy and her “Scooby Gang†began making the after-dark streets of Sunnydale safe for the oblivious human morsels, aided by an enigmatic stud-muffin referring to himself as Angel…
Eventually he was revealed as a good vampire – one who possessed a soul – and he and the Summers girl fell in love. Sadly that broke the spell which made a tragic hero and instead unleashed the diabolical vampire he had been – the red-handed Angelus who had turned Europe into his personal charnel house for nearly two centuries.
Although Angel was eventually restored thanks to the intervention of Buffy and Co, he had briefly carved a savage swathe through town – ghastly even by Sunnydale’s standards – and was left burdened with a double dose of paralysing guilt and faced every night the vigilant, fearful suspicions of his human allies…
Angel eventually won his own TV franchise, but long before that he had graduated from romantic interest/arch enemy into his own 3-issue tryout miniseries. Angel: The Hollower was released from May to July 1999 and detailed how, even after reverting to exquisite evil before being redeemed again, his past would always be there to haunt him…
This British Titan Books edition commences with an Introduction by scripter Christopher Golden (and ends with a light-hearted interview with original series cover-artist Jeff Matsuda) before the action opens with ‘Cursed!’ by Golden, Hector Gomez & Sandu Florea (originally seen in anthology Dark Horse Presents #141, March 1999) wherein the Brooding Bad Boy regales Buffy with the horrific events that followed his rebirth as a bloodsucker in Ireland circa 1753.
That handy origin recap concluded, the main event – set during the TV show’s third season – kicks off in present-day San Francisco where a pair of vampires is attacked by a monstrous tentacled horror. Veteran vamp Catherine barely escapes with her unlife and, having seen the horror before, knows there’s only one being she can turn to…
In Sunnydale, Buffy and Angel have resumed their after-dark partnership, even though Giles and the rest of her in-the-know friends are still wary of the recently re-redeemed night-stalker. However once their monster-killing “date†ends Angel is jumped by a band of fangers and sees a girl he slaughtered and “turned†over a century past…
Although their sworn enemy, his undead captors treat Angel with kid gloves. Catherine only wants to talk and she wants to talk about The Hollower…
In a flashback, the scene turns to Vienna in 1892 where Angelus and his pack-mates Spike and Drusilla were amongst many vampires preying on the populace in complete security, oblivious and immune to all threat or challenge.
However, soon after turning Catherine, Angelus was confronted by starving, terrified vampires fleeing from some unimaginable horror that actually preyed on bloodsuckers…
Back in the now, Catherine reminds her sire of the cost the last time the creature manifested and warns him the thing has undoubtedly tracked her to Sunnydale…
At last convinced, Angel agrees to a truce and prepares to battle the thing again. Unfortunately this is something he cannot share with Buffy…
In end-of-the-century Austria the first fight against the Hollower unsatisfactorily stalled with only a few undead survivors, whilst now in Sunnydale Angel secretly consults eldritch expert Giles and learns the truth about the beast. He also discovers that, blithely unaware, Buffy is already hunting a huge, subterranean tentacled horror that prefers vamps to human meals…
Watcher archives reveal a chilling scenario. Vampires are actually human corpses with the departed soul replaced by a reanimating demon, using blood to fuel the composite creature. The Hollower however, sucks out those demonic riders and ingests them. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, except once it’s full – about 3,000 demons is its limit – the horror explosively regurgitates them and the partially digested devils will infect the nearest LIVING body.
If the Hollower succeeds in satiating itself in vampire-infested Sunnydale and subsequently pops, most of the town’s mortal souls will suddenly become rabid, blood-crazed killers…
Engaged in the hunt, Buffy however can’t shift a nagging and unworthy notion: if the Hollower sucks out the vampire part of Angel, will she be left with a normal human lover…?
Fast and furious, this tale of two cities and times is a solid supernatural thriller big on action and intriguingly presented. Definitely prescribed for anybody suffering a surfeit of lovestruck face-suckers and kissypoo predators – which last really should know better at their age…
Angel ™ & © 2000 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.