By Chris Boal, Tom Fassbender, Jim Pascoe, Cliff Richards & Joe Pimentel (Dark Horse Books/Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-382-7
Having conquered television, Buffy the Vampire Slayer began a similar crusade with the far harder-to-please comicbook audiences. Launched in 1998 and offering smart, sassy tales to accompany the funny, action-packed and mega-cool onscreen entertainment, the series began in an original graphic novel (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the Dust Waltz) before debuting in a monthly series.
She quickly became a major draw for publisher Dark Horse – whose line of licensed comicbook successes included Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Aliens and Predator – and her exploits were regularly supplemented by short stories in the company’s showcase anthology Dark Horse Presents and other venues.
This particular UK Titan Books edition – illustrated by Cliff Richards & Joe Pimentel – features stories set during TV Season 4 and gathers issues #26-28 (October-December 2000), the pertinent covers by Christian Zanier, John Totleben, Ryan Sook, Galen Showman & Dave Stewart, plus a few photo portraits of the blonde bombshell in reflective mood.
What You Need to Know: Buffy Summers was a hapless Californian cheerleader Valley Girl until the night she inexplicably turned into a hyper-strong, impossibly durable monster-killer. Meeting a creepy old coot from a secret society of Watchers she discovered that she had become a “Slayer†– the most recent recipient of an ancient geas which transformed mortal maids into living death-machines to all things undead, arcane or uncanny.
Moving with her mom to the deceptively quiet hamlet of Sunnydale, Buffy soon learned her new hometown was located on the edge of an eldritch gateway known to the unhallowed as The Hellmouth…
Enrolling at Sunnydale High, Buffy made some friends and, schooled by new Watcher Rupert Giles, conducted a never-ending war on devils, demons and every shade of predatory supernatural species inexorably drawn to the area…
This slim supernal compilation finds Buffy with a new boyfriend – federal spook-buster Riley Finn – and starting out as a freshman college girl, as is trainee sorceress, roommate and BFF Willow. There’s no respite from her true calling, however, as the two-part ‘Heart of a Slayer’ scripted by Chris Boal soon proves…
The drama begins as a Slayer from the Dark Ages skitters through time to the present just as a seemingly indestructible horror targets Buffy. The beast is only driven away after the foul-smelling barbarous sword-maiden arrives, but the two monster-hunters are separated by more than language and seem destined to become bitter enemies.
The remnants of the “Scooby Gang†gather (Oz has gone walkabout and Cordelia has moved to Los Angeles with Angel) to try and learn the secret of the creature and the origins of the gothic slayer, but even as their researches uncover the appalling cost of stopping the ravenous monster, Buffy is astounded to find herself afflicted with an unwelcome messianic destiny…
Tom Fassbender and Jim Pascoe then pen the nightmarish voodoo thriller ‘Cemetery of Lost Love’ wherein the One True Slayer is plagued by unsavoury events and apparitions as she and recently reformed bad-boy vampire Spike seek to stop a very wilful girl getting herself immortalised by the local bloodsucker gang. Of course it’s all a devious trap…
This is another extremely accessible assemblage of arcane action and furious phantasm fighting, even for those unfamiliar with the extensive back history: one more self-contained creepy chronicle of stirring sagas as readily enjoyed by the newest neophyte as any confirmed connoisseur.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer ™ & © 2001 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.