I am – Hercules!!


Is Buffy the Vampire Slayer transforming the comics industry? Publisher’s Weekly has an interesting story here about how “Buffy” mastermind Joss Whedon’s new “Season Eight” series is turning first-time comic-book customers into buyers of non-Buffy comics. An excerpt:

The Buffy series is currently the bestselling title at Rocketship, the Brooklyn, N.Y., comics store, "by a pretty considerable margin," said owner Alex Cox. The new customers it brings in are starting to buy other comics, too, Cox said, especially Joss Whedon's other projects, like the superhero series, Runaways. "We've pulled in extra Runaways sales just by racking it next to Buffy. They're not just coming in for Buffy and leaving. With the death of Captain America, people came in, wanted that one issue, and we'll never see them again."

Another excerpt:

Other recent comics adaptations of TV series and books haven't been nearly as big, though. Rocketship's Cox said that the comics adaptation of science fiction TV series Battlestar Galactica "died a slow, slow death on the shelves." Muse Comics' Fisher noted that a successful tie-in needs to involve the original project's creators closely and has to offer new material: "There are plenty of CSI and The Shield and Star Trek comics, but they need to be something that fans just have to have, that's only in the comic book medium."

Today brings the fifth issue of the new “Season Eight” series.

Whedon wrote this stand-alone fifth issue, titled “The Chain,” and it feels much of a piece with Whedon’s old “Tales of the Slayers” series. Buffy’s not in issue five. Nor is Xander, Dawn, Willow, Jonathan, Warren, Amy, Ethan, Faith, Kennedy, Anya, Cordelia, Angel or Spike. I spotted no angry Army men and no anti-slayer tattoos.

Giles puts in a cameo. I think. (It might be Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek; guest penciller Paul Lee is no Georges Jeanty.) We don’t learn this month where Giles has been keeping himself.

Andrew turns up on one page. Slayer One on another. Nikki Wood turns up on Slayer One’s page, wearing her black duster.

Issue five focuses on a heretofore unseen slayer, a girl fleetingly referenced in issue one. She’s a Buffy decoy, but not the one who fooled Spike and Angel in Rome; it’s the decoy operating “literally” underground, where she’s been charged with putting the fear of Buffy into some hellmouthy types.

We follow pretend-Buffy from the day she got her superpowers. We learn a bit about how the neo-slayers are recruited into Team Buffy these days. We follow her through recruitment and training, and how she came to be chosen, as it were, for her Big Assignment. One comes to like the pretend-Buffy.

Faux Buffy also gets her own all-new non-human supporting cast. Not a vampire, witch or werewolf among them.

I say pick it up. This is the last issue Whedon will write for a while. Brian K. Vaughn (“Y: The Last Man”) takes over next month with a four-issue arc focusing on Faith the Vampire Slayer. (There’s a cool preview of the Dushku-y issue-six cover on issue five’s letter page.)

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