Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Vampire - Part 2

[TheCorpulent1]

Regarding the comics, in order:

Angel season 6 is pretty horrible, both art and story. Here's the CliffsNotes version: [blackout]The Senior Partners of Wolfram & Hart send LA to Hell and turn Angel human. We catch up with the other characters for a bit and then Gunn, who's become a vampire, makes a deal to kill Angel and reset the universe to before LA fell. Angel returns to being a vampire at the end.[/blackout] Feel free to skip it.

Buffy season 8 is decent except for all the stuff with Angel. There are mitigating factors to what he does, but there's still enough boneheaded nonsense on his part to negate all the progress toward making him a heroic leader in his own right on his show. Magic no longer exists (for the most part) on Earth by the end of this season.

Buffy season 9 is better and has a back-to-basics feel. There are a few interesting new characters introduced. It's a good read but, aside from the return of magic to Earth's dimension at the end of the season, it's nothing earth-shattering.

Angel & Faith isn't really Angel season 7. It's considered a spinoff of Buffy season 9, continuing from the events of season 8 but just focusing on Angel and Faith rather than the Scoobies. That said, it's a great series. It delves into a lot of what makes Faith who she is and she comes out at the end a much stronger and more interesting character than she ever was on the show. Angel doesn't fare quite so well, since he's pretty mopey from the stuff that he does in season 8; honestly, it's more Faith's series than Angel's. But it's still good and Angel at least manages to not screw anything up too badly again.

Buffy season 10 is the series we're currently on. It's been great so far, with the core Scoobies back together and not all angsty about each other, which is a refreshing change from how things were all the way back to, like, season 6.

Angel & Faith season 2 is also pretty good. The two title characters are separated this time, which allows the series to focus on each of them a bit more evenly. Angel and Faith are united by the common theme of searching for new identities in the wake of all the stuff that's happened by this point. So far it seems promising.

 

[ComicChick]

thanks corp

 

[Havok83]

How long is each season? of the books that is. I got turned off by Buffy bc S8 seemed to last forever. Was shocked when I read they finally moved onto S9

 

[jaymes_e06]

^Agreed. I thought it would be 22-25 "episodes" but it seemed to hit like 50 and I started to wonder if it would ever become a different "season."

 

[Lord]

Season 8 was 40 issues, due to them finding it too long, the core series for Season 9 were just 25 issues long because of the negative reaction to the length of the previous Season. Now Season 10 is aparently going to give each one of their series 30 issues.

 

[Havok83]

Season 8 was 40 issues, due to them finding it too long, the core series for Season 9 were just 25 issues long because of the negative reaction to the length of the previous Season. Now Season 10 is aparently going to give each one of their series 30 issues.

where any double shipped? If not, dang, it really lasted over 3 years?

 

[Primal Slayer]

I am glad that they shortend the seasons, hell I wish they would just shorten it even more. 12 issues for a season would be ideal.

 

[Lord]

There were some hiatuses here and there for a month or two if i remember correctly, so it lastes almost 5 years.

 

[Primal Slayer]

I wish we could get some animated dtvs. with how well the comics do, you would think FOX or Dark Horse would be jumping on something like that.

 

[PyroChamber]

Regarding the comics, in order:

Angel season 6 is pretty horrible, both art and story. Here's the CliffsNotes version: [blackout]The Senior Partners of Wolfram & Hart send LA to Hell and turn Angel human. We catch up with the other characters for a bit and then Gunn, who's become a vampire, makes a deal to kill Angel and reset the universe to before LA fell. Angel returns to being a vampire at the end.[/blackout] Feel free to skip it.

Buffy season 8 is decent except for all the stuff with Angel. There are mitigating factors to what he does, but there's still enough boneheaded nonsense on his part to negate all the progress toward making him a heroic leader in his own right on his show. Magic no longer exists (for the most part) on Earth by the end of this season.

Buffy season 9 is better and has a back-to-basics feel. There are a few interesting new characters introduced. It's a good read but, aside from the return of magic to Earth's dimension at the end of the season, it's nothing earth-shattering.

Angel & Faith isn't really Angel season 7. It's considered a spinoff of Buffy season 9, continuing from the events of season 8 but just focusing on Angel and Faith rather than the Scoobies. That said, it's a great series. It delves into a lot of what makes Faith who she is and she comes out at the end a much stronger and more interesting character than she ever was on the show. Angel doesn't fare quite so well, since he's pretty mopey from the stuff that he does in season 8; honestly, it's more Faith's series than Angel's. But it's still good and Angel at least manages to not screw anything up too badly again.

Buffy season 10 is the series we're currently on. It's been great so far, with the core Scoobies back together and not all angsty about each other, which is a refreshing change from how things were all the way back to, like, season 6.

Angel & Faith season 2 is also pretty good. The two title characters are separated this time, which allows the series to focus on each of them a bit more evenly. Angel and Faith are united by the common theme of searching for new identities in the wake of all the stuff that's happened by this point. So far it seems promising.

Didn't Spike have a comic series in between all of this also?

 

[Lord]

It was suposed to be a kind of interlude set between After the Fall and Season 8, yeah, i remember it being kinda average. If you like Buffy and Angel, then these comics serve as a nice gift, they can be very hit-or-miss, but pretty much follow that aspect from the last two seasons of the show. While Season 8's end was kind of a mess, i don't think there has any big bad so far that was worse than Adam.

I only read the first volume of Angel After the Fall and Spike's two canonical titles, but i don't realy remember them being all that bad, prety what Season 6 would have been like if it had been turned into a movie, was the rest of the story that disapointing. I also heard the stories from Aftermath and on were terrible, though that was said by people from the fandom, and they have hated elements i loved, like The First Evil, and some of the elements there look kinda interesting, like Myresto Mor.

 

[Havok83]

There were some hiatuses here and there for a month or two if i remember correctly, so it lastes almost 5 years.

5 years? My god! Another reason I couldn't get into it was the subpar art. I thought Buffy deserved better. It sucked bc the covers looked so good but someone else drew the interiors

 

[Lord]

5 years? My god! Another reason I couldn't get into it was the subpar art. I thought Buffy deserved better. It sucked bc the covers looked so good but someone else drew the interiors

Art is subjective, not all of it has to be pseudo-realistic, i could see how you would prefer the covers and were not a big fan of the interior art, but it wasn't bad at all. I myself am tired of every major comic book having to have the same type of art trying to be realistic and portraying all the female characters with the bodies of porn starts and the males with exagerated muscles and etc.

I would welcome more variety and comics with an actualy cartoony type of art.

 

[Mani-Man]

5 years? My god! Another reason I couldn't get into it was the subpar art. I thought Buffy deserved better. It sucked bc the covers looked so good but someone else drew the interiors

Yeah, the cover make the comics look a lot more "detailed" and fitting.
The art is still pretty good, for my taste just to bright and "clean", but there are plenty of series that have worse art.

The characters resemble those in the show and you dont have many awkward looking poses....i would kill for Greg Capullo to draw at least one issue, that would be awesome

 

[TheCorpulent1]

12 issues per season would be the equivalent of like 3 episodes. Comic stories take a bit longer to tell than TV episodes. 40 was a bit too long, definitely, but 24-30's a good length for the kind of intricate, serialized stories the Whedonverse is known for.

I personally love the art in all of Buffy's seasons. Georges Jeanty has a fairly cartoony style, which can be jarring if you're coming straight off the live-action visuals of the show, but he's a consummate comic storyteller and he did a great job on both seasons he drew.

Angel's art is much more hit-or-miss. I personally loathe just about everything about Franco Urru's art, from his lazy backgrounds (or lack thereof) to his sloppy, often awkwardly proportioned figures to his dull facial expressions. So After the Fall was pretty tough for me to get through. I remember the story also being horrendous, but I dropped it about 10 issues in, I think. I heard it got better and some of the things that I thought sucked actually wound up making a bit more sense in the context of later developments. I'm planning to read through the whole series, along with the Spike minis, after I finish re-watching the Angel TV show, so my opinion might change.

Angel & Faith, on the other hand, looks absolutely gorgeous. It's drawn by Rebekah Isaacs and, paired with Dan Jackson's bright, bold colors, creates a really vibrant, energetic world for Angel and Faith that can still be appropriately spooky when it needs to be. She draws a really good Angel--she doesn't stress trying to make him look like Boreanaz so much as just getting his key features right while allowing herself some liberty to keep him expressive and visually interesting.

Isaacs switched over to Buffy for season 10, and she's bringing that same gorgeous linework and expressiveness to the Scoobies now. Her Dracula has been particularly cool.

Meanwhile, Will Conrad has taken over Angel & Faith for their "season 10" (which is still an awkward designation to me, although I guess Whedon just considers them two halves of the same show now, basically). If you're not a fan of the exaggerated, slightly cartoony stuff from Jeanty and Isaacs, Conrad's art should be more up your alley. He tends to go for more realistic depictions of everything, including more faithful recreations of the actors' faces, but he's good enough to not sacrifice their expressiveness in the process. The only drawback (to me, anyway) is that he tends to rely on typical superhero stock physiques, so all the Slayers have basically that same body type you'd expect to see on Supergirl or Storm or every single other female superhero. Not a lot of variation. Still way better than the crappy artists Angel season 6 had throughout its run, though.

Oh, and there's an arc where Buffy crosses over with Melaka Fray, the protagonist of Whedon's Fray mini-series. That was drawn by Karl Moline, who drew the Fray mini. He does a good job with the Scoobies, although his style errs toward the cartoony a bit too--it's actually pretty similar to Isaacs', only a bit rougher and more sketchy, especially in action scenes.

 

[Lord]

How would you rank the big bads including the ones from the comics?

Would be great to see Joss Whedon have the franchise returning to live-action now that he has many more resources in Hollywood, i don't expect more of Buffy or even Angel, but Fray could be awsome, there's much that can be done with it, almost seems as if Joss was willingly leaving it open to return.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Hmm, good question. I imagine everyone has a different idea of what really constitutes a Big Bad, especially for Angel, so I'll just throw in every major villain (i.e. ones that had a longish arc devoted to them). I'm not counting Wolfram & Hart as a Big Bad because they were such a huge organization that they tended to spin off lesser characters who became full-on Big Bads in their own right.

Buffy
The Mayor
Angelus
Faith
Spike and Drusilla
Caleb
Dark Willow
[blackout]Simone[/blackout]
The Master
The Trio
Glory
[blackout]Twilight[/blackout]
The First Evil
Lothos (remember, the movie's plot is still technically canon )
[blackout]Severin[/blackout]
Adam
[blackout]Angel (I'm separating him from Twilight because I think it's significant that Angel did stuff on his own using "Twilight" as a disguise, as opposed to the latter part of season 8, when he was actively possessed by the Twilight being)[/blackout]

Angel
The Circle of the Black Thorn
Holtz and Justine
Lindsey
Angelus
[blackout]Pearl and Nash[/blackout]
Lilah (maybe she doesn't count since she was more self-interested rather than a constant antagonist, but she was a great character either way)
[blackout]Whistler[/blackout]
Darla and Drusilla
Sahjhan
Connor
Pylean priests
Marcus Hamilton
The Beast
[blackout]Vampire Gunn[/blackout]
Jasmine (this includes all the "evil Cordy" stuff)

The blacked-out ones are characters from the comics, since it seems a lot of you haven't read them. Also, I guess Eyghonn technically counts, but he's shared between the two shows/comics and he tends to only have one-off appearances now and then, so I don't really know where to put him.

 

[Wine-N-Cheese]

How would you rank the big bads including the ones from the comics?

Buffy:
1-Angelus
2-Glory
3-Faith
4-The Mayor
5-Spike & Dru
6-The Master (he really should be #1 just for the lisp!)
7-Dark Willow
8-First Evil
9-The Trio
1000000...etc-Adam

Angel:
1-Darla
2-Holtz
3-Circle of the Black Thorn
4-Lilah
5-Jasmine (minus the Cordy stuff)
6-Lindsay
7-The Beast

I would have included the comic big bads, but I can't remember any of them.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

How do you guys think Glory, Illyria, First Evil-enhanced Caleb, and Jasmine stack up against each other? They're the "god" characters, whose strength seems to be beyond everyone else's.

 

[Lord]

First Evil is probably impossible to destroy, and its full powers are most likely above anything else's in the Buffyverse. Not sure about the others, maybe Illyria's stronger than Glory, but i'm not sure, didn't Jasmine have the power to alter reality? Should be stronger than Illyria or Glory then, i don't even remember how she was defeated.

 

[Havok83]

My rank for Buffy is

1. Glory!
2. The Mayor
3. First Evil
4. Angelus
5. Dark Willow
6. The Master
7. Adam

and The Beast on Angel had to be the coolest bad guy. Its a shame he didnt last longer

 

[TheCorpulent1]

The Beast was fun because of how much Angelus made fun of him. "Big moves for a guy whose head is made out of rock!" Seriously, Angelus' toying with everyone has to be the best part of season 4.

Also, I'm about 12 issues into Angel: After the Fall now. I'd dropped it initially around #4 or 5, but as it's continued it's gotten steadily better. I wrote a lot of the characters' motivations off as stupid before, but they make more sense when you read everything together and get the full context. The story is actually pretty solid. Art's still absolutely horrific, though. Franco Urru got replaced by Nick Runge and, as much as I hate Urru's art, Runge makes me miss him. Runge is capable of excellent, almost photorealistic work, but I'm guessing it takes a lot of time to work on that level. His monthly interior work so far has been sloppy and bland. Panel after panel of misshapen figures, nearly unrecognizable faces, missing backgrounds, etc. It's awful. I decided to re-read Buffy seasons 8 and 9 and Angel & Faith after this, and I'm pretty much dying to be done with Angel so I can enjoy the competent artwork of those other series at this point. Unfortunately, I still have like 30 issues left.

 

[hopefuldreamer]

How would you rank the big bads including the ones from the comics?

Haven't kept up with the comics, but here's my ranking below:

Buffy:

Angelus
Faith
Spike & Dru
Glory
The Mayor
The Master
The Initiative
The First
Dark Willow
Caleb
Adam
The Trio

Angel

Wolfram & Hart (the senior partners)
Holtz
Angelus
Circle of the Black Thorn
Lindsay
Lilah
Holland Manners
The ruling demon class in Pylea
Darla
Sahjhan
The Beast
Jasmine (after birth)
Evil Cordy

 

[TheCorpulent1]

How come people separate Jasmine and evil Cordy? I thought it was pretty clearly shown that evil Cordy was just Jasmine using Cordy's body. I mean, Cordelia behaves literally exactly the same in "You're Welcome" as she did by the end of season 3 and nothing like she does after she supposedly got her memories back in season 4.

 

[Sterling Archer]

I just started re-watching Buffy, I'm up to the beginning of season 3. I forgot how much I like the Xander/Cordelia relationship.