The legend continues

[aadler]

 
I drove to my unit headquarters first thing in the morning, but the unit administrator was out when I got there. I didn’t know when he’d be back, so I sat down in an empty classroom and turned out another 800 words on my remix_redux story.

When he did arrive, I got all my pre-mob prep done. The only thing waiting now is travel arrangements, and the guy I’ll working with (he’s stationed out of Texas) will put those together and let me know when they’re set.

Finally, on my way home, I stopped by the proper book dealer and picked up my Buffy Season 8 issue, just arrived in a supplementary shipment.

My thoughts in the cut:

Open Cut — Buffy, Season 8

So, the first issue, henceforth referred to as Ep #08-01.

To begin with, I didn’t enjoy it to the extent I otherwise might have because, for reasons of my own, I did my best to acquire advance information about the upcoming issue, actively searching out spoilers when it had always been my habit to avoid them. I’d have gotten more out of it if I’d let it come to me fresh, so that can’t be blamed on the production itself. From now on, back to my spoiler-free existence. The alternative is too costly in terms of my ‘viewing’ pleasure.

It’s short. I mean, short. Were comic books always that short? Exactly two dozen pages. Maybe I’ve outgrown the medium. But it seemed short to me.

Introduction of a number of interesting things, but somehow nothing except intro. The stage is being set (but only partially), goodies promised for the future … I’d hoped for a little more. Did I always feel that way about the first episode of a new season? I loved the openers for Seasons 2 and 3, and wasn’t disappointed by that for Season 4 (though I’ve heard sharply different opinions elsewhere). Season 5, meh, and pretty much the same for Season 7 … maybe it’s just me.

I love the individuality of the Slayers we’ve seen. That’s good tactics for dealing with a bunch of girls suddenly drafted into superherodom: teach them their place in the group, but encourage them to hold onto and demonstrate aspects of their own unique personalities.

I wonder where all the money came from for helicopters, satellites, global communications networks, everything we’ve seen of the new organization. It’s cool, but who’s paying for it? And why, even apart from the non-Slayers, does everyone we’ve seen in Command Central appear to be under the age of thirty, if not sub-twenty?

Yes, there’s a Slayer named Leah (I said I’d freak completely if there was); no, her accent makes it abundantly clear that this definitely is not the Leah I wrote about a year ago in “Learning Curve”. So I’m deferring the freak for awhile. Still, Xander in Scotland, and a Slayer named Leah … if this was real life, I’d wonder about psychic forewarning.

Did anybody else notice that the guy in the copilot’s seat (page 13, panel 2) has a name-tag that appears to say “GOLDEN” … as in, same name as the author of several BtVS/ A:tS authorized novels?

Giant-sized Dawn makes a nice sight-gag, but where do they intend to take this?

Xander wanting to be called ‘Sergeant Fury’. Hmm. First he does an obvious eye-patch tie-in, then contradicts it by harking back to a time (“the Howling Commando days”) before Nick Fury wore the eye-patch. Psychological conflict, anybody? But his sense of humor is still operating smoothly.

Where’s Willow? Who cares? I began to tire of her in Season 4 ― browbeating Giles over Thanksgiving traditions, as if a Briton gave a rat’s arse about Thanksgiving ― and by the time the series ended, I simply couldn’t stand her. Maybe the graphic version will be less annoying. That would be nice, because I liked her a lot in the beginning.

Dangling boots, and the ends of a duster or trenchcoat or cape. Well. Obvious first thought is Spike, but since when can he hover a hundred feet up in the air? Either a new character, or a known one with new capabilities.

Nice to see Amy again, and learn that she’ll feature heavily in future events. I’m a bit sorry that the decision was made to turn her totally to villainy; she started off as a wholly sympathetic character, and at her worst (“Wrecked” #06-10, “Doublemeat Palace” #06-12, “the Killer in Me” #07-13) she came across as irresponsible and petty rather than actively evil.

And her ‘boyfriend’? His desire for access to a weapons lab definitely makes it sound like Warren or Adam, but there are good reasons for Amy not to have been able to find remains of either of them to reanimate. Again, I suspect this is either a new character, or a new twist on a former character, and I trust in the ability of Team Whedon to surprise us.

Military observations:

• None of the military vehicles or equipment show any identifying markings. Is this a clandestine unit, a là the Initiative? If so, why is a general officer wandering around in his Class A’s?
• Two guys in the back of a helicopter, sitting without straps and talking without microphones? Unh-uh. You’re belted in with a five-buckle harness ― those sliding doors have been known to pop open ― and there’s too much noise from the rotors for you to talk without yelling.
• General Voll’s uniform has no nameplate. But it does have the two black bands towards the ends of the sleeves, which is a detail lots of people miss.
• The radio techs in the tent (page 14, panel 3) seem to have their sleeves rolled up Marine-style, while wearing what appear to be Army BDU uniforms (the Army went to digitized ACUs a couple of years ago, but the Marines digitized their uniforms shortly after the first Gulf War … and Army guys, should they be allowed to do it at all, have an entirely different way they’re required to roll up their sleeves). So what branch exactly do they belong to?
• The guys in boonie hats guarding the tent (page 14, panel 2) … the one facing forward seems to be holding a pump shotgun. Another note for ‘non-conventional’, assuming it’s not just an artist who’s fuzzy on the details.

Final thoughts? First: definitely worth the time, and definitely showing promise for the future. Second: I want to see Faith. I want to see Buffy and Xander get together (but then, I’ve been wanting that since Season 2). I want to see Dawn do something besides be a giant mope. Third: at one issue a month (presumably), and twenty to thirty issues overall, this is going to be a long season.

Close Cut

Gotta go. New episode of Jericho coming in tonight.

Comments

[lmzjewel.livejournal.com]

When you gave the military observations you sounded like my husband does when he's watching a show thats medical themed like ER or House.

In the show ER they used to have an x-ray of a hand, I guess as a prop to one of the ER rooms and everytime my husband saw the thing it would just really bug him. I forgot why he said that x-ray wouldn't be there like that but it shouldn't have been and he'd always draw my attention to it.

At other times different shows like that will do medical slip ups and if it has to do with the Radiologic department he'll catch them everytime. (:

LMZ

[jgracio.livejournal.com]

That's a professional "disease".

You're okay with most anything in the movies / entertainment, until it enters a field you know a lot about. Then you realize entertainment is full of crap, and notice things just aren't true to real life. :)

[aadler]

But we forgive more if the entertainment itself meets our needs. Buffy usually does, so it’s allowed more latitude.

And welcome back, jgracio! We’ve missed you.

[aadler]

I tried to observe rather than object/criticize; having served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I know that guys in the field tend to adjust their gear and appearance to the needs of the moment, and “uniform” is frequently more a guideline than an actual fact. And, let’s face it, people working for official military publications get little things wrong on a regular basis; no surprise that someone not “in the business” might miss a detail here and there.

However, I agree that medical shows are the worst offenders when it comes to getting it right. My ex-wife never fails to express disgust when we see a ventilator working in the background, but the “comatose” patient only has a nasal cannula.

[mkcrl120.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about short... I've not bought a comic in years, but I do semi-regularly buy graphic novels, and this was just... tiny.

It annoyed me a bit too, cos everyone's been going on about this being a virtual season 8, but even with thirty-ish issues (or whatever), with the amount of story they're going to be able to fit in each comic, it'll probably feel more like a two maybe two-and-a-half-to-three hour film. Or maybe it'll feel more like each 'arc' they've promised will feel like an individual episode (maybe a slightly extended one - depending on what they put in it when it's all up and running)... so they might be 5 or 6 arcs/eps in total. Either result may or may not work, but from the initial look this looks (and I might be being generous here) like at maximum we're getting maybe a third/half of a season spread out of twice as long as a normal full season.

The age of the characters didn't occur to me at first (maybe cos it's a comic, or maybe cos they were always mainly young in the BTVS-verse), but yeah... what are these people, the children of the Watchers who were killed..? This is something they've got to address...

I was wondering if the Dawn thing is some set-up for an arc of her own. (I'm not sure who's been given arcs offhand; I heard Buffy, Faith and Willow as the names thrown around most... but are others like Xander, Dawn, Giles, etc... just gonna be tagged onto theirs, cos unless they get equal time I'm personally gonna feel a little robbed. That said though, for a first issue that had to cover Buffy, I felt Xander did have a fair innings; so maybe they can make it work.)

Didn't know enough about Nick Fury's history to notice the contradiction.

I think the hovvering character's either got to be someone completely new, or someone we recognise that's be 'worn' by The First - there's no reason anything incorporeal needs to care about anything as petty as Gravity. (The only other option that leaps out is that maybe they're Amy's boyfriend and it's something she did, or something this mysterious person achieved using the remains of whatever tech they've found in the Sunnydale crater (which would include whatever remains of Adam's lab and possibly bits of the old Initiative - all depending on how well they destroyed them).)

Yeah, I'm with you on the Amy thing, she came back from rat-status as some full-on-evil bitch, but she wasn't really anything like that when she left... it seemed to be some sort of prelude to what happened to Willow in her reliance on magic (I'll accept that Amy was frivolous with it beforehand, but nothing like she was when she came out). If it was meant to be the result of spending so much time as a rat; either as revenge for missing so much of her life or something similar to Buffy's own dives into the darkness (after being deceased) then it was really badly done. Not only was there no 'show' for that particular progression, there was no 'tell' either... (It'd be like Faith running away after awakening from her coma, but then coming back in season 7 wanting to be helpful - and then not only refusing to show the progression on AtS, but not even bothering to explain it).

But yeah, so far, at the moment I think my 'intrigued' factor outweighs any possible others, positive or negative.

Roll on the 2nd episode.

Mike

[aadler]

So it wasn’t just me, thinking this one was unusually brief. Okay. We can hope that later issues will have more flesh to them. I’m not objecting to the story itself so far — nice elements working, nice build going — but, yes, at four or five issues to the “episode”, this would indeed be a really short season.

As for the Nick Fury thing, well, there are nerd points and there are nerd points. Maybe I was reading too much into it; someone Xander’s age, just knowing about Nick Fury qualifies as exotic needless trivia. Actually being able to name the members of the Howling Commandoes — and knowing which ones accompanied Fury into S.H.I.E.L.D. — makes one more sensitive to the nuances.

I’m inclined to think Hovering-with-boots Guy is someone other than Amy’s ‘boyfriend’. The timing issue alone — we saw the boots right before we saw the Hazmat-suit Guy discover Amy below the Sunnydale Crater — mitigates against them being the same person.

And your response to my comments on Amy show that we’re seeing things the same way and talking about the same things. Plotwise, it’s more useful to cast Amy in the villain role; the new Slayer Command has more than enough super-powered folk to give us sufficient variety, and Amy has a history that makes her current incarnation plausible. I would, however, like to see something to indicate just what put her there.

Like you, my positives more than outweigh the negatives. In fact, I can’t really say there ARE any negatives, just things that show the potential for going that way if not developed properly.

I’m already getting set to put in my order for Issue #2.

[mkcrl120.livejournal.com]

The Nick Fury thing went past me because there's no timeline for it that I'm intimately aware of... I always assumed NF had had the eyepatch... which makes me wonder, me being between Xander's age and that off NB or JW and not knowing when Fury got the eyepatch myself (in canon), I'm wondering if it was something they(the writers)'d know or if Xander was supposed to know by being geek-worthy.

Yeah, I placed the flying guy as Amy's boyfriend last in my list too. At the moment if it turns out to not be someone we already know, then my guess is someone we've already heard of (for a possibility - The Immortal; we know so little about him and never saw him in canon - would it be that much of surprise if he's keeping track of the Slayers (and know the Buffy he's with isn't the real one).

Yeah, Amy needs a backstory/justification but what we need is something coherent that moves us past the 'cos-we-said-so' mentality.

Yeah, I'm gonna continue following it, but as I'm in the UK, so I'm not sure if there is a time-delay, I'll have to get a hold of it by whichever means are easiest...

Mike

[jgracio.livejournal.com]

The age issue, well, the Scoobies are all sub 25, and the age of the rest of the people can easily be explained by the FE cullings. Or maybe JW wants to set up a young people good, old people not so good vibe. Dunno.

[aadler]

Like I used to tell my daughter when critiquing her fiction attempts: “There are any number of plausible explanations for this, but as the author it’s your duty to provide any explanations that are necessary.” The youth-oriented communications center crew isn’t wrong, but it’s unusual enough that we deserve some justification for its being that way.

[mkcrl120.livejournal.com]

Part of me wondered (in initial readings) if this young-backup-crew was what some of the Slayers were doing... in fact it'd make sense for them to do it after a certain level of training. You've got used to obeying instructions and being part of a team; but afterwards you need to move one and learn that this is how your backup see it, this is how they're seeing the situation you're in - watch, learn and hopefully make useful comments; and then understand the differences between the remote view and the on-site view so that whatever position you're in you can best interpret the info presented to you.

Mike

[aadler]

I don’t think we can count on that being what’s going on, but it strikes me as a fantastic approach. Of course, you’d need experienced liaison to provide oversight for the ‘trainees’ — can’t leave the field-deployed Slayers at the mercy of newbies — but it would be a marvelous prep for the more active side of things.