Alien Resurrection: Angel & Faith #16 Review

Editor’s Note: If I ever want to hear your spoilers Spike… come to think of it, I’ll never want to hear your spoilers.

Well, I certainly didn’t see that coming. I probably should have, given how similarly weighty events have recently played out in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but what the hell. We’ll get to that in a minute.

We’ve spent sixteen issues watching Angel and Faith off in England, trying to work out how to bring Giles back from the dead. And during that time we’ve met some interesting new characters and we’ve come across some old familiar ones, and some weird shit has gone down, but that first statement has been our core mission: Angel and Faith are trying to resurrect Giles. And that has made Angel and Faith, to me, more compelling than the core Buffy Season Nine title, because of what that mission entails: doing some dark shit, shit that the Buffy TV show, in Season Six, showed us was difficult on a good day, impossible on a bad one, and dangerous, ill-advised and rife with bad, bad unintended circumstances on every day. And this story has worked for me because if anyone knows the dangers behind raising the dead, it’s members of Buffy’s Scooby Gang, and yet they were doing it anyway. And the promise has been that we will eventually see them on the precipice of darkness, with Giles’s body and some magical McGuffins, and having to make the conscious decision as to whether to proceed or not, and face those consequences.

Well, that’s over now. While the conclusion of Angel & Faith #16 delivers one hell of a twist and teases a possible big bad for Faith and Angel that I didn’t really see coming and which could well wind up with an emotional and affecting climax. However, by taking that course, writer Christos Gage has let the air out of the story so far. He trades the weird, sick momentum of the story so far for a twist and an “oh shit!” moment. And while that moment has some promise, it doesn’t trade even in my ledger.

Forward Into The Past: Faith & Angel #6 Review

Remember that episode of Buffy where Willow got all twisted on dark magic and couldn’t leave the house? And she was willing to ignore anything else that was going on in the Buffyverse because she was just too willing to roll around in the darkness in exchange for a free taste for a load of evil across her naked chest (Perhaps I’m misremembering the episode… but if I am, don’t you fucking dare tell me)? Yeah, that’s what Angel & Faith #6 is: the crack of the Buffyverse.

Whereas the actual Buffy The Vampire Slayer comic feels committed to advancing the Buffyverse and showing the Scooby Gang pushing forward into adulthood, Angel & Faith as written by Christos Gage, particularly in this issue, feels committed to beefing up and filling out previously mentioned areas of the Buffy mythos. On its face, this can be dangerous; any storyline that is less concerned with advancement and more concerned with its own continuity runs a serious danger of crawling up its own ass and dying (hello, Grant Morrison’s run on Batman!).

A Whole New 52-Less World

It is Wednesday, and as it has since the inception of this publication almost three months ago…

…this means the end of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives broadcast day.

Which feels like business as usual, but… something is missing… Oh right! There’s not a single issue of DC Comics’s New 52 in the take this week! That explains why my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks me to stop asking whoever’s milling around the Archie comics rack if they “wanna see the Old 5-2″, looked at my take this week and only said, “Bomb Queen? No refunds if the pages stick together, Rob. And no, I won’t shake your hand. Or anything else.”

It’s gonna be a weird week with almost no DC books to review, but check it out: we’ve got a new Mark Waid and Marcos Martin issue of Daredevil, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Rizzo’s Spaceman #2, Neal Adams art and script on Batman: Odyssey, Jonathan Hickman’s followup to FF #600, and a new Angel & Faith from Buffy Season 9!

This is going to be an interesting week; without the new DC books, we’ll have a chance to review some different stuff, and without that New 52 pressure (And since a series of head and chest colds here at the Home Office are starting to dissipate), we should be able to get a new episode of the Podcast in the can.

But before any of that, we need to read the new stuff. So see you tomorrow, suckers!

Crisis On Infinite Midlives Podcast Episode 3: The Fistula Of Justice

The Sudafed finally mixed with the Jack Daniels and made a mellow, Earth-friendly body-meth, which gave us enough energy to complete Episode 3 of the Crisis on Infinite Midlive’s Podcast: The Fistula of Justice!

Thrill to two drunk sick people as they talk about the impact of the New 52, DC Comics’ new Neilsen Survey (Which sadly didn’t include the obvious question: Orange nip slip: horrifying moment or the most horrifying moment?), the overriding post-Catwoman question: are superhero comics sexist (“What’s wrong with being sexist?” “Not sexy, sex… Jesus, you really are a monster, aren’t you?”), and our sleeper favorite books of the week!

And to answer some questions from the show that are enigmas, wrapped in riddles, covered in mucous:

• The Crow said Don’t Look (Seriously: don’t look at this. It’s not safe for work. Or your appetite)!
• Turns out 53 is a prime number!
• Tell DC what you really think without having to spoon Dan DiDio (EDITOR’S NOTE: Rob just tried to take the survey and was told he wasn’t qualified. Probably because of his area code. Or because he said his penis had an area code of its own)!
• Newsarama asks if comic fans want to Smell The Glove!
• Hot, sweet, [male] child on [male] child roundeye action!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:37 — 34.4MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS | More

Enjoy the show, sucker! And if you don’t, just hit that “Don’t Look” link up there!

I Live Through Angel and Faith #1

Emo Angel is emo.

I’ve noticed, in the short history that this site has been live, that my posts have been DCnU centric. That’s a shame, because there’s certainly a wealth of other comic book business that is managing to make it out into the world, despite the sucking vacuum of the New 52. Did you know, for example, that a comic book store is launching in Toronto that is intended to be specifically for kids? This is exciting, because I often find myself standing in the middle of a comic store in downtown Toronto pissed that they won’t let me do keg stands because of all the teeming, unwashed masses of children that cling to my ankles like so many fleas. Now I can be surly in public in Toronto in peace.

What? Your comic store doesn’t let you do keg stands? You need a better comic store.

Did you know that Image Comics plans on releasing “Morning Glories” #12, “Screamland” #4 and “Spawn” #211 for sale September 7, 2011? Yes! New Spawn! The one thing in my life that is 1992, every day, all the time.

And, meanwhile, Dark Horse released Angel & Faith #1 last week. Part of the “Season 9” arc of the Buffyverse, “Angel & Faith”, written by Christos Gage with art from Rebekah Isaacs, finds Faith in possession of Rupert Giles’s mysterious journal of mystery. This is because Angel killed Giles at the end of Season 8. BUT! It’s not his fault, you see – he was under the influence of Twilight and, as we all know, Twilight ruins everything.