Buffy the Vampire Slayer #23: Too Much and Not Enough

Buffy continues to play with new ideas, expanding on tropes from the show and trying to fully diverge from the events we all know and love. However, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, if anything is this: inconsistent.

I want to be honest here. Although I do enjoy the Boom! Studios Buffy-verse which has excelled with titles such as Angel & Spike, Willow and even the recent Faith revival, the titular book continues to fall short of what it tries to offer us.

The art has changed hands one too many times since the series inception with each new artist failing to capture the magic of Dan Mora’s initial run with a lot of it struggling to capture the emotion the story is desperately trying to convey.

This is in no way a critique of the artist’s ability or talent but more on those in charge who are picking styles not best suited to the story or perhaps even the target audience as the recent artist choices have more appeal to the Kaboom! line.

The story suffers from “too much going on” using ideas that require more time to their own such as the Mutliversal threat and even Robin’s activation as a Watcher, which could have been an arc in itself. It’s increasingly difficult to not compare the Buffy-verse to Boom’s more successful and consistent Power Rangers which dealt with complex themes over longer arcs and in changing artists kept similar styles to allow a less jarring change when those changes did occur.

As always it is worth sticking with to see how things do pan out in the long run and with stronger titles such as Angel & Spike linking directly with it you simply cannot have one without the other.