Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 9 #10
Story by Andrew Chambliss and Scott Allie
Pencils by Cliff Richards
Ink by Andy Owens
Colors by Michelle Madsen
Cover by Phil Noto
Alternate Cover by Georges Jeanty with Dexter Vines and Michelle Madsen
Created by Joss Whedon
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: June 13, 2012
Cover Price: $3.99

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 9 is all about the big existential questions interspersed with some brief action scenes and lovey bits thrown in. Joss Whedon is still the producer and occasional writer of his original creation, so all of those elements seem just as entertaining and challenging as ever. The Apart (Of Me) storyline has been no exception with Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 9 #10 rounding up the arc in an orderly fashion. There are no big explosions or revelations, but with a more internalized plot like this one, that would have just been rather tacky. Not to worry, there is stuff actually happening.

Buffy-Bot (body of robot, brain o’ Buffy) and Buffy-Not (body of Buffy, brain o’ Robot) get in a tussle with the latest big bad, the rough slayer Simone, Spike’s “bug army” shows up, Detective Dowling is upset over the loss of his partner turned zompire Cheung, Buffy makes a decision about her coffee shop gig, Spike and Buffy make some progress in their relationship etc. All that is rather important, as it sets up the next wave of Buffydom tales in a very natural manner.

The Guild, Volume 2
Written by Felicia Day, Jeff Lewis, Sean Becker, Kim Evey, Sandeep Parikh
Pencils by Darick Robertson, Kristian Donaldson, Ron Chan, Becky Cloonan, Tim Seeley
Inks by Ron Chan, Becky Cloonan
Colors by Dave Stewart
Covers by Georges Jeanty
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: June 27, 2012
Cover Price: $14.99

The Guild: Volume 2 collects the one-shot comic released for each member of the Knights of Good: Vork, Tink, Bladezz, Clara, and Zaboo. Each comic delves into the characters’ lives away from The Game and sheds a little more light on their personalities and motivations. These stories are not exactly earth-shattering revelations, but they’re brief, fun, focused explorations into the characters that fans love. Watching at least the first season of The Guild web series is a prerequisite to reading this collection. However, if you have not yet read the first volume of The Guild, fear not, this volume completely stands on its own.

Fans of The Guild undoubtedly have their favorite Knights of Good characters. Mine is the leader of the Knights of Good, Vork. He’s obsessively cheap and orderly. He’s also incredibly literal; my favorite scene in this chapter is the very beginning where he reveals why he plays the game the way he does. In this comic, we discover that Vork takes care of his retiree grandfather. While Vork follows rules to the letter, his loose cannon grandfather aligns somewhere around Chaotic Good””possibly Evil. In this play on opposites, Vork must reconcile his differences with his grandfather and learn to compromise with his inferiors””er, guildmates.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8
Library Edition, Volume 1 HC
Script by Joss Whedon, Brian K. Vaughan
Pencils by Georges Jeanty, Paul Lee, Cliff Richards
Inks by Andy Owens
Colors by Dave Stewart, Michelle Madsen
Cover by Jo Chen
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: May 30, 2012
Cover Price: $29.99

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was, and is, one of the most enduring popular cult television shows to ever hit the airwaves. Fan conventions routinely feature the stars of the show, as well as panel discussions. Legions of followers all over the world adore the Buffyverse and when it went off the air, we all thought that was it. But much to the joy of Buffy fans everywhere, creator Joss Whedon teamed up with Dark Horse Comics in 2007 to produce the continuation of the events of the television series.

When the first few issues came out, viewers of the TV show who weren’t also comic book fans and weren’t accustomed to the shift in format weren’t sure if the experience would translate for them from screen to book (usually it’s the other way around, with comic books getting big and sometimes small screen adaptations), but the one thing every fan wanted to know was what would happen next. Due to constraints, television plotlines usually can’t afford to veer off in all sorts of different directions the way comics do, and it takes whole seasons to properly go through one storyline. But with comics, the potential for several plotlines multiplies, and this can sometimes cause the reader to feel lost, but this isn’t the case with Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, Volume 1, a hardcover edition that collects the first two arcs of Season 8 (there are eight volumes in total) along with two stand-alone stories together. This is 304 pages of awesomeness that makes the ultimate gift for any die-hard Buffy fan, particularly if they never got around to reading the single issues.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 9 #2
Based on the television series created by Joss Whedon
Script by Andrew Chambliss
Pencils by Georges Jeanty
Inks by Dexter Vines
Colors by Michelle Madsen
Letters by Richard Starkings, Jimmy Betancourt
Cover by Steve Morris
Alternate Cover by Georges Jeanty, Dexter Vines, J.D. Mettler
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: October 12, 2011
Cover Price: $2.99

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 9 #2 starts off with dead bodies, credit demons (no, really), and a big dose of cold, hard reality for Buffy. Add to that some creatures of the night doing a little breaking and entering and you have the makings of a good BTVS story!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 9 #1
Written by Joss Whedon
Pencils by Georges Jeanty
Inks by Dexter Vines
Colors by Michelle Madsen
Letters by Richard Starkings, Jimmy Betancourt
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: September 14, 2011
Cover Price: $2.99

When I was given the chance to review Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 #1 a week or so ago, I was so excited. I am a huge fan of the Buffy-verse and am always excited when a new issue of this comic drops. Then I realized I needed a refresher on the last season, so the reading began… I’m happy to say that I finally finished rereading it and it helped put this first issue of Season 9 in perspective.

Immediately, the reader is thrown into the story and like many issues of the last series, this one really reads like a television program, with lots of flashbacks and memories, switching of scenes, and so on. The premise of this issue is to reunite the characters after the end of last season. Just like the show, it starts off with sort of a shaky start on what’s going on and proceeds to fill in some of the blanks, so to speak.