By Alex Zalben
Getting into a comic book mid-way through its run is hard! So we’ve made it easy for you: in just five short minutes (or less), we’ll get you caught up on a comic book you need to pick up tomorrow… Today! Oh, and in case it wasn’t clear: spoilers on.
Oh boy, where do we start with Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Tomorrow’s Issue #40 is the final issue of “Season 8,” so there’s a lot of, very, very confusing ground to cover. But we’re up to the task. We think.
Let’s begin at the beginning: Buffy was a regular girl given super strength and other powers in order to battle vampires, and the forces of evil. Over the course of seven seasons of her TV show she fought, loved, lost, and even died twice in order to protect her hometown of Sunnydale from threats that sometimes included her boyfriend, or best friend. At the end of the series, a super-charged Buffy redistributed her power so that every girl who could potentially become the Slayer – the chosen one who takes over when the previous Slayer buys it – did become a Slayer. Girl power to the max, yo.
Additionally, Sunnydale’s Hellmouth – the entrance between our world and the demon world – was closed. In fact, Sunnydale completely collapsed in on itself, and though there were other Hellmouths, for the moment, Buffy was out of a job.
Season eight (we’re onto the comic books now) kicked off with Buffy and company training an all-Slayer army to take the battle global. Forty issues later, and Buffy has fought an increasingly losing battle against – as far as we understand it – a rogue Universe she gave birth to after having super-sex with her vampire boyfriend Angel.
We’ll pause for a little bit of our precious five minutes to let that sink in.
Okay, back? So here’s where we are right now:
- Buffy has increased strength and superpowers gained back from other Slayers, as they die… And a lot of them are dying, as every demon ever is invading Earth.
- Angel has been taken over by the rogue Universe, called Twilight, and is trying to kill Buffy, mainly because Buffy chose her own Universe over her baby. In the process, Angel accidentally killed Buffy’s mentor Giles… Which may have been Giles plan, in order to get Buffy’s head in the fight (she was distracted by the fact that Angel and her all love each other and stuff).
- Buffy’s BFF Willow is enraged at her, because in order to stop Twilight, Buffy killed the source of all magic into and out of Earth. Willow was a witch, by the way. In the future, an evil version of Willow has been trying to kill Buffy in the past. No time to pause for that one!
- Xander, Buffy’s other BFF has one eye, and is dating Buffy’s younger sister Dawn, who used to be, at different times: a ball of energy; a centaur; and three stories tall. She is, however still way, way younger than Xander. So gross.
There’s also a lot more characters running around – basically anyone who appeared in the seven seasons of the TV show has shown up at some point. You should probably also know that the battle between Angel and Buffy is taking place deep below Sunnydale, oh, about a few feet away from the previously destroyed Hellmouth. Wonder what could happen there, huh?
In this last issue, it’s going to be Buffy’s thirtieth birthday, so we’re guessing there’s some sort of jump in time between the end of issue #39, and tomorrow’s floppy. And there is a season nine on the horizon, so expect a few cliffhangers before the issue is over. But that’s pretty much all you need to know to get caught up, and that’s your Five Minute Recap!
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