Buffy season 11 no 11
Sep. 29th, 2017 05:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightI've enjoyed this Buffy comics season for the most part, but have to say...
Spoilers behind cut
...I found this penultimate instalment mostly underwhelming. This is in large part due to the fact the ultimate Big Bad turned out to be someone so unimportant to the story so far that when they were finally revealed I had no clue who they were.
At first, I thought it was Willow's ex, Lake, but then it turned out it was some press secretary (so, if we're paralleling the real world (which I'm sure Christos Gage would say we aren't), does this mean that Sean Spicer is the real Big Bad in Trumpland - or, since the press secretary is female, that Huckabee-Sanders woman?). And okay, she's apparently juiced herself up with all the stolen magic (with an eye to becoming the only person in the world who can do any magic at all), but are we to infer from this that everyone else in the government - including the Minister of Magic (or whatever her title actually is) are under her control, or are they working together?
It's not entirely clear, though the latter seems more likely, given how sneery said minister is when she's accused of being the Big Bad herself.
The comic also suffers from a huge overdose of Willow omnipotence. She has a spell for everything. Really, until the last few pages where Buffy gets powered up herself, there's no real reason for anyone else to turn up. And even then, it's Willow who does the powering up - by reversing the Slayer spell from the end of Chosen so that Buffy ends up with all the Slayer power and every other Slayer loses theirs, even Faith.
I'm not going to judge the entire story on this issue, but I do very much feel that twelve issues was not enough to tell this story properly, or that too many pages were wasted on character stuff in early issues so that now the story seems very rushed. And since I think character stuff is rarely wasted, I wish this season could have been a couple of issues longer (at least).
I also very much think (unless a re-read makes me change my mind) that this Big Bad has been dropped into the plot pretty much out of nowhere, and that's never good in story telling terms.
A pity.
The art's good, though, especially the cover.
Spoilers behind cut
...I found this penultimate instalment mostly underwhelming. This is in large part due to the fact the ultimate Big Bad turned out to be someone so unimportant to the story so far that when they were finally revealed I had no clue who they were.
At first, I thought it was Willow's ex, Lake, but then it turned out it was some press secretary (so, if we're paralleling the real world (which I'm sure Christos Gage would say we aren't), does this mean that Sean Spicer is the real Big Bad in Trumpland - or, since the press secretary is female, that Huckabee-Sanders woman?). And okay, she's apparently juiced herself up with all the stolen magic (with an eye to becoming the only person in the world who can do any magic at all), but are we to infer from this that everyone else in the government - including the Minister of Magic (or whatever her title actually is) are under her control, or are they working together?
It's not entirely clear, though the latter seems more likely, given how sneery said minister is when she's accused of being the Big Bad herself.
The comic also suffers from a huge overdose of Willow omnipotence. She has a spell for everything. Really, until the last few pages where Buffy gets powered up herself, there's no real reason for anyone else to turn up. And even then, it's Willow who does the powering up - by reversing the Slayer spell from the end of Chosen so that Buffy ends up with all the Slayer power and every other Slayer loses theirs, even Faith.
I'm not going to judge the entire story on this issue, but I do very much feel that twelve issues was not enough to tell this story properly, or that too many pages were wasted on character stuff in early issues so that now the story seems very rushed. And since I think character stuff is rarely wasted, I wish this season could have been a couple of issues longer (at least).
I also very much think (unless a re-read makes me change my mind) that this Big Bad has been dropped into the plot pretty much out of nowhere, and that's never good in story telling terms.
A pity.
The art's good, though, especially the cover.