Script: Drew Goddard
Pencils: Georges Jeanty
Inks: Andy Owens
Colors: Michelle Madsen
Letters: Richard Starkings & Comicraft’s Jimmy
Executive Producer: Joss Whedon
Cover by: Jun Foster
Company: Dark Horse
Yup – this issue did, in fact, come out last week. But, it was a biggie – and after reading it on Thursday, I basically begged Manolis to let me write up something on it. Unfortunately, my weekend got all shot to hell, so I’m finally getting around to this now. Since it’s been out a while, I’ll be forgoing my usual review style, and just concentrating on the two rather huge storyline developments, including the last page reveal. (As well as the stuff in the middle that quite literally had me laughing out loud.)
WARNING WARNING: Spoilers abound here, mateys. Avast.
So, we start off innocently enough, with some wolves and cute banter between Renee and Xander, who happens to mention that it’s a full moon. So of course, we’re thinking “werewolves”.
Then Willow gets jumped by a female. (And not in a good way, either.)
Then we get THIS::
Yowza. I have almost too many reactions to this one.
Firstly: holy crap, I can’t believe Joss went there. I mean, it was one thing when Willow came out: we had some clues about that (especially from the evil vamp Willow). But this? I’m sorry, but even after the speech between Satsu and Buffy in the last issue, I still did not expect it.
Secondly, and it’s entirely possible I only feel this way because I tore through 6 “Y The Last Man” graphic novels in the past month or two, but my GOODNESS there are lots of hot lesbians in comics nowadays. I’m almost glad this stuff didn’t come out when I went to college: it could have seriously screwed up my perspective on the entire female genre.
Thirdly, I was incredibly relieved by the “post-coital talk” between these two, covering the whole “what happens next?” issue. It felt real, the tone rang perfectly, and I was just so happy that we could finally move away from the self-loathing crap Buffy was weighed down with in Season 7.
And lastly, the sequence with Xander, Renee, Andrew, Dawn and Willow was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a comic book in years. Andrew’s “Hi, nude Asian girl” was especially side-splitting.
I am not exaggerating even a bit when I say that there was at least one thing on practically every single page that made me say “Wow”, or laugh out loud. That is a heckuva batting average for Mr. Goddard.
And we recover from all that just in time for.. the man, the myth, the legend:
Yup – Big D. So long as Xander can keep up his “no more buttmonkey!” promise, I’m going to be loving this. (And yes, it certainly does help that there was a perfectly logical, storyline-related reason for the big last-page reveal.)
Rating: 9.5 out of 10
