Geek News: Buffy Is Back (Sort Of)
Those who spent a long time looking at that Entertainment Weekly cover with the Green Lantern on it may have noticed the text promising the lowdown on “The New Buffy”. This, as it turns out, was referring not to the weird reboot project you may have heard about, but to a Motion Comics adaptation of the the continuing Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 series graphic novel series from Dark Horse. And now the first episode of that adaptation is available for download via iTunes and Amazon.
As you may be aware, for the past few years series creator Joss Whedon has been overseeing a comic book series picking up the story where the TV series left off, a series that has been highly successful from both a critical and sales stand point. The series has over 30 issues thus far, and a Season 9 has been announced for after Season 8 has been completed. In addition to Whedon himself, issues of the series have been written by show writers Drew Goddard, Jane Espenson, Steven S. DeKnight, Drew Z. Greenberg, and Douglas Petrie, as well as acclaimed comics writers Brian K. Vaughan, Brian Meltzer, Becky Cloonan, and others. The series has taken a lot of risks (especially if it’s trying to be “canon”, as Whedon has claimed), but these have mostly paid off in my opinion. In any case it has been a lot of fun to read.
Motion comics are video presentations combining elements of comic books and animation. They use the art from the comic books with some added movement, along with voices reading the characters’ lines. This can often be surprisingly fun to watch, especially for those who don’t have easy access to comics at a neighborhood shop. There have previously been motion comic adaptations released of Watchmen and Joss Whedon’s run on Astonishing X-Men, as well as many other well-known comic book stories. This is the first such production from Dark Horse Comics, however.
The first ten minute episode (adapting Buffy: Season 8 #1) is now available for purchase for 99 cents (savings of a couple dollars from the actual comic) at iTunes and Amazon. It is unclear how often episodes will come out, but it appears that they plan to do the first 19 issues of the comic, with an eye toward an eventual DVD release. It’s very well done, despite a number of hurdles it has to overcome. First off, it does not use any of the actors from the show for the voices, at least not thus far, and those they do use don’t particularly sound like the originals. The actors they do use seem true to the spirit of the characters and give strong performances, so eventually you may get used to it.
In addition, the style Whedon, artist Georges Jeanty, and the series’ others writers have chosen to use involves a lot of experimental panel shapes and patterns, which often enhance the story when read as a comic. However, they do not lend themselves particularly well to being used as animation in this medium, so the production team here has used a lot of visual tricks to try and make things work. The motion comic ends up unlike anything I had previously seen in an adaption like this. It also enhances things by using some music tracks that are actually from the original TV series.
So if you’re a fan of the show but haven’t been reading the comics, you owe it to yourself to check these out. And if you haven’t seen a motion comic before, it is well worth taking a look at this just for the new experience. Yeah, I know, a decent percentage of Buffy fans hate the comics continuation for a number of reasons, so this may not be for those people. But hey, I bet a few years ago there you never thought you would get the opportunity to buy another Buffy DVD. And now, someday soon, you will.
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