Riley One-Shot - Shallow Thoughts
The art's decent enough, but the characters are very inconsistently drawn. I swear it looks like there are a dozen main characters instead of just 4 and Riley appears to have black hair in one panel. Makes it a little hard to read. The panels set in total black where the bubble arrows are basically pointing in one direction made it a little hard tell who was saying what.
Regarding the overall arc of the comics:
Whistler tells Angel that in order to save the world he has to be Twilight, to push Buffy to a place that she can attain enough power to save the world 'cause it will end if he doesn't or if he tells her. Angel doesn't like it, but does it anyway. Now, this isn't a very good reason, but in the Comic!World where Dawn cheated on her boyfriend 'cause she loved him so much, I guess it's going to have to pass muster for an explanation.
He has to push her to a place where she feels powerless in order for her to attain the 'ultimate power'. This could possibly mean the Retreat arc where she gives up her power, but I don't know. That's not the Ultimate Power since Buffy's still SuperBuffy and Angel has failed. I think Ultimate Power is the Twilight dimension where she's basically God and has the power to remake the world, so the powerlessness probably refers to Glowhypnol which only strengthens the noncon interpretation.
Juxtaposed to all this are Riley and Sam working side-by-side to defuse the missile and gain the coordinates which eventually lead them to Twilight's lair. Very much in sync with Sam making sure Riley knows it's his choice (and choice is power, right?) to help or not, directly contrasting B/A where Angel once again makes all the decisions. I think Jane did a good job on this in making me not hate Riley and setting things up as best as she could given what she had to work with.
As far as Angel goes, it doesn't make him look any better, just deluded. Especially for a guy who knows how sketchy prophecies are.
Regarding the overall arc of the comics:
Whistler tells Angel that in order to save the world he has to be Twilight, to push Buffy to a place that she can attain enough power to save the world 'cause it will end if he doesn't or if he tells her. Angel doesn't like it, but does it anyway. Now, this isn't a very good reason, but in the Comic!World where Dawn cheated on her boyfriend 'cause she loved him so much, I guess it's going to have to pass muster for an explanation.
He has to push her to a place where she feels powerless in order for her to attain the 'ultimate power'. This could possibly mean the Retreat arc where she gives up her power, but I don't know. That's not the Ultimate Power since Buffy's still SuperBuffy and Angel has failed. I think Ultimate Power is the Twilight dimension where she's basically God and has the power to remake the world, so the powerlessness probably refers to Glowhypnol which only strengthens the noncon interpretation.
Juxtaposed to all this are Riley and Sam working side-by-side to defuse the missile and gain the coordinates which eventually lead them to Twilight's lair. Very much in sync with Sam making sure Riley knows it's his choice (and choice is power, right?) to help or not, directly contrasting B/A where Angel once again makes all the decisions. I think Jane did a good job on this in making me not hate Riley and setting things up as best as she could given what she had to work with.
As far as Angel goes, it doesn't make him look any better, just deluded. Especially for a guy who knows how sketchy prophecies are.