Reaction to Comic #40
In absolute seriousness, when I clicked onto LJ during my lunch break on Jan. 19 and saw all the posts, my reaction was "Oh, yeah, I forgot. That's out today."
Which, for me, is telling. I hadn't thought about the comic aside from someone's brief mention of it the week before. Season Eight goes out with a whimper, rather than a bang.
Partly it's because I've been rediscovering an old fandom and completely changed ships - oddly enough, some of the dynamics of this new one remind me greatly of Spike/Buffy, except for the fact that these two characters never once got together in canon. (I think I'm forever fated to love doomed or nonexistent 'ships - see my bitterness at Janeway/Chakotay, years later) I think it's also because I needed a break from Buffy. (Also - new ship has given me tons of ideas! It's energizing - I felt in a bit of a rut with the Buffy fandom for the last few months.)
In some ways, the comic has reminded me of Nip/Tuck in its latter days - same old plots rehashed over and over, plots getting wackier and head-scratching in their attempts to be edgy, characters never growing beyond a certain point, characters eternally self-righteous about their horrible decisions, motivations becoming downright laughable once explained, etc. And when they couldn't figure out what to do with poor Kimber, who had been pretty outside of the plot that final season, they killed her, somewhat like Giles, who has been around but extraneous to the plot, who suddenly kicks the bucket. Nip/Tuck ended with a whimper. In part, this was because the theme of "people don't ever change - exteriors do." It made these characters so toxic to one another that the only option was for Sean to pack up and jet away, putting half the world between Christian and himself.
This is what I think is happening to these comic characters. A lot of crazy s**t gets thrown at them, and instead of growing and changing as a result, they've reverted back to their old ways, or worse. No one seems quite able to analyze and admit the truth to themselves, and they're all kind of aimless at the moment, except for the few who have managed lives and purpose outside of the army. Guess it helps to be well-rounded.
The problem with comparing Buffy comics to Nip/Tuck is that while Nip/Tuck does the wacky with aplomb and grounds its crazy patients and plotlines within a theme or in a way of bringing its characters back from any potential development...the Buffy comics have done crazy just because they could. I'm beginning to think these characters have become so toxic to one another that the only option might be for them to keep a firm distance from one another.
What's sad to me is that at the end of Chosen, there was a sense of closure to some storylines, a sense of anticipation for the future ahead. Now, at the end of Season Eight Comic-Style, the biggest reaction I can muster is a "Whatever."