Spike #1: the Review!
It's Spike #1 Review Time! To say there are spoilers ahead is an understatement. Be warned! Also be warned for some crude language as well. XD
Spike #1: Alone Together Now.
Synopsis: We begin our tale not in the City of Angels, but the City of Sinners, where all seven deadlies can be perpetrated under the sparkling lights of a casino marquee. Spike tells us about the amount of demonic activity in Vegas and its ability to be ignored that rivals that of Sunnydale. The latest event of the head-rearing of evil is an attack of killer bugs that are let loose by a slot machine rolling a wolf, ram, and heart (note that it was a heart not a hart). "This town needs a champion," Spike's internal blonde dialogue tells us.
For those unfamiliar with Spike's backstory, the reader is given a quick rundown. We see the scene from Fool for Love in which Drusilla turns William into a vampire more from his perspective, complete with Angelus lurking in the shadows. From there, his arrival in Sunnydale and subsequent love for Buffy Summers leads him to regain his soul. On the subject of good and evil, our hero has developed a mental scale with the Turok-Han on one extreme (pure, blind, unthinking evil) and Angel on the other (so noble that you might as well be in a coma). Spike sees himself as a "chaotic 8 and a half" on the side of good.
From working with Angel to making it back from hell and back again, Spike laments that his exploits have been co-opted for fun and profit by more than one person. A Hollywood blockbuster loosely based on the events of Angel: After the Fall was released entitled "The Last Angel in Hell," in which the character of Spike was a female. Spike doesn't seem to mind that fact as much as that he didn't get any money from it. Not only that, Spider (the creepy gal from A: ATF and Spike: After the Fall who convinced Spike that she would help him escape from Non's lair if he would have sex with her even though she knew she had no intention of helping... and then had the audacity to come back and ask for more after he had just been stabbed in the groin with a flaming hot poker... *Fender has to walk away from the keyboard at this point for about five minutes*), has written a series of books with herself and Spike as a sparkly teenaged romance because we can't have anything vampire-related these days without someone bringing up fucking Twilight.
Anyways, at the L.A. premiere of yet another Twinkle movie (oh, my God, I had to type that), a group of big bad vampires descend upon the lined up humans for easy pickings. Thankfully, Angel, Spike, and Illyria are there to save the night. Throughout the fighting, Illyria is being Illyria, and Spike and Angel continue to knock heads, but it's a little more irritated than normal. No time for too much bickering as Spike has to get to Vegas!
Later, Spike rides his awesome motorcycle-with-sidecar to the Mosaic Wellness Center (which is now known as the Mosaic Supernatural Rehabilitation Facility) in Primm, Nevada and meets with Malposa (I think that's the name they gave her in Asylum anyway), the director of the facility. Spike wants to take Beck, the young firestarter from Spike: Asylum and Spike: Shadow Puppets, to Vegas with him. Malposa doesn't think it's a good idea as Beck has been having a lot of property-damaging outbursts lately and she believes that Spike will not be able to control his sex drive, but Spike thinks having Betta George with them will be a good enough assurance that nothing untoward will happen. Everyone's favourite floating fish, however, isn't convinced that a team consisting of himself, Spike, and an emotionally unstable Beck is a good idea (though Spike alludes to a fourth member). Beck is no longer the chubby-faced 18 year old who wore sweats all the time in Spike: Asylum, and she's not even the leaner hero-worshipping Beck of Spike: Shadow Puppets. This is Dark Beck. At the age of 22, she's suddenly taller, skinnier, bustier, and a hell of a lot scarier.
While in Vegas, they quickly encounter a demon that is using Elvis impersonators to build onto his body. Think of a giant Katamari Damacy hunk of burning love. The demon relays a message to someone that Spike had been been sent just before Spike kills him, freeing all the Elvises... Elvisii... Spike is now aware that someone had been expecting presence from one of the White Hats and the word has been sent out that it's him.
In a posh hotel room overlooking the bright lights of the very center of Vegas, a bearded naked man takes a phone call that Spike had been sent. An equally naked but not bearded Drusilla is in bed. She reminds him that she knew that Spike would be the one. While having a little moment of clear thinking and speaking, Dru says that she is meant for Spike, that he has her heart. Her bearded companion says that he understands since Spike "has my soul."
Much like the ever-present Pickwick Portfolio, to be continued in the following edition.
Review:
Story: This is a solid issue. Due to the fact that Brian Lynch had to combine the first three issues of an ongoing series into a single issue to prepare for the franchise handover to Darkhorse, there are areas that are a tad abrupt and a little jarring, but overall, it's understandable. To really start this review, I'm going to begin with my major peeves of the issue and end with my ever-enduring love for Brian Lynch and Franco Urru.
The only thing that truly pisses me off is Spider's inclusion in this story and the scenes attached to it. For Spike to reference her as his "ex-girlfriend" after all that transpired in After the Fall and his own words about his uncomfortableness around her is confusing at best and an attempt yet again for Lynch to ram his only failed original character down our throats in a "LIKE HER! WHY WON'T YOU LIKE HER??!!!" way. To which Fender says that he should be very pleased that the other 99% of his original characters turned out so well in comparison to Willingham, Williams, and Armstrong's OCs. And if people want to argue with me about my views about what Spider did to Spike in Spike: ATF, my advice to them is to imagine Buffy being in that scene in place of Spike and a male captor in place of Spider and then try to tell me that it's not somewhat disturbing. *head-desk* This is a bit nitpicky but I hate that Spider's surname is given as Harley. HAAAAATE. It demeans both Harley Quinn and Harlequin Romances.
And FUCKING TWILIGHT. Spike is my escape from that nonsense, and I don't want to even think about it. Hasn't Darkhorse done enough to play right into Stephanie Meyers's checkbook? I'm sick of it. Damned sick. And no, the "Team William" shirts do not make up for it. It's just not funny, and the whole scene with Spike as played by Tom Felton and some kind of Subway werewolf is a waste of space. Actually, since Illyria does so little and Angel is the same old grumpy Angel that's been covered a million times over (and because Angel and Spike's relationship has regressed after the nice plateau they reached in the epilogue of ATF), the present action of the plot could have started with Spike arriving at Mosaic. The fact that is fight-fight-fight-fight-oops-VEGAS! is jarring.
Speaking of, when did Mosaic revert back to basically being a lockdown prison? Where are the pastels and the friendly, nurturing environment? It seems almost the same as it was before Spike got there the first time, only the patients can leave. Another nitpicky thing, I hope that Brian Lynch has gotten all the Season Eight jokes out of his system. Maybe if I hadn't been so frustrated by the EPIC FAIL of S8, I'd find these jokes funny, but I don't. The throwaway line about "aerial sex" was totally unnecessary and makes no sense (I know that was Lynch's point, but still it annoyed me).
NOW ONTO THE LOVE (because all of that above was like a total of three pages out of an overall good book but I just had to get that stuff out of my system). XD
It's interesting to see how Spike punctuates his life now. Drusilla and Buffy are bookends to a certain section of his existence. He's entered a completely new volume, on his own, with his own friends unconnected nearly entirely from other people he's knows. Spike has confidence, a little wavering at times, but it's definitely there. He sounds like himself, and he's acting like himself. He finds some humor in the fact that he was turned into "Sara" in the "Last Angel in Hell," and he even is able to find a jovial note for the "Team William" shirts (at least it's something Angel can't have... though he could have covered up the w-i-l with gaff tape and had "Team Liam" shirts, I guess).
Spike shows concern for Beck's behavior, but thinks that she's going through a phase, and he seems to be giving her berth to explore. Betta George refers to Beck's latest tranformation as Sandy in the last five minutes of Grease, which is ironic for me because I've always seen Spike's transition from shy virgin William to sexy fierce vampire as a Goodbye-to-Sandra-Dee story. Tell me about it, stud. The thing I suspect is that Spike will want to let Beck explore this reinvention of herself, but eventually he's going to have to put his foot down with her because she's entirely too quick to burn people and things.
The big ball o' Elvis impersonators was made of hilarity (and possibly Voltron), especially with Spike trying to politely scale the thing without hurting anyone.
We get a sneak peek of the why all the spooky-doo is going on in Vegas, which is something that Brian Lynch alluded to in an interview. There seems to be a network of demons and minions hubbubing about, preparing for someone from Angel's Avengers to show up. True to form, no one (besides Drusilla) thought that it would be Spike, and when it is Spike, no one seems to think he's much of a challenge. Drusilla and Jon (unnamed Beard Guy's name maybe?) have been up to all kinds of sex... some of it involving ballgags, manacles, floggers, crops, and spreader bars. I wouldn't expect anything less from Drusilla. And I think that there's a theme in Spike's grand story that you can't escape your past ever. If things are left unsaid or unfinished or undealt with, they'll come back to haunt you. There are events in Spike's life and unlife that he's still struggling with, and just as he's opening up a new chapter a sultry dark goddess-shaped footnote is about to pop up.
Art: Franco Urru's artwork will forever make me happy. It is fluid. It is expressive. It is perfection unlimited. I worship the ground he waltzes upon. I want his art babies. Fabio Mantovani's colours really add the perfect mood to every scene and compliment Franco's linework so amazingly well as always. The art makes me dizzy with joy, and I know that this quality will continue through the whole series, and it makes me sad to think about everything going over to Darkhorse.
Overall, the artwork gets a 10/10, and the story... well... Without all the stuff that had me ripping my hair out (which I'll blame more on outside sources), I'd give the story a 9/10. A very solid issue that gets everyone where they need to be very quickly and in a mostly entertaining way to set up for the next 7 issues.
Spike #1: Alone Together Now.
Synopsis: We begin our tale not in the City of Angels, but the City of Sinners, where all seven deadlies can be perpetrated under the sparkling lights of a casino marquee. Spike tells us about the amount of demonic activity in Vegas and its ability to be ignored that rivals that of Sunnydale. The latest event of the head-rearing of evil is an attack of killer bugs that are let loose by a slot machine rolling a wolf, ram, and heart (note that it was a heart not a hart). "This town needs a champion," Spike's internal blonde dialogue tells us.
For those unfamiliar with Spike's backstory, the reader is given a quick rundown. We see the scene from Fool for Love in which Drusilla turns William into a vampire more from his perspective, complete with Angelus lurking in the shadows. From there, his arrival in Sunnydale and subsequent love for Buffy Summers leads him to regain his soul. On the subject of good and evil, our hero has developed a mental scale with the Turok-Han on one extreme (pure, blind, unthinking evil) and Angel on the other (so noble that you might as well be in a coma). Spike sees himself as a "chaotic 8 and a half" on the side of good.
From working with Angel to making it back from hell and back again, Spike laments that his exploits have been co-opted for fun and profit by more than one person. A Hollywood blockbuster loosely based on the events of Angel: After the Fall was released entitled "The Last Angel in Hell," in which the character of Spike was a female. Spike doesn't seem to mind that fact as much as that he didn't get any money from it. Not only that, Spider (the creepy gal from A: ATF and Spike: After the Fall who convinced Spike that she would help him escape from Non's lair if he would have sex with her even though she knew she had no intention of helping... and then had the audacity to come back and ask for more after he had just been stabbed in the groin with a flaming hot poker... *Fender has to walk away from the keyboard at this point for about five minutes*), has written a series of books with herself and Spike as a sparkly teenaged romance because we can't have anything vampire-related these days without someone bringing up fucking Twilight.
Anyways, at the L.A. premiere of yet another Twinkle movie (oh, my God, I had to type that), a group of big bad vampires descend upon the lined up humans for easy pickings. Thankfully, Angel, Spike, and Illyria are there to save the night. Throughout the fighting, Illyria is being Illyria, and Spike and Angel continue to knock heads, but it's a little more irritated than normal. No time for too much bickering as Spike has to get to Vegas!
Later, Spike rides his awesome motorcycle-with-sidecar to the Mosaic Wellness Center (which is now known as the Mosaic Supernatural Rehabilitation Facility) in Primm, Nevada and meets with Malposa (I think that's the name they gave her in Asylum anyway), the director of the facility. Spike wants to take Beck, the young firestarter from Spike: Asylum and Spike: Shadow Puppets, to Vegas with him. Malposa doesn't think it's a good idea as Beck has been having a lot of property-damaging outbursts lately and she believes that Spike will not be able to control his sex drive, but Spike thinks having Betta George with them will be a good enough assurance that nothing untoward will happen. Everyone's favourite floating fish, however, isn't convinced that a team consisting of himself, Spike, and an emotionally unstable Beck is a good idea (though Spike alludes to a fourth member). Beck is no longer the chubby-faced 18 year old who wore sweats all the time in Spike: Asylum, and she's not even the leaner hero-worshipping Beck of Spike: Shadow Puppets. This is Dark Beck. At the age of 22, she's suddenly taller, skinnier, bustier, and a hell of a lot scarier.
While in Vegas, they quickly encounter a demon that is using Elvis impersonators to build onto his body. Think of a giant Katamari Damacy hunk of burning love. The demon relays a message to someone that Spike had been been sent just before Spike kills him, freeing all the Elvises... Elvisii... Spike is now aware that someone had been expecting presence from one of the White Hats and the word has been sent out that it's him.
In a posh hotel room overlooking the bright lights of the very center of Vegas, a bearded naked man takes a phone call that Spike had been sent. An equally naked but not bearded Drusilla is in bed. She reminds him that she knew that Spike would be the one. While having a little moment of clear thinking and speaking, Dru says that she is meant for Spike, that he has her heart. Her bearded companion says that he understands since Spike "has my soul."
Much like the ever-present Pickwick Portfolio, to be continued in the following edition.
Review:
Story: This is a solid issue. Due to the fact that Brian Lynch had to combine the first three issues of an ongoing series into a single issue to prepare for the franchise handover to Darkhorse, there are areas that are a tad abrupt and a little jarring, but overall, it's understandable. To really start this review, I'm going to begin with my major peeves of the issue and end with my ever-enduring love for Brian Lynch and Franco Urru.
The only thing that truly pisses me off is Spider's inclusion in this story and the scenes attached to it. For Spike to reference her as his "ex-girlfriend" after all that transpired in After the Fall and his own words about his uncomfortableness around her is confusing at best and an attempt yet again for Lynch to ram his only failed original character down our throats in a "LIKE HER! WHY WON'T YOU LIKE HER??!!!" way. To which Fender says that he should be very pleased that the other 99% of his original characters turned out so well in comparison to Willingham, Williams, and Armstrong's OCs. And if people want to argue with me about my views about what Spider did to Spike in Spike: ATF, my advice to them is to imagine Buffy being in that scene in place of Spike and a male captor in place of Spider and then try to tell me that it's not somewhat disturbing. *head-desk* This is a bit nitpicky but I hate that Spider's surname is given as Harley. HAAAAATE. It demeans both Harley Quinn and Harlequin Romances.
And FUCKING TWILIGHT. Spike is my escape from that nonsense, and I don't want to even think about it. Hasn't Darkhorse done enough to play right into Stephanie Meyers's checkbook? I'm sick of it. Damned sick. And no, the "Team William" shirts do not make up for it. It's just not funny, and the whole scene with Spike as played by Tom Felton and some kind of Subway werewolf is a waste of space. Actually, since Illyria does so little and Angel is the same old grumpy Angel that's been covered a million times over (and because Angel and Spike's relationship has regressed after the nice plateau they reached in the epilogue of ATF), the present action of the plot could have started with Spike arriving at Mosaic. The fact that is fight-fight-fight-fight-oops-VEGAS! is jarring.
Speaking of, when did Mosaic revert back to basically being a lockdown prison? Where are the pastels and the friendly, nurturing environment? It seems almost the same as it was before Spike got there the first time, only the patients can leave. Another nitpicky thing, I hope that Brian Lynch has gotten all the Season Eight jokes out of his system. Maybe if I hadn't been so frustrated by the EPIC FAIL of S8, I'd find these jokes funny, but I don't. The throwaway line about "aerial sex" was totally unnecessary and makes no sense (I know that was Lynch's point, but still it annoyed me).
NOW ONTO THE LOVE (because all of that above was like a total of three pages out of an overall good book but I just had to get that stuff out of my system). XD
It's interesting to see how Spike punctuates his life now. Drusilla and Buffy are bookends to a certain section of his existence. He's entered a completely new volume, on his own, with his own friends unconnected nearly entirely from other people he's knows. Spike has confidence, a little wavering at times, but it's definitely there. He sounds like himself, and he's acting like himself. He finds some humor in the fact that he was turned into "Sara" in the "Last Angel in Hell," and he even is able to find a jovial note for the "Team William" shirts (at least it's something Angel can't have... though he could have covered up the w-i-l with gaff tape and had "Team Liam" shirts, I guess).
Spike shows concern for Beck's behavior, but thinks that she's going through a phase, and he seems to be giving her berth to explore. Betta George refers to Beck's latest tranformation as Sandy in the last five minutes of Grease, which is ironic for me because I've always seen Spike's transition from shy virgin William to sexy fierce vampire as a Goodbye-to-Sandra-Dee story. Tell me about it, stud. The thing I suspect is that Spike will want to let Beck explore this reinvention of herself, but eventually he's going to have to put his foot down with her because she's entirely too quick to burn people and things.
The big ball o' Elvis impersonators was made of hilarity (and possibly Voltron), especially with Spike trying to politely scale the thing without hurting anyone.
We get a sneak peek of the why all the spooky-doo is going on in Vegas, which is something that Brian Lynch alluded to in an interview. There seems to be a network of demons and minions hubbubing about, preparing for someone from Angel's Avengers to show up. True to form, no one (besides Drusilla) thought that it would be Spike, and when it is Spike, no one seems to think he's much of a challenge. Drusilla and Jon (unnamed Beard Guy's name maybe?) have been up to all kinds of sex... some of it involving ballgags, manacles, floggers, crops, and spreader bars. I wouldn't expect anything less from Drusilla. And I think that there's a theme in Spike's grand story that you can't escape your past ever. If things are left unsaid or unfinished or undealt with, they'll come back to haunt you. There are events in Spike's life and unlife that he's still struggling with, and just as he's opening up a new chapter a sultry dark goddess-shaped footnote is about to pop up.
Art: Franco Urru's artwork will forever make me happy. It is fluid. It is expressive. It is perfection unlimited. I worship the ground he waltzes upon. I want his art babies. Fabio Mantovani's colours really add the perfect mood to every scene and compliment Franco's linework so amazingly well as always. The art makes me dizzy with joy, and I know that this quality will continue through the whole series, and it makes me sad to think about everything going over to Darkhorse.
Overall, the artwork gets a 10/10, and the story... well... Without all the stuff that had me ripping my hair out (which I'll blame more on outside sources), I'd give the story a 9/10. A very solid issue that gets everyone where they need to be very quickly and in a mostly entertaining way to set up for the next 7 issues.