Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 Volumes 4-6

 

So far Season 8 has been really good! I ordered Season 9 and they're starting to roll in, but boy, is Season 10 going to be expensive to acquire. Apparently the last volume is super rare, I've seen it going for several hundred dollars. I'm not overly eager to spend that kind of money on something that's going to take me all of 45 minutes to read. We'll see once I get through Season 9.

Volume 4 "Time of Your Life" has Buffy traveling the future to kill the one and only Slayer, Melaka. Apparently all the good Buffy thought she did with sharing her powers with girls around the world was for naught, and in addition she ends up having to kill Dark Willow in the future, too. Ouch. 

Meanwhile back in Scotland, Dawn is now a centaur. Dawn is seriously more trouble than she's worth.  

Volume 5 "Predators and Prey" has Harmony getting her own MTV reality show. As a result of her popularity, vampires are seen as cool and the slayers are seen as evil and persecuting the innocent. Then there was some bit about killer stuffed cats, which makes perfect sense because in real life cats are evil (I am deeply allergic to cats. They aren't evil. I just don't like being around them).

Andrew has found his rogue slayer Nisha, who has taken over an island and raised an extinct demon called the Ragna Spider. Buffy manages to set the Ragna loose and it kills Nisha. Andrew feels guilty and Buffy comforts him. I must admit, I never liked Andrew on the show. Not the actor, I thought he did a good job, but as a character he was so annoying and I didn't find him charming at all. But in this issue he told Buffy he was Team Spike, so I'm liking Andrew a lot more now. 

Faith and Giles visit a sanctuary for girls who were called to be slayers but don't want to be and discover the elders of the village are just using the girls to placate a demon who keeps them safe from vampires. 

Dawn goes missing--she's been turned into a porcelain doll and is being held captive by a Geppetto like figure. Buffy and Xander rescue her and her ex-boyfriend removes his curse, turning Dawn into a normal sized human again. And Xander tells Buffy he was Team Riley. Xander, even Riley wasn't Team Riley. You're lucky I like you. 

In Volume 6 "Retreat", the slayers head to Tibet to visit Oz, who has a wife (maybe? Partner?) and a baby boy! Get on with your bad self, Oz. Demons were able to attack them in Scotland because of the amounts of magic they were using, so Oz tries to help them rid themselves of their magic by returning it to the earth. Some of the slayers and witches are definitely not on board with giving away their powers (I wouldn't be, either). Turns out they're actually feeding it to three powerful, ancient goddesses. Andrew tells Giles he suspects there is a spy in their camp, and he's right: it's a cat. I told you cats are evil. Xander and Dawn are stocking up on military gear in preparation for Twilight's attack. It's clear right away that the slayers are losing, so they call up the goddesses to fight on their side, only the goddesses aren't interested in taking sides, they just want to kill. Buffy rescues an injured Riley from the battlefield: turns out he was a spy in Twilight's camp for her. During the battle Buffy gets knocked out and when she wakes up she discovers she is much stronger than she was before. Oh, and she can fly, so that's kinda cool. 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wolves at the Gate

 

Okay, volume 3 of season 8: "Wolves at the Gate". Dracula is back! Apparently he and Xander became friends (sort of) after Anya died at the end of season 7. Okey dokey. Vamps find their way into the Scottish castle Buffy and the rest of her Slayers in training are living and steal her scythe. No! Not the scythe! Come on. The weird thing about these vampires is that they were able to shape shift, turning into wolves and fog and other things. There's only one vampire Buffy knows that can do things like that: Dracula. He lost his powers to some cult of vampires who are looking to do Buffy in. So the whole gang, including Drac, travel to Japan to confront this group and get Buffy's scythe back. It was super weird to see Dracula killing other vampires, btw. And Buffy in bed with a woman. She needs Spike back, clearly. Still no sign of him, dammit. 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: No Future for You

 

I spent a small fortune on eBay for used copies of season 8 of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", since they're out of print (and if I want seasons 9-12, I'm going to end up spending even more. Ugh). They finally came, and I got to read the second volume in the series, "No Future for You". It was pretty good. Giles contacts Faith about potentially going undercover to get close to a rogue slayer who wants to murder Buffy, so Faith can take her out before she kills her. Faith does it, reluctantly. She's tired of being the Slayer everyone goes to when they need something dirty done. 

Meanwhile, Buffy and Willow are trying to figure out the mysterious "Twilight" figure and go to visit a mystical being for answers. Along the way Willow admits she doesn't want Kennedy around Buffy and the rest of the gang because of what happened to Tara. She says that if she and Tara had just left Sunnydale with Dawn after Buffy died at the end of season 5, Tara would still be alive. Ouch. First of all, Will, Buffy didn't ask you to yank her out of Heaven and bring her back to life. Jeez. Kinda harsh. 

I did love how Buffy used the word "ponce", which she must have picked up from Spike. He hasn't made his appearance yet, but it's coming up soon. 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home

 

I haven't been able to read, haven't wanted to read, anything really in weeks. Months. I've finished a few things here and there, but nothing like I used to. What I have been doing, however, is watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on TV.

A little backstory: I remember watching the first two or three seasons of "Buffy" when it first aired in the late '90s. Then I started working/going to school/hanging out with my boyfriend, and it was back in the olden days before DVRs (programming a VCR was a massive pain--I did it for the "X-Files", but not so much for anything else). So I never saw the rest of the series, but I honestly didn't mind too much. Except for a small handful of episodes those first few seasons, I wasn't terribly impressed by the show. I liked it, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't as dear to me as "X-Files". It was so earnest sometimes and the characters seemed so young. 

When I finished binge watching "Malcolm in the Middle" a few months ago, I decided to see if I could get through "Buffy". I was feeling nostalgic. It took a while to make it through those first few seasons, some of the episodes were eye rollingly bad. But once I got into season 4, the whole tone changed. James Marsters, who played Spike, because a regular and the show got wittier and way more interesting. I flew through the last four seasons and because solidly Team Spike. I finished watching it last week and it destroyed me. 

I found out that the creator, Joss Whedon, hadn't wanted the show to end but Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played Buffy, didn't want to go on after season 7. I don't blame her, it must have been exhausting. So Whedon teamed up with a graphic novelist to continue the story, and this is the first issue. Buffy is living in Scotland and training up the new Slayers with Xander and Gile's help. Willow is off being a witch. Dawn has been turned into a giant, and Amy has put Buffy into some sort of spell. I'm eager to read the rest! They're out of print, so I had to order them used off eBay and I'm waiting for the rest of season 8 to show up.