Angel After the Fall Volume 1

 

So volume one finally came and I was able to read it last night. It takes place a few months after the final battle at the end of "Angel" season 5. Angel is human again, but Wesley's ghost is keeping up the vampire charade with the use of charms and glamours. Spike is living large as Hugh Hefner, complete with a mansion and a bunch of gorgeous women. He's keeping an eye on Illyria, who is mentally unstable and causing all kinds of time jumps and havoc. Angel finds out Spike is actually helping Connor run a kind of rescue operation, hiding out people in the mansion until Connor can get them to safety. L.A. has been divided up into sections, each with its own Lord (Spike is co-Lord of Beverly Hills, along with Illyria). Angel kills the son of a Lord, and the Lords all get together to challenge him to a fight against champions of their choice. Angel is supposed to fight them alone, but of course the gang all rallies around him. I'm curious how long he'll be able to keep up pretending to be a vampire. Oh, and he somehow talked the Dragon into fighting on his side, which is cool. Not as cool as Spike walking around in a floor length robe with a bunch of hot women trailing after him, but still cool. 

Angel After the Fall Volume 2: First Night

I ordered the first six volumes of the "Angel: After the Fall" graphic novel series (the six volumes might be all of the series, actually, I'm having a really hard time figuring out all these graphic novels series in the Buffyverse). Of course volumes 2, 4, 5, and 6 came but not 1 or 3. 

I figured I could read volume 2 "First Night" without ruining volume 1 too much. So after the season 5 finale of "Angel", which had Illyria, Gunn, Spike, and Angel in an alley about to face a horde of beasts, including a dragon, apparently the whole thing falls apart and L.A. ends up in Hell. Okay. (Side note: the timeline on these books is kind of all over the place. Technically while season 8 of "Buffy" is going on, "Angel" season 5 is happening. But Spike and Angel both show up in season 8 of "Buffy", around the same time they should be taking on the Circle of the Black Thorn in L.A. I know, it's just fiction and it really doesn't matter, I'm just saying I noticed. Moving on!). "First Night" tells everyone's individual stories about their first night in Hell. Spike is happy to have survived another massive fight and vows to retire from helping anyone ever again, and two seconds later finds himself playing the hero because he can't help it. Wolfram & Hart make Wesley an enticing offer (anyone else surprised Wesley ended up in Hell after he died? I know I was). Connor meets a woman named Kate (from seasons 1 and 2 of "Angel"). Lorne ends up becoming mayor of Silverlake and turning it into a little oasis of paradise in the middle of Hell like the champ he is. Gunn has been turned into a vampire (oh no!!). Angel wasn't even in it, but that's okay. 
 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10 Volume 6: Own It

 

So glad I was able to get this one through an interlibrary loan, because the cheapest I saw it going for used online was about $650. Although after reading (most) of Season 10, I'm kind of disappointed I don't own them. So far I've enjoyed it.

D'Hoffyrn has turned the Anya ghost into a copy of Anya and is grooming her to be a vengeance demon. Xander and Dawn are actually having fun, jumping from dimension to dimension in search of a way back home. It was good for them to help rebuild their relationship. D'Hoffyrn is using Jonathan's ghost to plant seeds of doubt in Andrew's mind, and Buffy is fighting with everyone, including Spike :( He suggests they break up and I lost my tenuous grip on sanity (although some would argue I lost that a long time ago, and I would be hard pressed to disagree with them). Buffy says something super mature about how they both have a history of bailing on relationships when they get tough and now is not the time to bail but to fight to stay together. Willow gets kicked out of the military due to her close relationship with Buffy, since the military blames Buffy for the demon chaos. Spike and Buffy talk about their relationship in between visiting former members of D'Hoffyrn's council and enlisting their help to bring him down. They make up nicely (aw, I'm okay, I'm just getting a cold, I swear). Dawn and Xander make it back. D'Hoffyrn attacks the gang and Buffy has a brilliant way of bringing him down--she makes a wish that must be granted :) Buffy decides to form a new council, made up of beings of all kinds (including Riley, WTF, Buffy?!) to help rewrite the rules. There was a funny little bit in the end where Harmony follows Buffy around, trying to interview her for some documentary she's doing. 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 Volume 3: Guarded; Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10 Volume 5: Pieces on the Ground

 

Okay, I got Volume 3 of Season 9 yesterday, and I'm glad I skipped ahead, this wasn't too essential to the overall plot. Kennedy has started a sort of bodyguard business for the ex-slayers and Buffy joins up. She immediately fails the first test because she goes after a demon instead of protecting the client, thinking the demon was an assassin (he was just a bellhop). Kennedy decides to give her another chance and has her help her guard a social media founder named Theo. Theo created a site (think Facebook) called TinCan that has an open portal to a hell dimension that an evil law firm named Wolfram and Hart are using to their advantage. Theo is willing to sacrifice everything he worked for to shut TinCan's servers down and sever the connection, which they managed to do.

The last half of the volume was about a young gay boy named Billy who really wants to be a slayer but he's not a girl. He has a crush on another boy named Devon, who has aspirations to be a watcher. Devon tells Billy he has feelings for him too (it was super sweet) and the two of them team up to train together and work on taking down the zompires that are overrunning their town. Buffy shows up in the nick of time to help. 

Season 10 Volume 5 "Pieces on the Ground" starts out with the world being overrun by demons, since they have the portal generator. Satsu shows up and asks Buffy to help the Army, which is trying to forge as many supernatural alliances as they can to help them fight. Buffy and Spike go to Vegas to meet with Harmony and Vicki (who is one of the new vampire breed) and agree to a trial by combat. If Buffy and Spike win, the vampires will work with the military. They do win and head home where Spike goes to a bar and meets an old friend, a pretty female named Dylan. Without telling Buffy.

What the giddy god hell are you doing, man?! Why are you deliberately trying to screw things up with Buffy? I can't even right now.

Willow is settling in at her new job in the military but she and Buffy are arguing a lot. Buffy can't bring herself to trust them after they attacked the slayers at the end of Season 8. Buffy finds out about Dylan (she's an artist and she finds the invite to her new gallery) and she and Spike row about it but Buffy goes with him and meets Dylan and realizes she's worried about nothing, she can trust Spike (yes, yes you can). She's really upset about falling out with Willow, and so the two of them talk and make up. Andrew's having a rough go of things, seeing Jonathan's ghost and trying to figure out how he can be useful to the group. The Scoobies form an alliance with D'Hoffryn and his magical council, but Buffy doesn't want to let him help write the new magic rules. Giles points out that she doesn't want anyone else to do it, but won't do it herself and Buffy goes off the deep end. Xander is still seeing Anya's ghost. The gang heads out to fight a soul glutton (who gets bigger the more souls he eats) and when the restless door is destroyed a portal opens to a hell dimension. Dawn can close it, but she'd be trapped on the other side. No one wants that, but after much arguing Dawn insists she wants to do this to save her friends. Spike wants to stay with her, but Buffy wants him to help her fight, so Xander offers to stay with Dawn. It ends with Buffy heartbroken about having to leave her little sister and Spike unwilling to comfort her because he disagreed with her and oh my god why are the writers doing this to me?! Wasn't season 6 of the show bad enough? C'mon now! 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 Volumes 4 & 5; Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10 Volume 1; Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10 Volumes 3 & 4

 

Okay, I skipped ahead. I'm still waiting on Volume 3 to come (should be here this week), but in the meantime I was able to get most of Season 10 through Interlibrary Loan and was eager to get them read and back to their lending libraries, so I went ahead with what I had. I suspect I'll be able to keep up with the complicated plot :)

Volume 4 "Welcome to the Team": Severin, working with rogue slayer Simone, is siphoning any little bit of magic he can get his hands on, and there's not a whole lot of magic in the world. Vengeance demon D'Hoffryn and the rest of the magical council ask Buffy's help in fighting Severin before he drains everything left. 

The artwork on these is still a little hit or miss, but all in all it was pretty good. 

Volume 5 "The Core": Dawn is ill and the doctors can't figure out what's wrong with her. Turns out since the magic was drained out of the world when Buffy smashed the seed, since Dawn was made of magic she's disappearing. Xander, Buffy, and Willow must travel to the Deeper Well in England so Willow can get enough magic to restore Dawn. Spike (yay!!!!) comes back to stay with Dawn so she won't be frightened and alone. She doesn't remember him, but she appreciates that he knows her and cares enough about her to stay with her. Then Spike's memories of her start to fade, too, as do everyone else's.

In the Deeper Well, Buffy discovers Xander betrayed them: he told Simone and Severin how to get into the well from the other entrance in New Zealand because they promised to save Dawn. Oh Xander. You twit. How can you doubt Buffy? Buffy manages to defeat them, Willow gives birth to a new seed, a new source of magic for Earth, and the friends manage to escape and go home to a restored Dawn (and Spike). Buffy of course forgives Xander because she's too damn nice (I still haven't fully forgiven him for being Team Riley). 

Volume 1 "New Rules": New source of magic means new rules. The Vampyr book Giles left Buffy is blank and being rewritten with new rules as they go along. Which means a new breed of vampire that can go out in the sunlight (Spike is super pissed this doesn't apply to him, and I am too). Buffy and Spike are working on how to be friends (a wise man once said: "You'll never be friends. You'll be in love until it kills you both"). Xander and Dawn's relationship is on the rocks: Dawn admits that when she was restored her emotions basically rebooted to when she was 14 again, meaning while she likes Xander, she thinks of him as her old sister's friend, not her boyfriend. She hasn't fallen in love with him yet. Xander is pretty devastated but determined to make Dawn fall in love with him all over again. 

Dracula comes back and takes advantage of the new rules to steal the Vampyr book and write himself as the biggest, baddest vampire ever, which backfires spectacularly and shows everyone how dangerous it is to not have rules set down.  

The absolute best news is that Giles is back! Angel somehow found a way to restore him, and even though he's trapped in a teenager's body, he still has all of adult Giles' memories and knowledge, which is definitely going to come in handy as they figure out how to write the new rules of magic. 

And yes, I haven't gotten volume 2 yet, but seriously, did you think I was going to wait to read about Spike and Buffy getting back together? The answer, dear Reader, is Hell no. Times 10. 

Volume 3 "Love Dares You": Buffy realizes she never gave her relationship with Spike a fair shot and while she doesn't want to ruin the lovely friendship they have, she also finds she really wants to explore a more romantic relationship. She tells him that and he pulls away. After all, she's hurt him (a lot) and he's not sure he can go through it again. Buffy is disappointed but says she understands (I didn't. I was ready to smack him). After some soul searching and talking to Xander (really, Spike?) he realizes he's still in love with her and wants to pursue it, too. So they do. Vehemently. Physically. Awwww. All is right in the world again :)

For a little bit, anyway. Spike has a vivid dream of murdering a couple, and when he wakes up he discovers they really are dead. Did he kill them, or did he just see it happen in his dream? He asks Willow and Giles to help find out if something is controlling him, like the First did in season 7 of the show. He doesn't want Buffy to know, but of course she finds out and scolds him for trying to keep things from her. Willow uses Buffy to travel through Spike's memories to see if she can figure out what's causing his dreams. There were some really sweet scenes, like when she sees herself though his eyes and realizes how much he really does love her, and feels the pain he went through to get his soul back for her. She's able to find the source of the dreams: Archaeus, a demon that sired the Master and is therefore Spike's ancestor. Archaeus is using his descendants to do his dirty work, but he can't control Spike because Spike has a soul. The gang realizes they're going to need big time help to defeat Archaeus, and Spike reluctantly calls Angel. Way to be the bigger man, Spike. I'm proud of you. 

Volume 4 "Old Demons": Angel comes back (ugh) and is immediately rude to Spike because he didn't know he and Buffy were together (Spike wanted to tell him over the phone but Buffy wanted to wait and tell him in person). Buffy soon gets fed up with their jealous posturing but puts aside her irritation to get to Archaeus. He tries to control Spike and Spike is able to resist. He gets to Angel, though, and Spike has to snap him out of it (picture me sticking out my tongue and going "nah nah nah nah" at Angel). They're able to defeat him, but things are getting sticky with the new magic rules. 

Angel and Spike reach an uneasy truce and Angel leaves but not before telling Willow it won't last because Spike will screw it all up sooner rather than later. 

Fuck you, Angel. Go away. 

There were two other non-related side stories in this one: Willow is able to turn Giles into an adult for 24 hours, and then a really sad one where Buffy is trying to help women who are being taken advantage of sexually. It causes her to realize that she'll always have to live with the trauma of Spike trying to rape her in season 6 of the show, and while most of the time she's okay and realizes that the Spike who attacked her isn't the real Spike, the Spike with a soul, sometimes she's not okay and he's going to have to realize there's nothing he can do but give her time and space. 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 Volumes 1 & 2; Spike Omnibus

 

Okay, onto Season 9 of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". First up, volume one, "Freefall". First of all, the artwork isn't as good as in Season 8 (my mom saw this book and said: "That's not Buffy! Is that supposed to be Buffy?"). I guess after the craziness of Season 8 Joss wanted to get back to basics and have more realistic storylines for Buffy, which is fine, but man, the artwork took a dive. It was too bad, because in Season 8 I could immediately tell who each person was supposed to be because the images were so like the actors on the show. Oh well. 

Buffy has moved out of Xander and Dawn's apartment and in with two roomies, and throws a raging housewarming party where she gets blackout drunk and poor Spike has to tuck her into bed. At least he's allowed in the house. San Francisco is becoming overrun with zombie vampires, or "zompires", as Xander christens them. Thanks to Harmony's smear campaign against Slayers, the SFPD thinks Buffy is responsible. She's also trying to mend her relationship with Willow, who is now magicless (and dumped Kennedy, thank God) and working for a computer company. Buffy is having weird Slayer dreams and waking up sick. It suddenly occurs to her that maybe the dreams aren't making her ill and takes a pregnancy test. Positive.

Uh oh. 

Buffy contacts Robin Wood to ask his advice on whether or not she should keep her baby. Robin encourages her to do so, saying that she won't have to raise it by herself, she has family and friends to help, unlike his mom. Buffy then contacts Spike. Spike's been helping out a detective named Dowling, learning to deal with the zompires, while struggling with his feelings for Buffy. He knows he still loves her, but he wants her to have a chance at a normal life. He goes to see her and she tells him about the baby and says she considered asking him to run away with her and help her raise it, the three of them being a family (my heart broke for him. Seriously). She then said she couldn't do it and asked him if he would go with her to get an abortion, and he said he would. 

He takes her on his spaceship (I love how the big giant bugs call him "King Spike" and her "Mistress Buffy", it was so cute). Dowling needs help, so they go to rescue him and Spike doesn't want Buffy to fight because of the baby, but she insists. In the middle of the fight, her arm gets torn off, revealing that she's a robot. 

ANDREW!

Once Andrew is found, he admits he swapped Buffy's mind into a Buffybot when she blacked out. He stowed the real Buffy's body in a house in Mill Valley, where she's living a normal suburban life with no memories of being the Slayer. Spike, as one might imagine, is pretty pissed off that Andrew did that and put Buffy through Hell, thinking she was pregnant (turns out her symptoms were defects in the Buffybot). Buffy is upset for different reason: she's been trying so hard to create a normal life for herself in San Francisco and failing, while Andrew was able to do it. They head to Mill Valley and discover the real Buffy's body has been kidnapped by evil Slayer Simone. They fight her, but she gets away. Andrew swaps Buffy's mind back into her real body and Spike takes her home. He tells her he isn't coming back, that he can't keep living on the edges of her life, coming only when she calls for him. As his ship takes off, Buffy watches and wonders if she made a huge mistake by letting him go. 

Yes, Buffy, you did. But not if you're just going to break his heart. Seriously. 

So, a bit of drama with Volume 3. I ordered it with the rest of the series. I got 1, 2, 4, and 5, but not 3. The seller cancelled my order, so I went online and bought another copy, which will hopefully be here soon. I didn't want to jump ahead and read 4 our of order. And I'm still not sure how I'm going to get Season 10, since they're so honking expensive. 

In the meantime, I had the Spike Omnibus to keep me occupied. It was a big collection of Spike centered comics. Some were better than others, and the artwork was all over the place, but I did enjoy it for the most part. 

It starts with "Old Times", which recounts Cecily's rejection of William. Years later, they happen to meet up again by accident in L.A. Spike runs across a biker who is terrified he is going to die on his 30th birthday, like all the men in his family have before him. Spike is determined to keep him alive until after midnight. Turns out Halfrek (who is Cecily) cursed his family. Spike has a rough time keeping Lenny from being killed, but he manages. Lenny is so overjoyed to live past his birthday he falls out a window and dies. Spike gets his revenge on Halfrek by making out with her and then leaving her laying on the ground, telling her she's "beneath him". Hehe.  

"Old Wounds" is when Spike is at Wolfram & Hart with the Angel gang. A retired LAPD detective who worked the Black Dahlia case finally got a hit on some fingerprints they had on letters the killer sent. They belong to a new employee: Spike. Everyone on Team Angel assumes Spike is guilty except for Fred, who tries to help him solve the decades old cold case. He finally does and delivers an iconic verbal beatdown on redemption to the hypocrites that surround Angel. With Angel being the biggest hypocrite of all. Yeah, that's right, I said it :)

"Lost and Found": Spike is still at Wolfram & Hart, and a vampire is killing in broad daylight. Angel automatically assumes that Spike was somehow able to fix the Gem of Amarra, which Angel destroyed. Wesley figures out that there were actually two gems, and someone else now has the second one, which Harmony sold online (freaking twit). Because the Gem makes the wearer invincible, Spike and Angel have to think of a way to get it off the wearer before they dust him. 

"Spike vs. Dracula" was a long one, chronicling Spike and Dracula's hatred of each other over the century. A band of gypsies Dracula was aligned with cursed an evil vampire named Angelus. Angelus's team of vampires killed the band of gypsies under Dracula's protection, starting off the conflict. 

"Asylum" was another long one. A mother and father contact Spike to ask for his help breaking their half-demon daughter out of Mosaic, a rehab facility for the Supernatural. They believe she is in danger. Spike declines at first, but when the parents mistake him for Angel he gets annoyed and says he'll do it. He checks himself into Mosaic, and quickly learns it was a ploy to get him tucked away: he actually killed their daughter himself years earlier. They wanted to punish him. It worked: there's no way out of Mosaic once you're in, you're trapped. Oh, and did I mention all the other patients hate him and spend their time trying to kill him? 

And finally, "Shadow Puppets". I know a lot of fans (and the actors) liked "Smile Time", the episode of "Angel" in Season 5 where he gets turned into a puppet, but I found it very stupid. So I wasn't a huge fan of this one, although I will (grudgingly) admit there were some funny moments. Spike and Lorne go to Japan where Smile Time has resurrected itself for the Japanese audiences, still with the same evil goal of sucking the life out of the kiddos who watch the show. One of the Mosaic inmates, Beck, is there along with a Japanese warrior girl named Tok, and both girls have a crush on the "handsome vampire", so that was kind of funny to see them flirting with him. Of course Spike and Lorne get turned into puppets (sigh). In the end all of Angel's gang shows up as puppets and Spike has to fight the Angelus puppet. I can't believe how incredibly dumb I feel just typing these words. Oh well. In the end he wins and defeats the evil Smile Time puppets and gets turned back into his normal handsome self, so it all worked out. 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 Volumes 7 & 8

 

Okay, the last two issues of Season 8 (side note: apparently yesterday's post was my 1,000 since I started this blog! Yay me). Volume 7 "Twilight" reveals that Twilight is none other than Angel. I knew I hated you for a good reason, Angel (actually, I like him on his own show. But not for Buffy). Angel and Buffy fight, and then they have sex (ugh) and it's so powerful it creates a whole world. 

Not gonna lie, a little jealous. 

Angel explains they can live forever happily in this world, but it means abandoning all their loved ones on Earth with the demons they unleashed with their sexcapades. Seriously, nothing good ever comes from these two getting it on. Of course Buffy won't do that, so she goes back to Earth to help her friends fight. Things aren't going well at all for Team Slayer when guess who shows up on his badass steampunk ship.

Spike. 

Heck yeah. Now we're talking. 

Volume 8 "Last Gleaming". Spike shows up to save the day (as always). Angel gets possessed by Twilight (the world he and Buffy created) who is understandably pissed about being born and abandoned. There's a mystical seed underground, beneath the closed Hellmouth in Sunnydale. Like a cork, Spike explains. If they destroy it, all the demons will be sucked back into their own dimensions but all the magic will go out of the world. Willow is against this plan, obviously. Buffy, Spike, and a few others travel down to the Hellmouth to confront the Master, who is guardian of the seed. Buffy and Angel fight again, and Giles can tell she won't be able to kill him without proper motivation so he gets in between them and Angel kills him. 

Angel killed Giles. Okay, now I really hate you, Angel. For real. I know you're possessed but still. GILES, man! What the giddy god hell is wrong with you?!

Buffy uses the scythe to smash the seed and all the magic is sucked out of the world, leaving Angel free of his demon and horrified about having killed Giles. Damn straight you should be. He goes catatonic with grief and Faith offers to take him home and try to nurse him back to health. Turns out Giles left everything to her: his houses (Giles had houses?) and horses and books and everything. Buffy moves with Dawn and Xander (who are now a couple, and I'm okay with that) to San Francisco and starts waitressing again. And Spike shows up periodically for a fire escape visit, since Dawn and Xander won't let him in the house (rude). 

All right then!