“The Thing About Changing The World

Once You Do It, The World Is All Different.”

A great fan of Buffy that I am, I had a great deal of scepticism when I had season eight would be comic style. That didn’t stop me from spending 85 euro on the graphic novels anyway (each at 22 bucks!). In fact I waited until I had nothing else to spend my free time on before I got around to reading them!

Once I opened the pages and read that first line above, I knew I had nothing to worry about!

The great thing about Buffy is the dialogue and humour that comes with. And when I read that line I forgot all about the fact that I spend almost 100 bucks on comics FCOL. Once I began I couldn’t stop. Went through the four volumes without even realising it.

Season 9 Fukken where?!!

Anyway Buffy is still badass, neh, is badasser then before and everybody calls her ma’me these days! She is training a school of…Okay not a whole school but quite a whole bunch of slayerettes. And these whole bunch are just the tip of the real whole bunch of slayers around the world. More like thousands of slayers.

More slayers calls for more watchers and who better suited for the position that…No not Jiles! You just thought of Jiles didn’t you?! You did you sneek. Of course we already knew Jiles was a watcher but we are talking about the cool Sergent Fury. Oh! Not him either it’s Z-man Xander. It’s just that he has the one eye thingie going and in charge of a deadly force so…Ah you get the point!

Anyway yes Xander the Xander Harris is a watcher now. Jiles is also a watcher and trainer but he isn’t with our fav groupie. He is in some other country commanding some other school of slayers. Speaking of other countries, Buffy and Co. aren’t in Sunnydale any more (Oh! The will power it took me to not write Kansas instead!). You see Sunnydale is a big pile of…Hole and nothing is left there. Nobody unless you count the future evil bad guys digging up graves. So the alpha slayer the the betas are shacked up there in Europe. Wow that’s a very long way home. heh! Now I get the title of the first volume.

They are up there in Europe in some countryside and living in a castle of some sort. Totally away from civilisation so that they can train without interrupting the neighbours. They are slayers after all. This is a good thing too for Dawn is…Sweet sweet Dawnie is…

A Super giant teenage hormonal girl!!

Nobody knows what the hell happened. Dawn is definitely not talking. Unless you bring Willow! Oh shi…! Buffy suspects that this happened because she had sex with a thrice-wise! Hmmm looks like the sex genes run through the family.

Yes. Willow is no where to be found either. Well at least at the beginning. It seems that she went to get some super training for her powers from a err snake thing demon woman. Don’t know what was the point though! Willow could just gather all the magic books in the world and suck the info right into her brain, right? She can do that, right? She already did it before!

Any who, without Willow, every thing seems to be fine. Seems I was wrong. Amy strike! Remember her? The witchy wanna-be that was turned into a rat but Willow way back in the eralier TV seasons? Damn these witch wanna-bes and their magics. They never die! From what I gather, she was one of the bones that were dag up in holey Sunnydale by those troublemaker-government-persons. She wasn’t alone too but I am getting ahead of myself here.

While everyone is asleep, Buffy is dreaming…of kissing Xander?!!! Well, she hasn’t had sex since Sunnydale and with no living dead around, no sex for Slayer! In her dream while she plants one of Z-man, his head falls off!!!! Whew it’s all a dream that quickly turns into a nightmare. Amy has teleported right into Buffy’s room and cast some kinda sleeping beauty scenario but with eternal dream torment put into the mix. But wait, while you’re being tortured in your sleep I will be right here ready to put this Oh! so sharp dagger into your ribcage thus halting your heart beat…forever!

Too bad she didn’t know who she was dealing with…after all this time! Xander and the school of slayers walk in. Z-man puts an arrow through Amy’s shoulder. I scream “Hell yeah” but wait, she got magic. Wound disappears in a puff of green smoke! There was a protective spell on our favourite slayer (Ha! Ha!) so she’s safe from harm…physical harm. As for the psychological…

Amy brought some kinda dead ghoul army with her so the slayers go out to battle. Thing is, once you kill them, they get right back up. Oh! crap. What to do? alpha slayer is out, evil Amy is about and with her an endless group of the undead thingies that don’t die when killed!

But fear not mortals…

Our big gun is here to save the day…

She’s hereeeee!!

I love you Willow!

Ahem, a magic battle breaks out and it looks like Amy has the upper hand, at least she thinks she does. She doesn’t know about black Willow. Poor Amy! Turns out that Willow was just putting on a show. What in fact she was doing was decoding Amy’s magic in order to undo the damn ghouls! Oh! Willow, always thinking ten steps ahead I see. And not without a sense of humour, Willow makes the ghouls dance with the slayers, I really do mean dance! She makes the dance until she can figure out how to get rid of them for good. In the mean time, Amy gets in a shot and almost deletes Willow from existence. Willow is pissed and goes Black (in the eyes only) and puts Amy in her place.

Once Amy is put away, Willow comes to Buffy’s room and examines the spell on Buff-star. She tells the gang that someone truly in love with Buffy has to kiss her to wake her up. She orders everyone to close their eyes and that one step up and do the deed. Keep them eyes closed or else!

Buffy wakes up with thoughts of cinnamon…Which are quickly kicked to the curve once she spots Willow!

Some one kissed Buffyand it damn well wasn’t Xander! No other males are in the room. Do the maths. And just to make it clear, even though I am a killer Buffy/Willow shipper, it wasn’t Willow either!

It’s like she hasn’t seen Willow for years! They share the funny while Willow studies Amy (magically of course). Xander feels left out. He wants in on the funny too!

While Willow absently studies a presumably unconscious Amy, it seems like she’s found what she  is looking for but wait…It was a trap!! Willow is taken away only minutes after she came back!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

Buffy is royally pissed off! Take her Will will you?! She picks out her best apprentice ‘Satsu’, it’s not just because of the hair-do I swear, and prepares her feature weapon for war!

We go in. We get Willow. We get out.

If Willow can’t leave for some reason then neither will I.”

– The Slayer!

As for where exactly Willow is…

She’s in the hands of skinless Warren! turns out Amy saved him right in the nick of time before he died from shock!

So Amy knows about Evil Willow. Is she just dumb then?

Anyway while Warren is practising his pathological skills on Willow the earth elements separate her soul from her body. Even mother earth loves Willow! Buffy and Satsu break into the complex and start whooping ass! Yes, this is real Whedon material! Even in the comics you can feel the intense action. Amy is standing in Buffy’s way to her witch. How to fight a magician!

No worries Willow and Buffy are ONE! Willow channels her magics through Buffy and Slayer + Magic = If I were You I’d GTFO. So simple an equation even dumb Amy gets it! She runs for it with her boyfriend Warren!

Exactly how do they have sex?!!!!

Buffy runs to her Willow afraid for the worst! She rips those binds away like they were made of wet paper! Willow uses all her magic to set herself back together!

All is well! They leave with some last words from the leader of the complex that it’s war btn the humans and slayers now!

Dude, you are late. You should’ve picked your fight when there was only one slayer. Now there are thousands of thousands.

Good Luck!

The rest of the volume is irrelevant so I will wrap things up.

WOW! This is like the last season of Xena the Warrior Princess! I swear season eight is all about our favorite girls and Buffy seems like she was replaced by an alien or something.

All will make sense later…

Lastly, I apologise for the blurry images, these are graphic novels I have not the 1 dollar comics. Kina hard to bend.