Wishful Casting: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight

In the previous post I spoke about wanting to do a Wishful Casting for Buffy Season Eight and I did say that I wanted to do it sooner rather than later so what is ‘sooner’ than the very next day? This is a little hard because I don’t know how to gear the characters because there was such a gap between seasons seven and eight. If this were still on TV aside from it being drastically different removing things like flying and massive giants the principal cast would only be a year older. Even though there’s at least a two year gap within the time line so even if they did a ‘flash forward’ the actors wouldn’t have aged physically more than a year. But if you go by the actual passage of time Buffy will  be 30 years old on January 19^th 2011, so do I cast the new characters going off of the principal cast (except for Dawn and Giles) playing 26-30 and cast the new characters accordingly, or do I go off the assumption that if this were on TV it would directly follow season seven which would mean Buffy is only 23?

Even as I type this I don’t know the answer to that question. Part of me wants to think that I’d go for the most realistic choices but at the same time this is ‘wishful’ so that means that I can pretty much pick whoever the hell I want. I am going off of one assumption here: all of the cast would be back. So there won’t be any re-casting of characters that already appeared on the TV show even though there’s possibly at least one person I would instantly recast if I was given the chance. Okay. two assumptions here, the second being that all the demons/creatures would either be CGI or make up to the point of not being able to tell who plays them so I won’t be doing those character.

Oh and just so you know this is specifically for the Buffy Motion Comic DVD so it’s just issues/episodes 1-19 I’ll probably go back and do the rest of the season just for a sense of completion but for right now it’s just those characters. Also this is in no particular order:

LEAH – STACEY FARBER

There isn’t much that is known about Leah, she’s sort of a step above ‘background’ player yet not so far in the forefront that she could be considered part of the main cast. Going off of the voice acting in the season eight motion comic it’s possible that Leah is Irish or possibly Scottish but no one said that she absolutely has to have an accent. Now I started with her because as I do this she seems to be the character that no one would really understand why I picked this actress and I wanted to just get it out of the way. Why did I choose Stacey Farber? Well I hate to say it but because of her previous work. She’s used to network TV, she had done years on Degrassi (not that I’ve watched the show or anything) and she’s got that sitcom 18 to Life which is actually pretty good. The point is she would understand the effort involved in putting out a weekly show, and due to her being on Degrassi she knows how a show with a massive cast works. As to why she would be a real contender for this role… Joss has done weird casting before. Is an ex Canadian teen ‘drama’ show star any less deserving of playing a Slayer than Lalaine (she played the Potential Slayer Chloe in season 7 of Buffy) who was a Disney sitcom star for three years?

RENEE – KATERINA GRAHAM

 

Well Renee isn’t a character who lasted long but it’s a bit hard to tell why. Did she die because she had a relationship with Xander? After all Women he hooks up with tend to die. It could also be due to the massive cast list and the need to cut down on the amount of characters so the focus can be more streamlined. I actually liked Renee and I wish that there was more that we could have seen of her. She didn’t have to die especially since Aiko, Gigi, and NotBuffy!Buffy had all died recently. I get that it needed to be done because she had been around for the first 15 issues/episodes and there needed to be a brutal death to show the true level of danger but it’s hard to follow up Aiko being crucified in the middle of Tokyo with the words ‘Welcome to Tokyo’ written in her own blood just underneath her strung up body. Katerina Graham wasn’t an actress that I originally thought of when it came to Renee, but hey she’s on The Vampire Diaries so she’s used to this very specific genre and the actress is being underused on TVD just being brought out once and a while to moan about how evil vampires are. At least this would give her things to do other than playing filler.

SATSU – JULIA LEE

At the close of season seven we saw Willow activate all the Potential Slayers by using the Scythe and in a brief shot there is an Asian girl who receives her powers and then the scene shifts to another girl being activated. There’s no hard rule saying that that NuSlayer isn’t Satsu – and knowing Joss’s habit of bringing back bit players and elevating their status within the mythology it stands to reason that the girl would have ended up becoming Satsu. Given that the actress who played her on the TV show was Chuck’s Julia Lee. This would be good an homage to history, reinventing a new character, keeping the players within Whedonverse and giving Julia something to do other than pop up ever 15 episodes or so on Chuck. Plus I said that I wouldn’t recast anyone so I’m sticking to that – this is more a merging of two characters to thin the cast out a bit. Plus the only other highly visible Slayer of Asian descent is Aiko so theoretically the character Julia played in Chosen could be either Satsu or Aiko.

AIKO – JAMIE CHUNG

 

Speaking of Aiko I might as well get her out of the way. She wasn’t around long but she was a plot point for a major storyline. Aiko was portrayed as a strong fighter – one that even impressed Buffy enough that she was sort of the defacto leader of the Tokyo Slayer branch – at the very least she was high ranking enough to justify Buffy sending Satsu to run the Tokyo branch after Aiko’s death. Aiko was a Slayer who had been deactivated thanks to a spell done by a group of vampires who had obtained the secrets to Dracula’s powers and managed to steal Buffy’s Scythe so they can use a spell to deactivate all of the Slayers which would allow the vampires to take over the world. Why Jamie Chung you ask? Well between her roles in Dragonball: Evolution and the upcoming Sucker Punch and the TV Miniseries: Samurai Girl we know the girl can fake fight.

ROWENA – JESSY SCHRAM

Rowena is the final Slayer that rounds out Buffy’s main team. She appears to be third in command (so the pecking order goes Buffy, Satsu, Rowena, Leah) because when Buffy and Satsu are both indisposed Rowena takes charge instead of Leah. Nothing much is known about this German Slayer other than she apparently likes hats because she’s rarely seen without one and she does look quite a bit like Buffy Summers. Maybe she’s the third Slayer decoy – not the NotBuffy!Buffy who died underground saving the Fairy and Slug folk, or the girl in Italy that parties it up with The Immortal but the other, other NotBuffy!Buffy. Why Jessy? It’s simple - I kind of fell in love with her from her episodes of Medium where she played a younger version of Allison.

LADY GENEVIEVE ‘GIGI’ SAVIDGE – KATIE McGRATH

Gigi was the type of person I imagine Faith would have turned out to be if Gwendolyn Post had lived in Revelations. Like Faith Gigi wasn’t on the straight and narrow and her personality type made it easier for Roden to seduce her into his way of thinking reducing her to nothing more than a third string pawn in Twilight’s endgame. The character’s existence alone is a huge plot point for Faith. Giles contacts Faith to take down Gigi because she will destroy the world. In Gigi we get old themes with Faith’s struggle for morality – what is right versus what’s wrong; betrayal of trust and a road all too familiar. Sure Gigi was only around for one episode (four issues) but everything around her proves a major turning point in Faith where she now wants to try to save other girls from becoming the types of people that Gigi was and the actions that have led to Faith’s hands forever being stained with the blood of innocents. Gigi was the type of girl who screamed HBIC and you need an actress who can pull it off there are actresses that can do that but when you factor in that she must be British, carry herself like royalty in addition to being a Slayer and a bad girl. It was easy for me to pick Katie McGrath for this, I mean it’s not that big of a stretch for her since she’s busy playing Lady Morgana in the BBC series Merlin – it’s pretty much the same role only with more fighting and electricity. Plus she’s worked with Anthony Stewart Head before so it would be a nice little wink and a nudge to that.

KUMIKO ISHIHARA – BINGBING LI

Kumiko Ishihira is a creature of many hats (including the very literal one she wears) – she’s a witch, she’s a vampire, she’s kind of punk/goth, she can fly, she’s not your typical vampire either since she is a part of Toru’s gang that had the heightened powers that they obtained through a card game with Dracula. On top of that she was able to hold her own in a sneak attack on Buffy’s base in Scotland, got the jump on Willow more than once and was able to tap into the mystical power of Buffy’s Scythe in order to channel a spell through that and a gem that would cause all the Slayers to lose their abilities. The best she got though was depowering Aiko. I liked her character an awful lot and I really wish that they didn’t kill her off like they did. It’s one thing to have a very plot specific death ala Tara, Buffy, Joyce, Gigi, Warren (well kind of) but Kumiko’s death kind of strikes me as very similar to Anya’s death in Chosen – killing her off was just something to do. They could have kept her around especially since like Willow she is a student of the part snake woman Saga Vasuki. I would love to have seen if she was connected to the Scythe… could she tap into its power because if she wasn’t vamped she would have been a Slayer? Is she an old Slayer who was turned by the vampire she fought? Is Saga Vasuki tied to the Scythe – is she hedging her bets by placing an apprentice on both sides of the battle to ensure that she’ll live no matter what the outcome? Why Bingbing Li – well… why not?

ROBIN/THE MINDER – MIRACLE LAURIE

From the second I read this issue I instantly knew that Joss would cast Miracle Laurie as this tragic hero who is forced to watch over Sephrillian’s reality field that keeps one of the oldest of the Old Ones contained and unable to move back into Earth. As a byproduct of this ever shifting dimension Robin’s life is not experienced in linear fashion and this is shown when she and Willow meet for the first time yet they know each other. This non-linear fashion also allows the Minder (Robin being the current one) the ability to have control over Sephrillian’s reality field; it seems like she also has a level of telepathy and telekinesis and gives her the ability to have knowledge of things that are ‘future’ events for everyone else. Casting Miracle continues the trend of Joss reusing actors from his previous shows.

MELAKA “MEL” FRAY – SUMMER GLAU

I’ll admit I wasn’t entirely sure which way to go with casting Melaka. She’s an extremely important character within the mythology of BtVS since she is the first Slayer to have been naturally activated since Buffy and Willow triggered all the Slayers with the Scythe so not only does this imply that Joss has big plans for Mel in general but also that something huge is going to happen in the future to cause there to be a need for another Slayer. Now the Scythe actually first appeared in the Fray mini-series and then worked it’s way into the TV show and then Joss retroactively added Melaka into the mythology by having Buffy travel to the future and visit her (unwillingly mind you) in season eight. There really wasn’t anyone that stuck out in my mind when it came to who could play her so I picked Summer Glau – it’s obvious that she can do this type of role so there’s no need in explaining why, but it would be nice since Summer appeared in Firefly, Serenity, Angel, and Dollhouse I say just make a sweep of it and put her in Buffy too.

HARTH FRAY – THOMAS DEKKER

Harth is Melaka’s twin brother and because of that it spilt the Slayer abilities – Melaka got all of the access to the strength and physical abilities and Harth ended up with access to all the psychic based powers (dreams and all that jazz) – which results in Harth being a ‘half’ Slayer for lack of a better term. And to make it even a bigger deal going with that theory he’s sort of actually the first male Slayer in the line. That alone makes for a very interesting premise and it gets even more interesting after Harth is turned into a Lurk (the future word for vampire.) I picked Thomas Dekker specifically because I had chosen Summer Glau for Melaka. The pair played brother and ‘sister’ on Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles for two seasons and the two of them had this weird creepy chemistry vibe going on that I think would make Mel and Harth that much more interesting if they carried it over in to the Buffyverse.

ERIN FRAY – YVONNE STRAHOVSKI

Erin is Melaka and Harth’s older sister and a cop. I honestly don’t know much about the character since I haven’t read Fray yet – yeah, yeah, yeah I’m a bad fan I know – but I do know that she and Mel don’t really get along and that Erin takes her job as ‘Law’ very seriously. I picked Chuck’s Yvonne strictly based off of the fact that she looks an awful lot like Erin and for me that was enough.

SAGA VASUKI/ALUWYN – MELISSA GEORGE

Saga Vasuki (who also goes by the name Aluwyn) is a part snake woman who exists in a different dimension that apparently can only be accessed through extreme pleasure. She is a sorceress who at one point served as a teacher to Kumiko Ishihara taking her on as an apprentice and eventually taking Willow on as a student as well. She is a creature of secrets which is obvious because of the two names she goes by as well as the fact that at first Kumiko and Willow seem shocked by the fact that they were both taught by Saga Vasuki. It’s also possible given the similarities in her appearance that she shares some sort of connection to the demon witch Proserpexa whom Willow tried to raise from the dead when she turned dark. There’s more validity to that thought when you consider that she is very specific in not wanting Willow to see the future in which she is once again evil. Maybe she’s afraid that Willow would make the connection… When I was thinking of who to put in this role I wanted a Rose McGowan type of person who exudes sexuality with every breath she takes. I ended up picking Melissa George because she looks like a cross between Rose McGowan and Christina Ricci – sexy yet creepy at the same time and I think that’s something that Saga Vasuki likes to take advantage of.

SIMONE DOFFLER – HAYLEY WILLIAMS

Simone is one of the Slayers that were called after Willow’s spell in Chosen. She started out in Chicago under Rona’s squad and was sort of tutored by Giles. It’s not really an important fact, I don’t think but Simone was a part of the same training Slayer Squad that featured NotBuffy!Buffy. After Simone’s time in Rona’s squad she eventually moved on to Andrew’s squad in Rome in an attempt to soften her ‘rough edges’ by moving her away from the city. The man thing with Simone is her distaste for the traditional Slayer weapons opting more often than not to go with guns or military grade weaponry. Simone ended up pulling two other Slayers into her way of thinking and abandoned Andrew’s squad and went rogue and basically became nothing more than a punk gang with super powers. I chose Hayley because she’s honestly the only one I could think of when it came to Simone – there’s no hard and fast rule saying that she absolutely has to have a neon pink mohawk. Plus Hayley doesn’t look ‘rough’ – if that makes any sense – so even though she doesn’t have a ‘classical look’ it would be shocking to see someone of her stature be this tough bad ass kind of character.

GENERAL VOLL – TIM DeKAY

LIEUTENANT MOULTER – REBECCA HAZLEWOOD

In addition to being members of the military General Voll and Lieutenant Moulter are members of Twilight’s organization and bear his mark. Moulter hasn’t really done much, she only shows up briefly to report that the warlock Roden and ‘his’ Slayer Gigi have both been killed – but I get the sense that she could end up becoming more than a brief appearance type of character so that’s why I included her in this –not all of the characters have been cast, I mean do you really need to know who I’d pick to play the Slayer that NotBuffy!Buffy ended up getting bitten in the neck in the process of saving her? General Voll had a bit more to do – he was responsible for the excavation of Sunnydale and his team were the ones that discovered Amy who had been buried alive along with her boyfriend Warren (whom she’s been keeping ‘alive’ by using her magic to act as his skin), he captured Ethan because he was high enough in Twilight’s inner circle to know that magic can stop the endgame and he later murdered Ethan in an execution style killing. There are characters that appear in A Beautiful Sunset that could be Voll and Moulter so I figured they aren’t exactly one and done type of characters. I chose Rebecca because of how much the drawings of Moulter look like her and as much as I love her on Outsourced it would be nice to see her take on a non comedic role. Tim DeKay struck me as perfect for Voll yet there’s no real reason why. Maybe because of his role on White Collar being a little bit similar to Voll- like I said I had no real reason as to why I chose him, but he just feels like he’d fit the role.

RODEN – SEAMUS DEVER

Roden is a powerful warlock who was a member of Twilight’s group. Apparently Twilight promised him safety after the end of all magicks if he agreed to work for him and gave him detailed instructions on how to destroy Buffy. Roden met Gigi and soon began manipulating her and slowly turning her into a killer – his original plan was to use GIgi to kill Buffy but when Faith accidentally killed Gigi in battle he quickly shifted focus and decided to use Faith instead. Of course this didn’t last long before Giles used one of Roden’s own spells to make his head explode. It turns out that Roden was very powerful because he was strong enough to break any mystical containment that someone tried to place on him – which is why Giles had to place one within Roden’s body. I don’t know if Seamus could do an Irish accent but I do see similarities between Roden and Seamus. I like his work on Castle, and he isn’t such a huge character that he couldn’t step away from the show long enough to do a guest spot, plus it would be nice to see him play evil.

 
RAIDON – JOHN CHO

TORU – WILL YUN LEE

Toru was the leader of the Japanese gang of vampires that used Dracula’s powers and stole Buffy’s Scythe. Unlike Kumiko (also a member of his gang) Toru uses his strength – and oh boy he’s a strong one too… he killed two slayers – Aiko and Renee. After the vampires revert to just ‘regular’ vampires Dracula uses his sword to cut off both of Toru’s hands and legs as punishment for stealing his abilities and killing Renee. Ultimately Xander finishes Toru off by decapitating him. Raidon was the other main member of Toru’s gang – he didn’t really do much or have a large role and once depowered he was quickly killed by Satsu. I chose Will Yun Lee for Toru because I had been a fan of his going all the way back to his run on Witchblade and I’ve always liked it when he plays really evil characters (he should do it more often.) John Cho ended up being my pick for Raidon because it seems he has made a career out of playing roles that make me unable to stand him. The only thing I ever liked him in was his episode in the first season of Charmed – so I figured I’ll give him one more chance, and if he still pisses me off Raidon gets killed off so no big loss.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Motion Comic DVD Review

Today we’re going to take a look at the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 Motion Comic. Let me get this out of the way right off the bat: the voices are off. The actress voicing Buffy doesn’t really understand inflections, the actor who voices Xander actually sounds like Xander, but he needs to work on his pacing. The actress who voices Faith is probably the best out of the group. I do understand that it would have been impossible to get the cast back to voice the characters – but for the Buffy video games they managed to get back everyone except for SMG – so it kind of hurts that they didn’t get ANYONE. Forget the new characters or the core 4 (Buffy, Willow, Xander, Dawn) are you honestly telling me that they couldn’t get: Felicia Day (Vi), Indigo (Rona), Adam Busch (Warren), Iyari Limon (Kennedy), Tom Lenk (Andrew), Anthony Stewart Head (Giles), Marc Blucas (Riley), Faith (Eliza Dushku), Elizabeth Anne Allen (Amy), Robin Sachs (Ethan), Rudolf Martin (Dracula), Harry Groener (Mayor Richard Wilkins) or D.B. Woodside (Robin) – really they couldn’t get a single one of them? Really?

As the episodes progress it gets increasingly harder to tell Willow’s voice apart from any of the other females. Giles – I don’t know if it’s the accent or the actors fault but it’s just so off. It was actually easier for me to accept Buffy, Xander and Andrew’s voices but if you think about it: Anthony, Michelle, David, Eliza and Alyson have all been in the public eye and consistently on tv ever since Buffy ended it’s run. The accents on the new characters could be better and part of me wishes that Satsu had an accent – don’t even get me started on the Asian vampires in the Wolves at the Gate episodes – the accents aren’t there, the only one with a consistent accent is Kimiko (a character I really wish stuck around.)

The episodes do give us many new characters like Leah, Rowena, Simone, Satsu, Rowena, General Voll, Aluwyn, Roden, Lady Genevieve Savidge and others plus it makes all of the characters from the Fray comic book now officially cannon (well they were before but now they’re directly tied into the Buffyverse in a way that can’t be discounted. It’s interesting now that I’ve watched the dvd I’m kind of getting the urge to do a wishful casting segment on characters that are strictly Buffy Season 8 characters… hmm… be sure to look for that, this is a post that might come sooner rather than later.

The way the issues break down is pretty simple with a few exceptions (The Chain, Anywhere But Here and A Beautiful Sunset) The Long Road Home, No Future For You, Wolves At The Gate and Time Of Your Life are all 4 ‘issues’ each that add up to roughly 44 minutes a story, which is what the original tv episodes ran. The single issue episodes are good – I don’t mind how short they are time wise because the stories are really strong enough to carry it without a lengthy build up. I’m not going to lie though, I do fear for some of the single issue stories in the second half of season eight if they do release the rest of the season as a motion comic.

Special Features:

Special features… okay where to start?  I’m not exactly sure that this counts as a special feature because it is a DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack that comes with not only a standard definition version of the episodes/issues but a high-definition version as well. The first ‘real’ feature really isn’t anything spectacular in and of itself – it’s just a cover gallery of the first nineteen issues. There’s no new information here but it sure is pretty.

There is a feature that allows you to make your own Buffy centric comic book thanks to Tooncast Studio. Now this actually makes me sad because I really wanted to try this out – I knew it would be cheesy as hell but it seemed fun and I wanted to try it. So of course that means when I pop it in my dvd-rom that my computer won’t even read the disc at all. I’m assuming that it’s my dvd-rom that’s the problem and not the disc itself so I can’t fault the dvd.

The next special feature is kind of random and honestly it’s a bit of a let down. The Buffy Trivia Experience is just what you’d expect it to be… trivia. Basically you turn it on and then watch the episodes/issues and it plays ala VH1’s popup videos where random trivia pops up. There’s nothing wrong with this particular feature but think about this… Buffy is popular, but it’s a limited market and it’s been off of TV for seven years so that takes away selling points, this is an animated motion comic adaptation of a comic book series (even though it’s officially Season 8) so it closes the gap even more in it’s marketability because it’s an animated vampire ‘movie’ based off of a comic book. What I’m trying to say here is it is doubtful many people will run into this and just decide to buy it if they have no prior knowledge of Buffy in general, and anyone who has this obviously is a huge fan of Buffy and a fan of the comic books. The pop up trivia while good isn’t delivering anything new here at all for die hard BtVS fans – I would much rather have had pop up bubbles explaining behind the scenes information as to why certain scenes are the way they are or notes from Joss or the writers. To me it would make more sense to have had that especially since there is no writer/director/actor commentary.

We get the ‘test pilot’ – which is done like any pilot, a brief version of what will be the start of the series/movie to show how it can go – and it’s nice but there’s nothing new. It seemed like there was a bit more music to this than the actual first episode. I don’t mean to be down on the special features but it would have been better if they gave us a little bit more – maybe an animated version of Buffy’s opening credits (but use the comic images and play it out like the TV credits) but then who would you include? Obviously Buffy, Willow, Xander and Dawn but would Faith, Leah, Satsu, Rowena, Giles, Faith, Andrew, Twilight, Vi, Kennedy, Renee, Amy or Warren have made the cut? Again this is something that’s for the diehard BtVS fans, they could have thrown in the original pilot, or even the BtVS: Animated Series pilot because that’s a bit part of issue #20 so it could have been positioned as a ‘things to come’ type of deal.

We get a smaller version of the first issue packed in with the dvd set which is nice and I’m glad that they did it for people who haven’t actually gotten the issue but for me it’s a little much. I’m a huge OCD personality when it comes to things and collecting the Buffy comics is one of them and I’m pretty sick of having to buy the first issue over and over. There’s the first print with the two covers, there’s a black and white pencil version of the cover (the only one I don’t own, mostly because it goes for over 350 dollars), the second print, third print, fourth print, fifth (and billed as) final print, The Long Road Home collection, the motion comic singles, the motion comic set and now the smaller print in the motion comic set. It passed going overboard about 5 prints ago.

The final special feature: Under Buffy’s Spell is watchable but some of it is pretty expected. Jane Espenson joking about how no one was shocked about Buffy and Satsu having sex; Jo Chen was there talking about working on the covers for Buffy, Buffy fans talking about how they had never read comics before but now they want to since Buffy is a comic book. It was nice but it kind of felt like someone just went around Comic Con and asked people questions about it. A proper sit-down interview would have been more entertaining and it could have possibly given us a bit more information.

At the end of the day this is a pretty solid dvd and it did make me want to check out other motion comics, which I guess is a good thing. There’s the OCD aspect of myself that needs to have a complete collection so I would rather they waited to release the entire season together, or at the very least some type of guarantee that they will be doing the second half of the season. That’s the one real concern I have – I’m afraid that they won’t release the rest of the season and that is a shame.

Rating: BUY
Special Features: SKIP
Overall Rating: A-

Charmed Season 9 Issue 1 'Charmed Lives' Review

Well here we have the first official issue (episode) of Zenescope’s Charmed (Season 9). Since it’s only one issue in it’s hard to tell the type of format they’re going to use to tell these stories and I think it will take a while before it’s clear exactly what they’re going to do with it. The first issue isn’t a stand alone story, so the first ‘episode’ is going to take at least two issues to tell, but beyond that it’s unclear if Charmed will follow the Buffy Season 8 method of 4-5 issues per episode, or like Angel a 10-13 issue arch that serves as a half season.

The issue picks up a little over a year, eighteen months to be exact, after the end of season 8. Now be warned because everything beyond this point is all spoilers.


Now the continuity here is really questionable, even more so than the normal problems Charmed had while on the air. Piper and Leo are still married and even though the eighth season ended with Chris barely 2 years old some how Chris and Wyatt seem to be around 4-7 and Piper has a toddler, a baby girl named Melinda. I actually like that because it’s a little throw back to season 2 when they went to the future and Piper had a baby girl and how after Prue died Piper believed she’d never have her baby girl, and unlike Chris, Melinda is taking after their older brother and has access to her powers from birth. Leo is off running Magic School and Piper is in the process of opening a restaurant of her very own.

Phoebe is still married to Coop and are still living in their own place away from Halliwell Manor. Phoebe still writes her advice column for Elise, only she had taken a break because of the fact that she had gotten pregnant and gave birth to the baby girl she had been dreaming about for years. Prue; which if you know the history of Charmed and the legendary epic ‘battle’ between Alyssa and Shannen that led to Shannen leaving the show you can’t help but laugh at this a little…. Anyway, Prue is half Witch half Cupid which also makes her powers work a bit differently. Like Paige baby Prue can also teleport objects to (and one would assume away from) her only instead of orbing it’s ‘beaming.’ It remains to be seen if baby Prue has any other powers at this point.

Paige is still acting as an official unofficial Whitelighter in addition to teaching at Magic School, she leaves the politics and paper work to Leo though. Paige and Henry are married and raising twins of their very own. Thankfully the twins don’t have any active powers yet because Paige has her hands full trying to teach the students how to use their own powers.

We get a few new characters here and like I said before, until we know the format of how long it takes for each episode it’s impossible to tell how long these characters will stick around; .the Angel of Destiny shows up, but just in a pop in, pop out, kind of way so it’s hard to count that as anything substantial. Billie and Henry are missing in action, although it’s likely we’ll see Henry before Billie since he’s married to Paige. The new characters so far aren’t anything to write home about.

Neena can open portals, only she doesn’t know where they lead and appears to have some sort of fire based powers that she uses to kill Weasel with. Weasel, well what’s to tell? He showed up, he was little, he liked to make sexual advances, he died. Hogan is working with Neena but it’s not clear if he’s a warlock, demon, darklighter or whatever because so far he’s shown no powers at all. There are a couple of new characters given to us from Magic School but the only one who actually gets a name is Jessalyn. There’s nothing really to say about her other than she gets bored easily and is not that good with the magic yet.

So far the plot is pretty standard: Piper, Phoebe and Paige try to balance their real lives with their magical ones and raise magical children (although the children part is new to Phoebe and Paige.) Neena and Hogan are trying to unearth some dark power, no idea what that is yet but the issue ends with both of them in the Underworld where people are being tortured and they’re looking for someone or something.

While it will take a while before I can accurately judge/review the long term plot I can certainly judge the art right now and let me say boy was it a BIG LET DOWN. The art in last month’s “The Book of Shadows” was really good and fitting for the series in general. I ended up getting the cover pictured above and I was psyched, the artist really captured Holly Marie, Rose and Alyssa’s respective likenesses. You looked at them and bam you recognized them instantly; the art on the inside though; yeah, not so much. Paige looks nothing like Rose, or even close enough for it to be recognizable as ‘Paige’ the character. Leo’s brief appearance left much to be desired; I had to reread the page twice before it sunk in that the person I was looking at was supposed to be Leo. Phoebe is a bit better than Paige artistically, but it’s still not Alyssa. To me it kind of reminds me of the art from the Witchblade comics. Coop actually manages to look enough like Victor Webster that it doesn’t bother me too much. Piper is done the best here however that’s because of how much Holly Marie stood out visually compared to Shannen, Alyssa, Rose and Kaley. The problem I have with how Piper is done that she suffers from Witchblade/Darkchylde art. It’s like ‘oh okay, I’m going to pick up this knife right here and cut up a plant but I can’t do it unless my chest is sticking out and my but is pointed directly in your face.’ I get that Charmed was mostly about the hotness of the actresses but I’ve got the dvds for that, let the comic be about amazing art and storytelling.

My fear with the art is that the girls don’t look enough like themselves, not even when they’re all together. They don’t ‘feel’ like The Charmed Ones, it feels like a bunch of girls sitting around on a couch together. I know it would have been almost impossible to do it but I wish the artist put in the girls’ tattoos. At least then you could tell which character was which more easily. Honestly I’m not feeling the art at all and it’s really bringing down the book for me. It takes me out of the world when I have to figure out who is who.

Another problem with the art is the way the pages are structured makes it seem like a very quick read. It took me so long to read “The Book of Shadows” because it pulled me in, both with the writing and the art. But with “Charmed Lives” it’s only 21 pages and out of that there’s one full page consisting of a long shot of Phoebe being ‘beamed’ in while Coop holds baby Prue; on top of that there are a total of THREE two page spreads. So this 21 page issue is in reality only 18 pages of story followed up by a two page spread promoting issue 2 “No Rest for the Wicca” and the rest are two back up stories/previews for other Zenescope books. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the book didn’t cost $3.50. So for fifty one cents more you’re getting exactly one LESS page than any given issue of Buffy Season 8. And this was the first issue, and first issues are usually LONGER than the standard comic.



Rating: C
There’s just not enough plot to rate it on and the art really brings it down for me

Ranking the Ten Worst Buffyverse Characters

It’s something that happens in every fandom, it’s inescapable. There are characters that polarize the fandom so drastically it can start decade spanning internet wars. Joss Whedon’s projects are no exception; the only difference is they are kept so intertwined it’s hard to separate them. Actors migrate from one series to another, playing different characters some times actors come on to the show playing one character and by the time they’re done they’re playing an entirely different character.

And then we get to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or as I like to call it ‘The Little Show That Could’ and its sister show Angel (The Little Show That Should Have Known When To Stop.) Not only are these shows intertwined by being contained within the Whedonverse, having migrating actors, actors playing multiple characters but now we’ve got crossovers and actors playing the same characters on both shows. So it’s only fitting that in a list of Top 10 Worst Buffyverse Characters that the list also contain characters from Buffy’s sister show Angel.

10) DAWN SUMMERS (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER)

The thing about Dawn isn’t so much the character but what she represents and how much of a game changer she actually was.  Buffy had always been a series that was meant to be metaphorical and larger than life and despite it being a show about demons and vampires it never had too many undertones of religion. Dawn changed everything. In the course of one season we get a magically created girl who can open a portal to hell that will end the world that had been protected by monks because she needed to be kept hidden from a God so evil that she was banished from the very hell she was trying to return to. We get the death of Joyce, Dawn’s reveal as Buffy’s sister but not really Buffy’s sister just as an army of religious knights storm Sunnydale to stop Glory from using Dawn. Buffy died because of Dawn, Buffy suffered the most because of Dawn and then all of a sudden Buffy went from fighting Gods and dragons to the Nerd Herd. And now in season 8 we have Dawn hooking up with Xander (which is still creepy because while her body is 18-20 her soul is only like 5 max), saying she considers Willow to be her mother and has a resentment towards Buffy that rivals the emotional roller coaster that was season 5-7 Dawn COMBINED!

 

9) EVE (ANGEL)

I wanted to like Eve I really did. Actually out of all of the characters on this list I would consider her ‘middle ground’ not really hated, but not really loved. Or more accurately Eve is on this list because of the hate of what she was, but there’s a desire to keep her off of this list for the love of what she could have been. There was a tongue-in-cheek aspect to her character the second she threw an apple at Angel and offered him the keys to Wolfram & Hart. Now part of me wants to believe that she was actually *THE* Eve from The Garden of Eden, not only because of that but also when the Senior Partners send in her replacement and force her to sign away her immortality. That implies that she’s been around for a long time because of how scared she got, but it also makes you think because it’s been proven that the contracts with Wolfram & Hart extend postmortem, so there wouldn’t have necessarily been a need to keep Eve alive and ‘human.’ All that aside the big bone of contention among essentially every single Angel fan is that not only was Eve a poor substitute to Lilah but an extremely poor follow up given the fact that there wasn’t enough time to properly expand on her character or even give fans time to really get used to her. I hate to say it but she had almost been reduced to a throw away character. We don’t know what happens to her at the end of the TV series. We don’t know how she reacts to Lindsey being killed, yet in Angel: After the Fall (aka Angel Season 6) The Senior Partners discuss the idea of resurrecting a zombified version of Lindsey or Eve to serve as their liaison to Angel because they are both currently under their control.

8) KENDRA (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER)

Oh where to start? Is it the bad accent? Is it the fact that it continued the trend that Slayers can’t use crossbows (first Buffy, then Kendra, later Faith finally Kennedy broke that trend)? Could it even be a case of bad casting? I think it’s a case of all of the above and none of the above. Kendra has sort of made her mark as unforgettably forgettable. She will never go down in history as the most hated Slayer in Whedonverse, I think that honor belongs to Kennedy (although I don’t understand that one,) she’ll never be the ‘weakest’ Slayer we have all of season 7 and a good chunk of season 8 for that. She was the first Slayer Drusilla killed, but they never touch on Drusilla’s time in Sunnydale much and her death gave us Faith. My problem with the character is the fact that Kendra was sort of before her time. Buffy didn’t really start her quest for normalcy until season 3-4, that would have been a good time for a character like Kendra to show how much more normal Buffy was than she thought she was. Seasons 5-8 are when we really get to see the full grasp of the Slayer mythology and how deep and profound it is, so we get moments like Kendra being given to her Watcher as a child, but that isn’t touched on again until season 7. At best Kendra was introduced one season too soon.

 7) SCOTT HOPE (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER)

I don’t understand why Scott exists in Buffyverse at all. I get that he was supposed to be this bridge to Buffy trying to get her life back together but at that point in the series it was unnecessary. He would have fit in with Buffy with the way the character was written in the movie or ‘The Origin’ comic but with all of the characters Buffy has been romantically involved with: Pike, Angel, Spike, Parker, Riley, and Satsu; Scott is the one character that just doesn’t fit. Yes Riley was too ‘bland’ ‘milquetoast’ ‘Mary Sue-like’ for many but Scott took all of those qualities and amplified them a thousand times over.

6) BEN (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER)

For me Ben is the Eve of Buffy. I wanted to like him, I tried to like him, but it’s hard to look past what they had done with him. But there were so many unanswered questions and that’s why he lands on this list. Why was he chosen to contain Glory? Was it a punishment for something he had done? Was it a last ditch attempt on Glory’s part to make a pact with someone on Earth before she was sent there? How long ago had the two of them actually merged, was Glory sent to Earth long ago and Ben just didn’t age and his life sort of just started over and he was implanted with all these fake memories and a history of himself and those around him like the monks did with Dawn? Was he drawn to Dawn and Buffy because he honestly felt sorry for what they were going through because of Joyce being sick and later dying or was he drawn to them out of a feeling of remorse because he knew that Glory was going after the two of them? When Giles killed Ben to kill Glory did their souls stay merged? Did they go back to Glory’s dimension or Earth’s version of  hell? Do characters like Ben, Dawn and Connor even have souls? I wish Joss found a way to keep Ben around post Glory, to see his struggle with the things that had happened because of someone in his body, to see him and Buffy struggle to regain their sanity together – it would have made for a much better redemption story than Buffy/Spike. The only reason why Ben doesn’t rank higher on the list is because Giles killing him helped to deepen the rift between Buffy and Giles that gets to the point where Giles sides with Faith over Buffy multiple times in season 7 and beyond.

5) PRINCIPAL ROBIN WOOD (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER)

Everything that’s right about this character is actually what makes him so wrong. It is fitting that he jumped in with Buffy and the gang considering the fact that his mother was a Slayer. The problem with that is that Buffy has moved so far past this ‘can a Slayer have a normal life’ plot that the idea of a Slayer having a child is pointless. But it does tie up some loose ends, Robin’s mother turns out to be Nikki, the Slayer from New York that we learn through flashbacks in season 5 that Spike killed. This would work, but it’s a bit out of place too, his character would have been done justice better if he had been introduced in season 6. The idea that he held a grudge and was taught his entire life to hate vampires, more specifically Spike would have worked so much better while Buffy was spiraling out of control in season 6. Instead Robin is used more as a prop, first to keep Buffy at Sunnydale High since he is the principal, and secondly to further hold Spike on this pedestal where Buffy must always stick up for him and forgive him and protect him even though Buffy’s own father figure Giles begs her to stay away from him. Instead of his story being about a man who had his entire life shaped by one event and forever altered in the most tragic of ways it became about Spike’s redemption. As a bone we got thrown an 11^th hour Robin/Faith relationship but that seems to have fallen apart between season 7 and 8.

4) CONNOR (ANGEL)

Connor is sort of like Dawn, only worse. He’s a mystical being who was sort of thrown in there for a plot point, yet they were so deeply connected to a main character that they couldn’t retcon him out permanently or kill him off for good. My problem with Connor is actually the same problem I have with Dawn, I like them both and the actors really grew on me over time but they were major game changers. The only problem is that Buffy as a series seem to rebound after the introduction of Dawn but the same can’t be said for Angel after the introduction of Connor. I like the episodes in the Connor era of Angel but the creation and existence of this character destroyed too many others. Darla got her ultimate redemption in killing herself in order for Connor to be born, but she *can’t* come back, only she does when she unsuccessfully tries to keep Connor from going over the edge; so now we can only get ghost/spirit!Darla or flashback!Darla. Connor while not directly involved in the destruction of Cordelia’s character played a major role in it. The birth of Connor set Wesley down a path he never recovered from, and it changed Angel. Angel essentially sold out all of his friends in order to give Connor a normal life, only to have that never work and he still got stuck in the ‘family business’ anyway only to be killed by Gunn in season 6 and then that was all retconned out too. So we have a character that never was supposed to exist, then was a victim of ‘rapid aging syndrome’ (where a character goes a way for a brief period of time and comes back aged to suit the plot), gets thrown into a really odd plot, gets retconned out, gets written back in, then out, then back in and remembers EVERYTHING, then we get season 6 which happens and then suddenly the entire season gets retconned out and we’re right back to three seconds after the end of ‘Not Fade Away’ so they retconned the third retcon, or re-retconned the second one. It gives me a headache.

3) PROFESSOR MAGGIE WALSH (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER)

Numbers 3 and 4 were a tough call and both for different reasons. In the case of Maggie Walsh I think it’s a combination of Buffy suffering growing pains as a series and a poorly constructed plot in general. Buffy wasn’t meant to be a series with political subtext and undertones so the fact that the show suddenly became about Buffy VS. the Government came out of left field. As a whole season 4 is hated by the fans for various reasons but in the end it all comes back to the plot with the Initiative. They neutered Spike, they ‘created’ demons to stop demons; we ended up with the stereotypical ‘evil government’ plot. The whole thing was a failure; there were a few bright spots we got Tara, more Anya, Faith waking up from her coma, vampire Harmony; I liked Riley and Graham but not so much as soldiers. But there was a lot of bad that went with the series too, so for the life of me I can’t figure out why for a large part of season 8 it was Buffy VS: The Army, Government and Twilight. If it didn’t work the first time: don’t revisit it!

2) SPIKE (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/ANGEL)

Forget about restricting it just to Buffy/Angelverse characters Spike is quite possibly the most polarizing character in all of Whedonverse. I’m not going to talk about the shipper aspects of it because honestly I’ve never been a big supporter of Buffy/Angel or Buffy/Spike her relationship with both of them almost perverted the essence of Buffy’s character; but that’s a story for another blog post. Spike at best was a one note character that honestly didn’t need to exist within the universe beyond the second season of Buffy. It’s going to be impossible to do this without talking about the time Spike tried to rape Buffy so I’ll have to go into that. I get that it had shown how far Buffy had fallen on her own that she had let Spike get as close as he did but from that episode on Buffy the Vampire Slayer almost switched gears into becoming about Spike’s redemption and nothing else. Anya had a wish gone wrong in season 7 and Buffy was ready and willing to kill her that second, it didn’t matter that she had a soul, yet Spike was given chance after chance by Buffy. He was the one that closed the Hellmouth, not Buffy. The grand sacrifice of the series didn’t even come from the main character; it came from a guest star that just wouldn’t go away. And then Buffy ends and he goes over to Angel and we get season 5 of Angel (again my hate of that is a post for another blog.) And now at the eleventh hour Spike is about to swoop in and help save the day in season 8. The ONLY reason why he isn’t ranked number 1 in my most hated list is because his very existence gave us Drusilla. Well that and the episode of Angel where Illyria kept killing Spike over and over.

1) JASMINE (ANGEL)

Joss does best when he is allowed to tell the story he wants within the timeframe he wants to. Jasmine is proof of how big of a train wreck it can turn into if he looses control, and here he lost it not once but twice. The series was still rebounding from Darla’s mystical pregnancy in season 3. Season 4 was deeply intertwined with Buffy season 7, Buffy was ending, Angel had taken a massively dark turn, The WB had an axe hovering over Angel’s head telling Joss the series had grown too deep and complex and needed to be simplified and more stand alone and self contained, Joss and crew had just finished killing off a massive amount of the recurring and regular cast and then Charisma Carpenter became pregnant. I get that if Joss would have been left alone Jasmine would have been the endgame for Angel, I could easily see him tying Jasmine, Illyria and Glory all together and connecting them somehow, but sadly that never came to be. Jasmine wasn’t introduced until the fourth quarter of season 4, there was the mandate of ‘stand alone only’ episodes from the WB so she needed to be wrapped up quickly. But it left a sour taste in my mouth, magic!Dawn one year, magic!Connor the next and then magic!Jasmine. There were too many magic babies that rapidly aged way too close together.