This summer, the Buffy comics have gone through some major changes. We switched writing teams yet again, this time going for established names from the ranks of mainstream stars: Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza, who've worked together before on The X-Men, and more recently, apart, on High Roads and Thunderbolts. They came to Buffy with the idea--scandalous to some!--of making Buffy more of a comic book than an adaptation of a TV show. Their first trick? Blow up Sunnydale and bring back Angel and Faith to help Buffy sort it out. Haven't seen that on the show, especially lately.
This fall, we take another crazy turn in the title, with Scott and Fabian steering us into both old and new territory. As of issue 51, we're going back to the beginnings. That's right, this is going to be Buffy pre-Sunnydale. She's just been thrown out of school for blowing it up. Her parents are on the verge of splitting up, and her little sister is in constant need of attention. And what we're not used to seeing with Buffy, she's not surrounded by a crowd of friends watching her back. All she has is Pike, the guy who saw her through her rough transition into Slayerdom.(If any of this sounds unfamiliar to you, go ahead and check out Buffy: The Origin, our comics adaptation of Joss's screenplay, in which we smoothed out some of the continuity problems between the film and the TV show.)
However, having refered just now to the show and the film, let me reiterate: This is Buffy the Comic! Splash pages, spreads, outrageous monsters, nasty fights. It's a time in her life we've had little insight into--which means WE'VE got plenty of room to mess around. We all know Buffy went to Las Vegas; we recently learned that she was briefly in a mental institution. To Scott and Fabian, this sounded like excellent story material. So they've rolled up their sleeves and they're hard at work right now--literally: Fabian just emailed me with a question that he and Scott had come up with while Instant Messaging back and forth.
For your first peak at this new "old" direction, check out the anthology Reveal, with Scott and Fabian and superstar Buffy cover artist Jeff Matsuda showing a night in the life from Buffy's days in LA. See Dawn's first mysterious meeting with Angel, before he'd ever introduced himself to Buffy. Jeff's developed a wild new art style for this, and it's sure to turn heads. Not only that, but we've got a Picasso comic, so all you guys and gals thinking you're slumming in a literary ghetto when you buy your Buffy comics, prepare to stand corrected.
Every so often you need to shake things up. Hopefully you'll dig the earthquake we've caused under the monthly title.
Scott Allie