We are really excited about Buffy Season 9 comics arriving on comic shop shelves Sept. 14th and wanted to reach out to fans and get their thoughts about Season 9 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer in general. Whedon fans are legion and probably some of the most generous and passionate we've ever encountered. We're excited to share their enthusiasm for Buffy here on our Blog.
I was sixteen when Buffy the Vampire Slayer left television. Although I wasn’t upset about the series ending at the time it did—in fact, I applauded the decision—I later discovered that I deeply missed the characters. It was as if my older, sassy, kickass sister and all of her awesome friends had all moved away and then never kept in touch. I wanted to check on Xander; have tea with Giles; chat with Willow; know what Dawn decided to study in college. And, obviously, I wanted to know how the eponymous heroine was faring. While I tried to find other characters and casts to fill the Buffy void in my life, nothing was ever quite the same.
Luckily, I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
But when I learned that the Buffyverse was continuing in a comic-book series I was really skeptical. I’d never read comics before and wasn’t entirely sure how the show would translate to a print format. Nevertheless, I found myself in a comic-book store, feeling very conspicuous in my dress and heels, asking the extraordinarily nice employee not only where to find the Buffy comics, but how to go about reading them. (I was really that clueless.) After my Comic Book 101 immersion, I tested the waters with the first issue and found, to my sheer delight, that the integrity of the characters and, perhaps more importantly for me, the dialogue did in fact make the transition from television to print. From there, I threw myself into Buffy Season 8.
Overall, I enjoyed the season. Don’t get me wrong; there were some trying times. The story became overly complicated: there were SO MANY plots and universes that things felt messy and confusing. There were definitely moments when I would stop and think, “Wait. WHAT?!” and would then go back and reread so that I could figure out just what exactly was happening. Though I didn’t always love the decisions that were made (Um, GILES?! Speaking of him, I’d really love to see something about his Ripper days. Just sayin’.), I had faith (no pun intended) that the writers would bring it all back together.
And they did. Somehow, Joss Whedon and his phenomenal writing team (I bow to you all) took the tumultuous plots that made up Season 8, made sense of them all, and wrapped up the season in a nice, neat, pretty package promising a back-to-basics version of Buffy. It’s refreshing to think of Buffy patrolling instead of leading Slayer armies into battle.
So after all of the crazy, and sometimes literal, heights that Season 8 took Buffy to, I’m incredibly excited for the stripped-down story that Season 9 is poised to bring. Like Whedon said in his open letter at the end of Season 8, “Buffy’s best when she’s walking that alley, dusting vamps, and nursing a pouty heart.”
I couldn’t agree more. And I can’t wait.
— Bethany Larson
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