Angel

I wasn’t a huge fan of Angel until about halfway through the series run on TV, but Season 5 is one of my favorite seasons of any series I’ve watched. The finale, "Not Fade Away" was a great ending, but I certainly wanted to know what was going to happen next. I waited through several IDW Angel series while they fed little tidbits of character updates, but I was thrilled to finally see them take a page from Dark Horse and give fans a proper continuation to the series.

Once I found out there was going to be a 3 issue break in the series after Issue 5 to tell the story of the "First Night" following the series finale, I immediately thought of two things. First, I was thrilled that they were going spell out the details of the events that fill in the gaps between the end of the series and After The Fall. Second, I was certain they were going to leave a doozy of a cliffhanger for everyone to stew over for three months (or more). Obviously, I don’t know what "First Night" will bring, but I can safely say that fans of the series will be talking about what happens on that last page for a bit. Be warned, however - it isn’t a shock on par with the events of Buffy #12, since you only need to have read Buffy to understand how big those events were, but even if you only watched Season 5 of Angel, you will understand how big of a deal that last page is.

Brian Lynch continues to take advantage of the "unlimited" visual effects budget that the comic format provides, with some incredible settings and creatures that probably wouldn’t be able to be delivered in quite the same way on television. Franco Urru’s art continues to frustrate me a bit, though. I think he captures likenesses well and I enjoy the supernatural creatures he draws, but the smaller details in his art seems to suffer when the action gets big and the panels get big to match. For a fan of the series and characters, it probably isn’t a dealbreaker, but it does take a bit of effort to follow at times and could confuse newer readers. However, with multiple artists on "First Night" and a new art team taking over after that, don’t give up if you aren’t a fan of the art.