Angel

Finally, IDW’s Angel: After The Fall series hits issue #5, with all of the familiar old players from the Angel TV show out in the open in an L.A. that literally opened up into hell in the show’s big cliffhanger ender. Franco Urru’s dark, stylized art has drawn some flak, but really, the biggest problem is the way he has to limit his stylization in order to graft in familiar faces, so, for instance, Angel looks like a plastic-y version of David Boreanaz instead of like the better-rendered original characters. But Brian Lynch’s scripts (supervised by Whedon) actually feel more like authentic Angel than, say, the new Serenity series feels like authentic Firefly. Lynch captures how the characters talk, but better yet, he picks up on the series’ constant shocks and twists and its severely dark tone… B+