Buffy : Season 8

1. ThatEvilLawFirm: Hello! What a shocking and amazing issue! So myI think question for you: 

Will we see the major ramifications of the destruction of the seed this season? 


Georges: Not this season, obviously, but it does make for some interesting stuff in Season 9- most of which is hush hush!

2. ThatEvilLawFirm: We’ve been told that ALL demons are banished from Buffy’s dimension and I know this won’t be covered in the one issue remaining, but what does that mean for characters from Angel, such as Illyria, Cordelia (I guess she is still part demon even though she is a higher power?), Betta George, Lorne (not around, but still sort of in this universe), etc.?


Georges: Those are very good questions... that I’m sure the Angel series from Dark Horse will address. I mean all the demons weren’t killed, they were just banished, so they gotta be somewhere. More interesting fodder for next season.

3. ThatEvilLawFirm: In Fray we were told that the Watchers Council became a group of fanatics. With Giles’ death, it seems like this is imminent, since the only watcher left now is Andrew (I think it’s stated that he is a ’Watcher in training’). Is there any chance that next season we will start to see the story center around the Slayer’s organization fall apart due to lack of a head watcher?


Georges: It’s a whole new season. And so much was left unsaid in this one. There are so many places to go... are you starting to see Season 9 shaping up..?

4. bamph: Hey Georges. What a powerful issue. I guess this ranks up there with "Becoming" and "The Gift" as heartbreaking finales. I’m sure you’ll be flooded with questions on this one. Here are my first three. Now that the issue is out, can you tell us about the challenges and emotions you had on the art in this issue especially on Giles death and the ending of this one?


Georges: That was a tricky one. I felt it paramount that I had to talk to Joss if for nothing else then just to voice my feelings on that issue. I had that page laid out a couple of ways. I first toyed with the idea of making it an extreme close up when Angel twists Giles head, and then more and more I got the parallel to the death of Jenny Calendar, right down to the curved arch with Giles and the curved window with her. I really wanted the impact to come across and for the reader to understand that Giles was being killed here. Drawing such a quick action was tough because of course, comics don’t move, so I had to capture the act as it happens. I took great care with the next panel with Giles laying there because I knew we were going to be running this image again in the issue and in the future. I thought of it as that one image that sticks in your mind when you see a horrible scene.

5. bamph: Can you clarify now who was the betrayer and who was the prince or do we still need to wait for the final issue next month?


Georges: Oh... that would be telling. You get a hint in the next issue, but Angel doesn’t get out of this unharmed.

6. bamph: Buffy/Angel shippers have been scared in recent months due to the build up hype surrounding how bad things would get in #39. Buffy #40 I’m guessing, deal with the fallout of #39’s event. I’m sure you can’t say much. But after this issue and Season 8 in general, can the Buffy/Angel relationship come back from this like it has before with Angelus next issue and in Season 9 in your opinion? Or has Buffy/Angel really been torpedoed and there is no hope for a future for them after this? Anything you can say would be really great right.


Georges: Oh, it’s just awful... this has been a tragedy all around. But there is compassion from a very unlikely source...

7. sosa lola: What was the moment that made you really upset when you read the script? Obviously it’s Giles’ death, but if there’s something else you can add, I’d be very interested. (I’m still crying over Giles’ death by the way.)


Georges: Aside from Giles’ death I thought I really got across Buffy’s grief on the last page of that issue. It is a throwback image to Issue 10 where this whole ending is foretold, but I finished that page and thought, I did a good job of getting Buffy’s expression on that page, I think, because it was my own as well. So every time I look at that page I get the pain she’s feeling.

8. Hellbound Hyperion: Vagina monster — your idea or Joss’s? (Yeah, I ask the tough questions, the hardball questions!)


Georges: In a way it was Scott’s. He was on me to do some demons that weren’t the regular bi-peds we’d been seeing, so I went in a whole ’nother direction. And all of a sudden I’m hearing the jokes of Willow fighting the Vagina Monster...!

9. Hellbound Hyperion: Now that we’ve seen #39, can you describe the general mood of #40? I get the feeling it’ll be resolution (in terms of story) but not... peace, per se.


Georges: I think it takes place 6 months after. It more sets up season 9 than ends Season 8. Kind of like the way the last episode of Season 4 sets up Season 5.

10. Hellbound Hyperion: Just kind of curious: did you re-draw the panel from #10 with Buffy on the floor ("Betrayal. The closest, the most unexpected...")? I don’t have my TPB on me but the panel in #39 looked like an excellent reiteration of the panel from #10. (Great work all around this issue, by the way, and for the series in general! )


Georges: Yup. That was Joss with all the foreshadowing even way back in Issue 10! Also, the creatures that Giles rides in to join the fight are the same ones from way back in Issue 1. Also, that’s the same jacket that Buffy’s been wearing for the whole season which we first see in Issue 4. I tried to wrap up a lot of things with this issue, visually speaking.

11. drywallman: Should Xander fans feel let down considering the indications that he would do something really important in this issue when, in reality all he does is stand around and watch others act? Does issue 40 do anything to make up for this? As it stands that whole bit with the General telling Xander about the Seed seems really pointless.


Georges: Or maybe he got the information from the General to go down there and was himself about to be killed had Giles not shown up...? I think Xander understood that the forces that were going on around him were way beyond his capabilities, sometimes the best thing you can do is just to witness events to relay them in the future.

12. Dorotea: Hi Georges,

IOY to read this season to its bitter end - and so I do. Your art is amazing - I keep repeating myself, but well, I hope this is OK with you. Chuckle.
Now to the questions.

What was the point of resurrecting and bringing Master back into the story ? He seemed pretty irrelevant, to be honest. Just give your personal reasoning please. Even Warren’s brief comeback had made more sense to me - by the way hilarious scenes with him and Amy! Thank you for lightening the mood!


Georges: Hey you! I have to agree with you a little bit. I’m not sure why the Master was brought back like he was. I think overall he was a red herring to the big climax. That’s a better question for Joss.

13. Dorotea: Spike chasing after that vagina monster, eh? Whose idea was that?


Georges: Again, I think that was Scott. He’s such a naughty boy...

14. Dorotea: Twilight keeps complaining about ’you cannot abandon the universe you have created’. Can I ask you to comment on my feeling that this is Joss mocking himself and his Buffyverse fandom - that universe that he had created and that keeps chasing after him and begging not to abandon it, and that S8 is his way to get back at us ? Just kidding, but every joke has a grain of truth in it.


Georges: That’s a good grain. I don’t know. Another good question for Joss. I won’t even speculate because I don’t know where Twilight falls in Season 9, so I don’t want to give anything away.

15. kdeb: Hi Mr Jeanty

I think this issue contains some of your very best work. The panel of Angel killing Giles, which mirrors his murder of Jenny Calendar in season 2, is particularly impressive, and the blood red coloring really adds to the effect.


Georges: Please, it’s Georges!

Here are my questions:

Scott Allie has just done an interview with Buffyfest, in which he says that Spike will return and have a scene in no 40. I know you can’t spoiler, but will this be where the Spike/Buffy relationship finally gets the respect that Scott promised us it would get in the last Q&A he did on this board?


Georges: I don’t want to say too much, but I can say that scene with Buffy and Spike reminded me a lot of the scene in Season 5 when Buffy goes out on the porch of her back yard and Spike shows up ready to kill her and she’s crying and all he does is sit there and pats her on the back in sympathy, which is what she needed right then and there. Sometimes that’s what we all need. Not to solve our problems, but to just sit there and sympathize... ’sometimes there just aren’t enough rocks.’

16. kdeb: When we see Spike pursuing the so-called vagina monster in No. 39, is he pursuing it in our dimension or into the one where all the other monsters are going? 


Georges: Some how that monster evaded the portals and as such, is retreating in our dimension.

17. kdeb: In the web comic “Always Darkest,” in Buffy’s nightmare, Angel and Spike joke with each other that she can’t tell them apart. Many readers thought that this actually meant something, but it seems not. What, in your opinion, was the point of it?


Georges: I haven’t read that. If I had to guess it would be that she thought vampires were interchangeable. Either that, or the possibility that Spike and Angel are hung just about the same.

18. cheryl: Hi Georges, wish I had something positive to say but at the moment I really really don’t.

My first question is this...why in the world would Joss ever kill our beloved Giles? I mean, seriously? A universe without Giles is...broken.


Georges: When I talked to Joss about this issue he did give me a reason, but I think it’s something he wants to develop next season.

19. cheryl: Will we have any reason whatsoever to cheer at the end of the next issue?

Georges: Well, it doesn’t end with anyone dying... sorry, anyone else dying. 



20. cheryl: What about that twist aka gotcha moment? Tell me that it wasn’t the death of Giles because that was more like a sucker punch to the gut after having a bucket of ice water dumped on you.

Georges: Wow, you are graphic. I don’t think I ever said it was a twist, and I don’t know if it’s fair to say sucker punched. It’s just a tragedy.



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http://slayalive.com/showthread.php/649-SPOILER-Q-amp-A-with-Georges-Jeanty-Session-17?p=7582#post7582