Buffy : Season 8

Sierra Hahn, Associate Editor

Initially, I wanted to begin this by boasting my Buffy-cred in order to gain your trust as an authority on all things Buffy. Then I realized that my experience with Buffy, and why I loved the show, this comic, and this fantastic world isn’t all that relevant. It’s your experience that counts.

With that in mind I want to assure you that Buffy and the team have a lot of surprises in store for you this summer. There are a lot of choices the Scooby-gang are going to make that you’re going to applaud and other decisions that you’ll potentially loathe (hoping for the latter here! makes for better stories!). But behind each decision and motive within Season Eight remains the heart of this saga — the passionate, intelligent, lively characters that so many of us first fell in love with over a decade ago.

Come May we’ve got the collection of the long anticipated crossover between Buffy and future Slayer Fray — a favorite comic character of mine created by Joss in 2001. Illustrated by Karl Moline, Fray and Buffy come to together when the past melds with the future in the fourth collection of Season Eight, Time of Your Life.

In addition, we have the final issue in the series of one-shots that we began in January. Written by Doug Petrie and illustrated by series artist Georges Jeanty, readers witness the final stage of Dawn’s Thricewise-induced transformations. It’s a creepy one that turns Dawn into something that I’m deathly afraid of . . . thanks, Barbarella and thanks, Joss.

In June, Dark Horse offers a respite from Buffy’s drama in order to check out the new world order — Vamps yay! Slayer nay! — in Becky Cloonan and Vasilis Lolos’ Tales of the Vampires. This one-shot captures the compulsion to befriend vampires and leave youthful folly behind as humanity welcomes blood-sucking fiends into their daily lives thanks to a popular reality show starring the bubbly, two-faced vamp diva, Harmony Kendall.

All of this leads us into a moment I’m fiendish for . . .

Longtime Buffy television scribe and Battlestar Galactica producer (my other favorite TV show) Jane Espenson, tackles Season Eight duties like a seasoned pro when, in July, she reintroduces Willow’s former-flame, turned werewolf, turned Zen master, Oz. This next arc captures the truth behind the madness currently driving the mysterious Big Bad, Twilight, and his military minions in Retreat. Here is where Season Eight kicks into high gear throwing the Scoobs some serious punches, all while building momentum that will lead us into the frenetic next chapters to wrap this wonderful Season of Buffy comics with Brad Meltzer and Joss at the wheel.

Then (yes, there’s more) the driving force behind all . . . Joss pens a two-page Buffy-saga, illustrated by the Eisner-nominated Buffy cover artist, Jo Chen, for the online anthology MySpace Dark Horse Presents (and it’s free!). Here, familiar love interests make a surprise appearance in Season Eight, which hearkens back to what I referred to as moments that you’ll likely both love and loathe. I don’t know about you, but I’m going with pure love on this one.

Free Buffy! New Buffy! Old Buffy! I’m feeling nothing but Buffy adoration, and I hope you are too.

Sierra Hahn

Associate Editor