Buffy The Vampire Slayer

If fictional superheroes were eligible for sainthood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer would be a likely candidate. Portrayed for seven television seasons by Sarah Michelle Gellar, the teenage, cross-wearing Buffy Summers battled and defeated every demon imaginable — always with a measure of irony and humor.

The silliness of the name and the premise that a blond Valley Girl can overcome evil gave way to scholarly consideration of spiritual themes undertaken by the television series: redemption, resurrection, selflessness, guilt and existential angst, among other subjects.

"Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies" (not a joke) lists more than 500 articles in 51 categories, from aesthetics to musicology to vampirology. And recently, Open Court Publishing released the latest book on the series, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale," a collection of essays by philosophers at major universities.

"’Buffy’ gets people thinking," a book reviewer says in the Nov. 7 issue of Commonweal, a Catholic magazine. Those who missed the first run of the series, which ended in May, can catch the reruns on UPN (Channel 20 locally).