Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Buffy Summers, the blond, vamp-kicking fighter who managed to rise from the dead twice on the beloved 1997-2003 TV series is back slaying again. Sort of. A new comic book series from Dark Horse titled Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 - with an initial story arc by Buffy creator Joss Whedon - offers the show’s devoted cult following a rare opportunity to see what might have been if the show had continued to air. The publication of the new comic book series coincides with the 10-year anniversary of the show’s premiere, a milestone that, for Buffy’s many gay fanboys, invites reflection on the show’s place in the canon of gay-themed TV - and anticipation of where its core characters (gay and straight, living and undead) are headed.

For gay men - always drawn to empowered women with a sense of style (see Xena) - Buffy, as immortalized by Sarah Michelle Gellar, was more than an icon; she was the teenage girl they wish they could have been in high school. Fearlessly navigating the living hell of Sunnydale High, she pulverized demonic bullies with her fists and cliques of mean girls with catty one-liners that packed just as much of a wallop.

"I would say the high school setting accounts in part for the show’s appeal to a gay audience - the scene of the trauma, so to speak," said Will McCormack, a writing instructor at New York University. "The show was good at externalizing internal states; when I was in high school, I think I was rather shut down emotionally and was generally perceived as bookish and geeky. The show found a way to ennoble a similar set of characters."

Self-described Buffy addict Steven Lawrence elaborated: "The show made the outsiders the most attractive and appealing characters. The popular students were just snack food for ghouls. They lacked interest or distinction. The outsiders had the power."

Intensifying her sense of herself as an outsider, Buffy’s status as a vampire slayer - a secret she had to keep from almost everyone in her life, including her mother for several years - forced her to grapple with an isolating loneliness that could easily be a metaphor for the traumas of the closet, particularly for gay youth. This subtext pretty much became the show’s text in the Season 2 finale when Buffy comes out about her secret to her mother.

Her mother’s naïve responses, including, " It’s because you didn’t have a strong father figure, isn’t it?" and "Have you ever tried not being a vampire slayer?" are met by a heartbreakingly emotional Buffy.

"No, it doesn’t stop," she says. "It never stops. Do you think I chose to be like this? Do you have any idea how lonely it is? "

As Buffy fan Lawrence observed: " The interesting thing about Buffy was she came from an experience of being very popular but then found out something about herself that she felt couldn’t be known by others. She came to this new high school carrying that knowledge but managed to build a circle of trusted friends she could confide in. That directly tied into my own experience coming out, and that of many other gay and lesbian people I know."

The Show Comes Out

Like Buffy herself, the show seemed to come out after those high school seasons, more explicitly dealing with gay characters and ushering in a more overt queer sensibility.

Once the gang started college, Buffy’s best friend, Willow (Alyson Hannigan), who had previously locked lips with boy crushes Oz (Seth Green) and Xander (Nicholas Brendon), fell in love with Tara (Amber Benson). This was no mere "very special sweeps month" stunt, but a serious, long-term, very loving relationship.

A 2003 AfterEllen.com article observed: "Willow’s relationship with Tara was (and still is) the longest-running lesbian relationship on network television (2.5 seasons), and the pair developed a dedicated following among lesbian and bisexual fans who felt overjoyed to finally see aspects of their lives and their relationships reflected back."

Gay boys were no less overjoyed. Lawrence remembered: "What was important about that relationship was seeing a same-gender relationship being represented with such tenderness and passion. As a gay man, I take positive representations where I can get them. Any time a same-gender relationship is portrayed in a positive but very real light benefits us all."

Tara and Willow’s relationship was at its most heart-swooningly romantic in the Season 6 episode "Once More With Feeling." Not only did Tara serenade Willow with a beautiful, Shawn Colvin-esque ballad, "I’m Under Your Spell," Willow apparently pleasured Tara in bed so skillfully that Tara literally floated above the bed in ecstasy.

Beyond the hot and heavy (for network TV anyway) same-sex action, that episode might be considered Buffy at its gayest for another reason: It was a singing, dancing, very knowing and very loving treatment of the musical format, with nods to everything from Sondheim to Les Misérables. As Lawrence said, "I’m a gay man ... I love a good musical. ... Buffy as a musical ... it doesn’t get better than that."

Just hearing that Buffy was doing a musical was enough to make Norman Cherubino, an avid Broadway theatergoer, watch the show, even though he’d never seen it before. "I loved it," he said. "It showed a true understanding of musicals and was a great way to showcase a lot of different types of music. ... Now I listen to the CD all the time and know all the lyrics."

Beyond the TV Show

He’s not the only one. The musical episode has spawned Rocky Horror-like midnight screenings in Boston, New York, Chicago, Tucson, Pittsburgh and other cities across the country, where audience members sing along and act out the parts. This means that on any given night, there just might be dozens of Spike wannabes thrusting their pelvises in public - something else gay fanboys can thank Buffy for. The Buffy Sing-A-Long is just one example of how the Buffy universe has taken on a gay-friendly life of its own beyond the original series.

Another example is the predominance of Buffy slash fan fiction on the web. Check almost any fan fiction site, and you’ll see Angel/Spike pairings that equal, if not surpass, Kirk/Spock - and it’s no wonder. Here were two studly guys with a thing for leather, who seemed to spend all their nights prowling underground clubs and couldn’t keep their fists off one another. Even Whedon, on his DVD commentary for Buffy spin-off Angel, acknowledged: "Spike and Angel, they were hanging out for years and years and years. ... Are people thinking they never -? Come on, people! They’re open-minded guys!"

Buffy may have generated enough homoerotic imagery to fuel countless gay fantasies and fan sites, but for such a gay-friendly show, it was sorely lacking in its depiction of actual gay male characters. Lawrence does remember one particularly interesting, stereotype-busting character who appeared early on in the series: a high school jock named Larry who mercilessly bullied Xander before coming out to him (and then coming on to him). Larry showed up again a few episodes later, now so comfortable with his sexuality that he proclaimed, "I’m so out, I got my grandma fixing me up with guys."

Buffy Didn’t Get it all Right

Far more problematic was Andrew Wells, one of a trio of geek villains introduced in Season 6. One of Andrew’s crimes was unleashing flying monkeys to attack the school play, and nothing says "Friend of Dorothy" like a Wizard of Oz reference. Everything about Andrew screamed gay, from his gushing over almost every guy on the show to some of his sophomoric dialogue. (Looking for hidden transistors, he tells fellow villain Jonathan, "I’ll find it if I have to check every hole in my body - and yours!")

But the character never demonstrated any kind of self-awareness about his sexuality. Andrew remained a long-running variation on what has become a maddening television cliché: the girlie guy everyone but him knows is gay.

It is telling, however, that while main characters and fan favorites Angel and Spike are not even mentioned in the first two issues of the new comic series (although both will likely appear in future issues), Andrew has a key role to play, overseeing and training slayers under Buffy’s command. He’s still coded as gay, obsessing over Star Wars trivia and fashion (bemoaning "the cape and the little bell-bottoms" that Lando Calrissian sports in Return of the Jedi) but then immediately launches into a serious lecture about weapons and head butts.

It’s as if Whedon himself is acknowledging there’s more to tell about the character than previous TV seasons allowed. Perhaps the apparent maturation of Andrew’s character promises similar progress in the treatment of his sexuality; it will certainly be interesting to see how Whedon himself handles this touchy subject.

What the Future Holds

Seeing what Buffy, Xander, Willow and the gang are up to now, as well as how their creator personally envisioned their futures, is what will no doubt drive many fans to comic book stores in the coming months.

The plot, so far, seems to be dealing with how Buffy’s army of slayerettes is being targeted by the U.S. government as potential terrorists. It’s the kind of timely, politically charged storytelling one expects from Battlestar Galactica, but lacks the thematic richness, emotional angst and personal relevance that gay fans of Buffy were initially drawn to. What it lacks in plot, though, it makes up for in the promise of compelling developments for its core characters.

Of particular interest to gay fans is Willow, whose name comes up in a context that is intriguing. Buffy’s younger sister Dawn has apparently had a bad-boyfriend experience all her own (with amusingly extreme supernatural repercussions), but the only one Dawn is willing to discuss her problems with is Willow, which leads Buffy to say sarcastically, " Willow’s the expert on boys since when now?" It’s an uncharacteristically mean-spirited remark from Buffy - shocking, even, to hear her reference her best friend’s sexuality in the form of a put-down.

But the fact that she says this hints at why Dawn might not want to talk to her in the first place. Buffy, for all her stellar qualities, was never very self-aware, especially in terms of her effect on other people. She doesn’t see that it isn’t what Willow doesn’t know about boys that matters to Dawn; it’s what Willow does know about relationships that counts.

Unlike Buffy, whose relationships have usually ended in tears or stakes through the heart, Willow has been in relationships in which she experienced true love - not to mention mutual respect - serving as a much more positive role model for Dawn. It’s also worth remembering that it was Willow and Tara who served as surrogate parents to Dawn when Buffy was dead and buried and that, even now, Dawn looks to Willow for support.

It will be interesting to see how the Willow-Dawn-Buffy dynamic plays out in the 25-30 promised issues to come, as well as whether or not Willow is still with Kennedy, her lover post-Tara. Hopefully we’ll get more face time for Willow, more insight into Andrew, and maybe even a new out and proud gay male character. Maybe we’ll get two and can even see them getting some floating-above-the-bed-it’s-so-so-incredible action. Now that would be something gay fanboys could sing about.