[b:True confessions|310146|The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle|Avi|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1200883701s/310146.jpg|997358] time: I was a BtVS fangirl.So you can imagine my joy when I discovered that Joss Whedon had continued the now-defunct series in comic form -- not a spinoff, but a real continuation that picks up where the seventh (and final) season ended in 2003.Volumes 1 & 2 of Season 8 arrived from Amazon yesterday, and I read them both in one sitting... and discovered that I do not know how to read comic books. I'm a quick study; I'll figure it out. But I'm so darn text-oriented, I missed a lot the first time through. I'm having to re-read them now, discovering all of the richness of the artwork.But I'm happy to report that all of the wonderful elements of the Buffyverse are well represented, and the characters are unmistakably themselves (except for some, ah... augmentations to Buffy and Willow's chestal regions). ( )

Wrapping up loose ends from Season 7, developing a new world of empowered slayers, and giving me more Willow, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8: The Long Way Home is my new favorite thing. My only complaint is that Jeanty's artwork makes it rather hard to tell who anyone is when they are not introduced. Except for Willow, the characters here only slightly resemble the actors who originated the part. I had an especially hard time with Andrew.
Joss, however, proves that he is a genius of all media, writing graphic novel just as well as he does television and movie scripts.
What I would love is to have novelisations of these books, as I'm not terribly well-versed in reading the Graphic Novel style and had a hard time following it. This is more my failing, than the book's, though, so no points off. (As though I could rate anything even remotely related to Joss Whedon anything less than full marks.) ( )

Summary: After the cataclysmic end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 7, our favorite petite blond evil-fighter finds herself with a whole host of new problems. After Willow gave every potential in the world full Slayer strength, Buffy has relocated to Scotland with Xander as her new pseudo-Watcher, while members of her team are busily training the new Slayers around the world. Averting the apocalypse has never earned our gang more than a temporary rest, though, and Buffy still has to deal with problems both normal (Dawn's growing up, causing all kinds of sisterly tension) and supernatural (Dawn's really grown *up* - about forty feet up, and she refuses to talk to Buffy about the reason.) Plus, in the course of daily monster-fighting, Buffy stumbles across hints of a new organization, called Twilight, which will bring together new force and some old enemies in order to bring down the Slayer and her friends. This volume also includes a one-off issue titled "The Chain", which explores the idea that even if there are now thousands of Slayers, the name of Buffy Summers still carries some weight.

Review: True to the title, this really is exactly like another season of Buffy, only with an unlimited budget to pay for special effects and guest stars. The story structure is the same: following multiple storylines that all feed into the overall arc. The editing is the same: cuts between scenes where the previous scene's dialogue feeds into the next image. The language is the same: the snarky sense of humor is recognizeably Joss Whedon, and the rhythms of speech are recognizably Buffy. The characters are the same: they all sound like themselves, and for the most part look like themselves (Giles, Willow, and Xander are all great; personally, I was less-impressed with Buffy herself, and Andrew's almost unrecognizable in some panels.) The story moves quickly, and you have to pay attention to stay on top of what's going on... and I'm sure there are plenty of clues hidden in the dialogue and the drawings that I didn't catch. Overall, though, comics and Joss Whedon and Buffy are a natural fit, and I'm looking forward to seeing where the story goes from here. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: My recommendation isn't going to be worth a whole lot, here, Buffy fans should definitely read it, even if they're not really into comic books; non-Buffy fans should absolutely NOT start here. ( )

The Long Way Home doesn't start exactly where the last television season of Buffy left off, instead it starts a little past that, after Buffy and her crew have restarted their lives. In some ways, things are very different, but in others, they're exactly the same. Each character seems to have taken a level of bad ass as they push forward in the fight against evil in their own ways.

Training the new slayers for a fight that's longer and more eventful than the epic big bad battle season seven kissed viewers goodbye with, Buffy still has issues, and still has a ton of problems, including; Andrew, Willow's sometimes tenuous hold on her personal darkness, Dawn's feelings of uselessness and need for attention, Xander's everlasting support that might just be more than friendly and a cadre of teen girls to wrangle, train and keep alive.

On a part-training mission, Buffy and some of her trainees interrupt a demon ritual and discover the human prey all have the same strange symbol carved into their chest. More than just a casual encounter, the crew get to work trying to unravel the larger plot only to be distracted by a series of villains, who like good antagonists, never seem to go away completely. So between high school rivals, still bent on revenge, the military declaring Buffy's operation a terrorist sect, giant sized little sisters and a mass zombie attack The Long Way Home doesn't skip a beat, thrusting beloved characters right back where fans love to see them, with the same humor and mix of horror and fantasy that Buffy is famous for.

There couldn't be a better continuation of the Buffy-verse and with such a die-hard audience we can hope this new, more affordable, and in some ways more flexible, series will continue for a long time to come. ( )

Not as good as the tv series as of yet, but it's so much fun to return to characters and a story that I thought was over that it is quite worth the half hour it takes to read this. ( )