Comic Review: Buffy The Vampire Slayer #5

Buffy The Vampire Slayer #5

BOOM! Studios

Writer: Jordie Bellaire

Artists: David López & Raúl Angulo

Issue 4 ended on something of a cliff-hanger. Xander looked as though he’d need some serious help from his crush, Buffy. However, #5 picks up the story of everybody’s favorite Scooby-gang, in a dire state, both thematically as well as (and I’m sorry to say) creatively.

Story:

Issue 5 picks up a few days after the last installment. It’s a strange choice to have gap-time between issues, as  #4 left Xander in such a tight fix. Then, suddenly, Giles is adamant that Buffy comes to his home. Since she lost her phone some issues ago, he sends Willow to wake Buffy up before sunrise. Some sequences of what happened to Xander and how he came to be at Giles’ house rush by in exposition. But it all feels perfunctory. The pacing, a strength of the first four issues, seems nonexistent, the voice of the characters seems to blend together, and the clever storytelling mechanic of character narrated issues was dropped for a much more straight forward approach.

Character:

I’ve already touched on character voice, but the issue falls flat in this category for a variety of reasons. After the discovery of the giant bat creature, Camazotz, I expected it to play some type of role in subsequent issues. However, despite the fact Buffy has a huge, vampire killing magical bat in a jar she can summon, there’s been no sign of it. Furthermore, this issue also sees Buffy visits the magic shop. Anya owns the magic shop, and it seems this would have been a perfect moment for the protagonist to meet a major character. Sadly, the author either did not or could not make this first meeting worth the page space.

Art:

From the moment Dan Mora released his character designs before #1 hit the shelves, I was stoked. I absolutely love the TV show, so I was eager for a modern and well-illustrated reboot. #5 is not in the same creative vision. The switch of artist from Dan Mora to David López is a mystery. I tried and failed to discover a reason. No matter, the result is undesirable. And that’s charitable. All the artwork is pretty simple, and at times it is downright crude. All the art looks as if it was on short notice. Often characters’ facial features are not proportionate and on multiple occasions, they portray emotions that don’t match up with the events taking place around them.

Whether the downfall of this issue was the art, the writing, or the instability that has crept into this run, I cannot say. More likely, is that it’s all these issues that have driven the stock down of a once high flying comic.