Intersesting, I'll order this one.

Madhatter | February 06, 06:11 CET

I've got the two Star Wars Omnibuses that are out, and I love the format. Wasn't too crazy about 'The Origin,' but 'Viva Las Buffy' and 'Slayer, Interrupted' were excellent tales with excellent art.

Niels van Eekelen | February 06, 06:23 CET

Are these stories the same as the TV show or are they new stories that fit into the seasons? Or a mix?

jcs | February 06, 06:44 CET

jcs, they're stories on their own.

Madhatter | February 06, 07:04 CET

I don't much fancy Buffy comics not written by ME folk...but hot damn, this looks purdy.

And they're going in chronological order according to continuity! God bless them.

UnpluggedCrazy | February 06, 07:43 CET

But what about "A Stake to the Heart"?! It is the bridging story between "Slayer, Interrupted" and "Welcome to the Hellmouth"

paxomen | February 06, 09:27 CET

If they're really intent on posting all of the old Buffy stories, maybe now we'll finally see one-shots like Giles: Beyond the Pale and Jonathan collected in a trade.

Shiai | February 06, 10:47 CET

Cool. I've never read The Origin. Think I'll get this.

Simon | February 06, 11:17 CET

So, this isn't the ongoing series they had going, it's just these three miniseries? I think I'm getting this. For $25 (probably less when bought through amazon or play) we get the original Buffy movie and Some More Stories. Not bad.

dark_tyler | February 06, 11:55 CET

That would be, cool. I actually printed a post from the old Dark Horse Buffy MB, where someone got a post listing every story, that has not yet been collected. Onto this...



The old comics, for the exception of Origin, which pretty much just retells the '92 movie script with minor tweaks, were all original.
I'm actually prepping a huge post for my livejournal (since I don't use it much, and this sound approppiate - although there might be some more accurate wikipedia entries into it) about my take about the old comics, for anyone who might be interested. I might actually use of the material from the post I just mentioned above. But mainly, I'll feature a timeline, that's sort of attempt to fit the old comics continuity with the TV Shows. Of course, most of the old comics, are not canon (and I'll be noting this into my post). This timeline was actually something that I did years ago, while the old series was still being published, and I wasn't quite satisfied by the Buffy Zone (the old one) timeline that they made available.

Anyway, still trying to answer tcs, the stories presented in this Omnibus, are sort of a mix, in certain sense, because they're collecting titles from the early run of the series and some from the end, although all of them pre-dates events from Season 1.
According to the solicit info, this Omnibus will Collect The Origin, Viva Las Buffy, Slayer Interrupted and All's Fair.

Don't blame if something below is wrong, cause I'm writing with what I remember by heart (yes, I'm one of those fans):

The Origin, was a 3-part mini series (which makes it the first ever mini series released for the comics, outside the regular montly series), released in late 1998. Only a few months after the monthly series started to be published. It was a adaptation of Joss' script for the 92' movie, I believe done by Chris Golden, who was making his debut in the comics, with art by Joe Bennnet and Hector Gomez. It brings Buffy early training closer to Joss vision, and also incorporated Buffy burning the gym mentioned early in the TV Show. Also Merrick looks more like the guy we saw in Becoming, instead of looking like Donald Sutherland. The Origin has it own TPB.

"Viva Las Buffy" and "Slayer Interrupted" are 2 (4 part) of the 3 storylines that were as a whole called back then Buffy Year One, or something like that, which concluded the previous regular montlhy series. As the comics were already doing in a while, the storyline attempted to fill the gap between Origin and Season 1. Written by Scott Lobdell and Fabian Niscieza, featuring art by Paul Lee and Cliff Richards, showed what happenned to Buffy after she left L.A with Pike and her stint in the mental health institution, that was explored in "Normal Again", but with the memories that our Buffy remember from there. Both storylines were previously individually collected in their own TPBs.

Finally, "All Fair" was the third Spike and Dru, written by Chris Golden, and was supposed to feature once more the art of Ryan Sook, who did the previous two, but this one is actually mostly done by Eric Powell. It furthers some events shown in "Fool for Love", like Spike killing his first Slayer, and its repercussions. UPDATE: "All Fair" was collected in the Buffy, the Vampire Slayer: Spike & Dru TPB, which collected all 3 One Shots, plus a short story from "Lovers Walk" (the OS comic, not the episode).

It seems that there might be some extra story in there, since the Solicit reports a 320-page count for this Volume 1 Omnibus, and I just added up the numbers, and from the stories featured, it will only reach about 288-pages (About 72 pages for "The Origin", 96 pages for "Viva Las Buffy" and also for "Slayer Interrupted", and about 24 pages for "Spike & Dru: All's Fair" - yes, I'm counting the alternate photo covers).




Yep, "A Stake to the Heart" is the montlhy series final storyline, showing the Summers dealing with the divorce and preparing to move to Sunnydale, and what was happening to some known faces in Sunnydale and in England, concluding the "Buffy: Year 1" theme-arc.



Actually some of them were "mini series within the series". With the growth of the TPB culture, a lot of books started to be solicited that way.
"The Origin" was a mini series outside the montlhy. "All Fair" was a One Shot.
"Viva Las Buffy" and "Slayer Interrupted" were the two storylines that came right after BtVS#50, and as I mentioned above composed 2 of the 3 storylines from Buffy: Year One, that ran through the remaining regular montlhy series. I believe the featured storyline, were featured in BtVS#51 to #58 or #59.

The regular series ended with the "Stake to the heart" 4-part storyline, so the previous run, ended in #63.

[ edited by Numfar PTB on 2007-02-06 12:34 ]

Numfar PTB | February 06, 12:29 CET

paxomen, yeah, I was surprised 'A Stake Through the Heart' isn't in there too, but I guess that'll start off volume two.

Shiai, yup looking good for that. The Star Wars comics editors have said that collecting such 'orphaned' stories is one of the points of the Star Wars Omnibuses, and I presume the same holds true for Buffy. Which is cool, because 'Jonathan' was just Espensonilicious.

Numfar, not a complete timeline, but I recently did a post on the pre-Season Eight comics most worth reading. The comics in the Omnibus are all on it, too.

The comic that takes up the extra pages in there must be the one-issue Dawn-centric tale that came out during the Year One period. That was written and drawn by Paul Lee, and Paul Lee is listed among the writers here.

Niels van Eekelen | February 06, 14:02 CET

I've heard varying reports about these comics but at $25 (hopefully around £13) for 320 full colour pages seems like it's worth the gamble. If there're even two or three gems in there it'll pay for itself I reckon.

(thanks for the heads-up hitnrun017 and the contextual info Numfar PTB and Telltale)

Saje | February 06, 14:19 CET

Simon, you should definitely read The Origin. Everything Numfar PTB said. The the art isn't that great (I've only been a comics fan for like a year, but I'm already developing taste) but it's the only version we have of the original Buffy movie. And there's a lot of character stuff. It doesn't suck. It's Jossy.

dreamlogic | February 06, 14:20 CET

Very Cool. I actually quite enjoyed Chris Golden stories also. Hope you don't mind if I include a link to your blog post, when I happen to finish writing mine.



Art wise, the comics suffered a lot in the earlier days due to all that work on depicting likeness, which unless youre someone like, say Alex Ross, really tight your hands, if there's not much of an artistic plan or you're starting to understand how to juggle actor likenss and comic book movement.

They got better later on. I loved Christian Zanier work in Angel. And both Ryan Sook and Cliff Richards, who both got to work in some projects at DC and Marvel later on, pretty much build a lot of their carrer doing Buffy comics. Cliff who did a lot of the regular series, was even challenged in some crative ways. For example in the 3-part arc "Ugly Little Monsters", he was still doing the same 22 page comic each month, but he had to use 3 panels in every page of the comic to tell the story during this arc. Yes, likeness was always an issue. My non-comic fans when I lent them my comics, always said, but she doesn't look like Sarah or Aly or Nick. But you knew the characters, and I think that's the most important part.

As a weird note - or trivia, that I remember from some time ago -several artists involved with the Buffy previous regular series, were all South American. Joe Bennett (who did most of Andi Watson early Run #1 to early chapters of "Bad Blood") and Cliff Richerds (joined during Chris Golden run, and pretty much stayed until the end) are both Brazilians. And Hector Gomez (who did the final issues of Watson's run, and some mini series) is Argetinian, who happenned to live in Brazil for several years.

I remember even Cliff commenting on how he was working on issues that delved into some storylines from 6th season, before Fox started to show it over here.

Numfar PTB | February 06, 14:53 CET

Very Cool. I actually quite enjoyed Chris Golden stories also. Hope you don't mind if I include a link to your blog post, when I happen to finish writing mine.

Please do. That post might be the only one on my blog anyone besides me has read. :-)

I thought Golden's 'The Blood of Carthage' was pretty good, too, but Golden very much writes his own flavor of Buffy, with his own recurring characters. I left it off my list because I wanted the stories with the most direct appeal to none-comic/novel reading Buffy fans.

And incidentally, Cliff Richards already started during Andi Watson's run as writer. I've heard some people complain about his likenesses, but I always thought they were great--more than just the faces, his Scooby gang acted like the Scooby gang. If Georges Jeanty needs a break sometime, Cliff should fill in.

Plus I have one of his original Buffy pages, which is awesome. ;-)

Niels van Eekelen | February 06, 16:56 CET

There is a complete timeline of the Buffyverse comics at Wikipedia (including all the Buffy and Angel ones), it's done by story-arcs rather than by issue#, and each story-arc has its own article: Buffyverse comics timeline. You can see how the comics roughly match television series continuity at the even more complete Wiki-Buffyverse chronology (which chronologically lists Buffy/Angel episodes, novels, comics, video games, and other bits)

People maybe interested on a comment from Whedon back in 1999 on The Origin:



[ edited by Dalton on 2007-02-06 16:55 ]

Dalton | February 06, 18:49 CET

Thank's Dalton, didn't know about those, just make my upcoming post quite smaller. And more opnative, instead of informative. Gonna link that too.

The Origin got some problems with dates, which kept the dates that appeared in the script with what appeared in the script, instead of changing them to new timeline, based on 1997.

Numfar PTB | February 06, 18:58 CET

I know they won't but I would be in geek heaven if they fixed the dates in the upcoming "The Origin" in the omnibus, and improved the likeness/dialogue of Buffy's parents to match the television series.

Dalton | February 06, 19:11 CET

Like the later fixes DC and Marvel have been doing lately in their collected editions, right?

Numfar PTB | February 06, 19:14 CET

I guess so, have Marvel and DC been correcting their continuity in the collected editions so that it makes more sense?

Dalton | February 06, 19:21 CET

I don't know about the specifics of what Marvel did, but I remember reading about it.

In DC's case, the most recent, famous and also polemic one, was with Geoff Jones and Phil Jimenez' "Infinite Crisis". Where several tweaks and changes were done. Jimenez was allowed to change and correct some of the artwork that he didn't have time to finish when the mini series was first released, so things would be clearer and events would line up with what they really wanted to tell, and to the current OYL and 52 storylines.

But, now we're faring too far Off Topic. Bennet is at DC, doing some work for 52, but I wonder what Gomez if doing nowadays. Wonder in Dark Horse would consider doing those fixes.

Numfar PTB | February 06, 19:32 CET

Thank you all for being so informative! The world of comics is incredibly confusing for someone who's just getting interested in them. (Just what I needed, a new hobby to spend money on. All Joss' fault.)

jcs | February 06, 19:48 CET

I hadn't yet gotten into comics when the original Buffy series was published so it will be great to finally read them.

Derf | February 06, 20:30 CET

The Origin is most definitely worth checking out, either as part of the Omnibus, or else in its own trade paperback from a few years ago. If that had been the working script for the movie, I think the original film might have fared much better (funny historical sidebar: the film did poorly at the box office in the U.S...only around $15m...but the novelization of the film was a big hit with young adults, and eventually prompted Simon & Schuster to do a line of Buffy books once the TV show was launched). Chris Golden did justice to the original vision of Joss.

Shiai | February 06, 21:22 CET

No problem, that's why we here.

Madhatter | February 06, 21:57 CET

I expect bringing artists back in to fix things might be too expensive for a reprint edition, but if you know which dates were wrong where in the comic, you can always send an email to the nice people at Dark Horse, and who knows.

Looking at that Wikipedia list, a second volume might consist of 'A Stake to the Heart,' 'The Dust Waltz,' 'Ring of Fire' and the remaining two Spike & Dru oneshots.

I wonder if Dark Horse still has the rights to repring their old Angel comics.

Niels van Eekelen | February 07, 00:02 CET