Whedonesque : Comments on 6166 : "One Small Promise"

I usually like these but....ummm.....just not this time. Sorry, no.

People miss Buffy and Riley? ;)

TOTALLY joking. no offense intended. :)

I miss them heaps but I just don't want them back like this!

Kinda' reminds me of the fight between Buffy and Dawn in 'All the Way'. Funny, I couldn't stand Riley while BtVS aired. But now, in rewatching the show on DVD, I've noticed that Riley had some rather meaningful conversations with the other scoobies. But, as Buffy's boyfriend, there just wasn't enough 'demon' in him. Too wholesome.

Madhatter | February 25, 16:01 CET

What the hell?

Christopher | February 25, 16:29 CET

Incredibly juvenile 'story', like the worst sort of fanfic, really. Odd.

Caroline | February 25, 16:33 CET

Poor Riley he really was to nice for his own good. I wished they would have taken him to an even darker place than the selling-blood-to-vamps maybe even vamped him completely. This would have opened up some interesting storylines in early season 5, big fight with Spike over Buffy ?, asking Buffy to stake him ?, a vamp army recruited and led by Riley ?

Hope they can come up with better writing than this if they want to continue creating these comics.

jpr | February 25, 17:20 CET

Well that was just... really really bad

debw | February 25, 18:20 CET

"I've never had a women give me jewelry before." Ouch. Also, can we pick an eye color for Buffy?

Ocular | February 25, 18:37 CET

Ergh.

And I'm one of the few that love Riley (and accept Buffy/Riley as a part of his character...)

Amberina | February 25, 18:49 CET

??? "Floss your own ice"?? That's *so* Buffyspeak.

Ouch. Also, can we pick an eye color for Buffy?

I'm not sure the *show* ever did! I think we ended on blue for TGIQ, though!

But yeah...I've read better BADfanfic than this!

Rogue Slayer | February 25, 19:13 CET

I'm a rare breed of Buffy/Riley lovers, but that wasn't even Buffy and Riley. I don't know who they were but, ugh! I was actually rooting for the vamps.

Gypsy | February 25, 19:14 CET

Though I can understand the eye color confusion from the show, Sarah's natural eye color is green.

Madhatter | February 25, 19:31 CET

Man. That was just...bad.

vamRIPire | February 25, 19:33 CET

Actually, I think that would have played out as a pretty funny scene on screen.

Revello | February 25, 22:47 CET

You're right Madhatter, very "All the Way". This was not one of my favorites. I for one DO enjoy the Riley/Buffy couple. All her relationships helped form her character in one way or another. Excpet Parker..errrr. I knew too many boys like him in college. As far as the necklace, Buffy would never give one to a boy. She has better taste than that. Maybe a ring. No disrespect to you men who wear necklaces, but that is soooo 1988.

Harmalicious | February 25, 23:20 CET

Ah, I think this was from a single one-shot issue called "Lover's Walk" (yeah, they named an issue after an episode. Pretty lame, IMO). There may've been two or three other short stories in there as well. From what I remember it was a waste of time.

Writing team Pascoe and Fassbender were a little overrated. More misses than hits. I remember them having a few good ideas plot-wise, but they never had the characters or the dialogue down, at least not from what I remember. This is why it's so hard to recommend much of the regular Buffy comic book series, because so little of it was good. So I don't bother wasting the effort, I just say, "Fray, Tales of the Slayer, Haunted, and maybe that sorta comical one by Jane Espenson that toys with the viewers over what happend when Buffy met Angel halfway after she came back from the dead. That's all that I can guarantee will entertain and not make you cringe, happy reading."

Kris | February 25, 23:38 CET

Don't forget Tales of the Vampires, Kris, which I prefer slightly to TOTS. And I kinda like the retconning, to use the word in vogue, of BtVS: The Origin; not sure if the story is really changed much at all, but I just like to see SMG's visage in the tale . . . Now, what's Haunted?

SoddingNancyTribe | February 26, 00:07 CET

Haunted was the Jane Espenson mini that bridged the gap between season three and four. It featured the ghost of the Mayor and connected him to Adam. I won't say anymore though in fear of spoiling it.

Jackal | February 26, 02:10 CET

Can we say trying to duplicate the scene from "Prom" when Buffy and Angel are fighting about breaking up in that cave, and a vampire tries to attack, but Buffy kills him and they carry on their fight. This reminds me of that...but NOT in a good way. I don't know how much time and effort went into this crappy story, but I do know that it was all wasted. Yes we Whedon-Junkies need our fix...but not this way. Hopefully this was a one time slip up and the ones to come will be much better.

Gio | February 26, 03:44 CET

I'm one of the few fans I think who didn't really choose to root for one beau over another. Each of the men whom Buffy dated served their purpose in her life. Well. Except maybe Parker. He was just an ass.

I appreciate what the people behind One Small Promise were trying to accomplish, and far be it for me to look a gift horse in the mouth. I mean, it didn't cost us anything. I am thankful that we get the Buffy Ecomics at all. Bearing that in mind, in more than one occasion the artist got SMG's mouth completely wrong. The customary fight was superlative and predictable. The spacing of the panels was more artsy and less communicative. The dialogue didn't read at all like a tiff between Riley and Buffy. Not a lot of thought seemed put into this or executing it.

It's nice to see the Buffy Ecomics explore areas that the television show never did. I'm not really sure what this was supposed to accomplish, but it wasn't that.

ZachsMind | February 26, 06:46 CET

Even Parker served a purpose - to quote ZM: "He was just an ass"

That was his purpose. To that point, Buffy hadn't got that yet, IMO. Parker was a valuable, if painful, lesson. Some people just are asses.

[ edited by catalyst2 on 2005-02-26 07:56 ]

catalyst2 | February 26, 09:56 CET

Kris (or anyone), do you happen to know the title of the one where Angel and Buffy meet half way after she comes back from the dead?

Harmalicious | February 26, 11:00 CET

Harmalicious, it's Reunion.

electricspacegirl | February 26, 11:17 CET

Thanks, electricspacegirl! Do you have any clue where I can find it?

Harmalicious | February 26, 11:33 CET

ZachsMind, here we were ripping this thing apart when you had to throw that intelligent review into the mix. Good thinking.

Madhatter | February 26, 12:44 CET

Well actually I thought I was (nicely) ripping this thing apart. It deserved dissection from people like ourselves, without frog fear. We've butchered it pretty well I think. I just didn't want to diss the effort behind it, even if the end result was a little disappointing.

I'd like to believe I could do a better job writing a Buffy Ecomic if given the chance, but do not wish to have my foot in mouth if someone approached me, putting their money where my mouth was. That would be mildly embarrassing, predominantly if I couldn't then come through with a Buffy Ecomic story that y'all wouldn't trounce five seconds after it went online! LOL!

I mean sure it's fun to rip new orifices for the people responsible for this questionable dip into the BuffyVerse, but honestly could you or I do any better? We'd like to think so perhaps, but there's a powerful difference between those of us kibbitzing in this inconsequential thread and the names Tom Fassbender, Jim Pascoe, Cliff Richards, P. Craig Russell, and Scott Allie.

They're published. We're just criticizing. This is like people at the foot of a mountain arguing over whether the people on the summit actually got to the top correctly, when we have no place to complain about their method unless we're gonna climb that mountain ourselves. To be blunt: methinks we doth protest too much.

ZachsMind | February 26, 23:56 CET

Hmm, agree somewhat...but because I've seen so much better writing from the Buffy comics license (and from non-Whedon-related comics, books, film, TV, etc), I feel pretty comfortable ripping into half-assed stuff like this. If I were Pascoe or Fassbender, and my first draft or two came out like that? I'd re-write the script as much as possible until it was a hell of a lot better than that. Or abandon it entirely failing that. I realize it's not that simple when you get commissioned to write stuff for a publisher and are on a schedule. The heart of the story they were trying to tell...eh, to me it didn't really feel like something that needed to be told or that enough Buffy fans would be interested in reading. Maybe Riley was getting a good response from the comic readership at the time, I can't remember.

Kris | February 27, 02:00 CET

...upon further contemplation, this little vignette might have worked if this was one scene in a larger story. The token vampires in this piece would have been more fleshed out, and the silver necklace might have been thought through better. Overall it just doesn't seem in character for Buffy, who is fashion conscious, to give her boyfriend such flippant jewelery, unless she had a greater reason to do so. Maybe somehow she learned that these particular vampires were after Riley for some reason, and she had Willow put a spell on the necklace to protect him.

Okay. Even that seems far-fetched, but my point is this scene may have fit into a larger picture, but is certainly not enough to stand alone.

ZachsMind | February 27, 07:27 CET

"I mean sure it's fun to rip new orifices for the people responsible for this questionable dip into the BuffyVerse, but honestly could you or I do any better?"

I'm a published author. But I've absolutely no ambition to do better. To write Buffyverse material at all. Still, I think we (or at least some people here) could probably do better than this, because we probably know the characters a little better than whoever wrote this story.

Caroline | February 27, 14:30 CET

Whoa, that was totally out of character for both of them. Riley came off more like Angel actually, I think.

fortunateizzi | February 27, 23:01 CET

February 25 2005