Buffy The Vampire Slayer #24

Faith looks booberific!

Looking forward to this, Faith + Giles was fantastic last time, but without BKV will it still work? 

Why wouldn't it work?  These characters worked long before Brian K Vaughn ever touched 'em.

Faith + Giles = me very excited!

Yay!  I thought I was going to trade on this book, but who am I kidding?  I ended up picking up the one-shots I skipped and loved them.  i'm definitely on board for Faith & Giles.

@Hawkboy Many of the non-Whedon stories on this book have been hit or miss. And BKV wrote a stellar arc with these two. Is it any wonder that I'm a bit leery that Krueger, a decent but decidedly vanilla writer, is tackling them?

Yeah but you make it sound like nobody can write these characters other than Brian K Vaughn, and since they have been around for over 10 years that is decidedly not the case.  I wouldn't say Vaughn's take on the characters was anything other than a solid story....it certainly wasn't defining in any way to forever attach his name to these characters.

@hawkboy I was referring more to the dynamic of Faith and Giles then their individual writing. While they certainly are the characters from the series, the dynamic presented in Vaughn's arc was not. Is it an original dynamic? No, it's certainly based on Pygmalion and the like, but it was fun. And if I recall, they were originally only supposed to be handled by Vaughn in Season 8. I realize he has other things to do and can't keep up with it, but I know I'm not going to get the same caliber of *story* from Krueger. Now, he may surprise me come tomorrow.

Okay, I shouldn't have doubted Krueger. This was a pretty good fill-in story. While it was easily guessable, it was still fun to see Faith and Giles in these roles. I will say I marked this issue lower than I might have if I hadn't read virtually the same story in last week's Fantastic Four by Millar and Hitch. Even the monster is the same. While I realized both stories are derived from long traditions of such tales, I can't help but feel like I got a "less complicated" version of it from this issue. Still, Krueger impressed.

But what I did love about this issue was Cliff Richards art. I thought it was fantastic. He really captured the likenesses of Faith and Giles while bringing his own style to the table. I admittedly don't know much about him. Good issue over all.

I felt like this was another down issue, not as bad as the Harmony crap but not great either. After reading it though I realized even the tv show had quite a few stand-alone stories that didn't effect the overall arc that much. The voices just didn't seem right for Faith and Giles.

Probably worst issue yet. Absolutely nothing revealed (to me) with respect to the overall storyline, and barely any hints of character development. Executive producer is getting busy and starting to phone it in. This was, at best, the best of the pre-Season 8, BTVS licensed comics, which even at best, was not very good. 

WHAT!  I thought this was a really great issue. It felt totally Whedon , and I thought the art was great. I could care less about the new Courtney character but Faith and Giles is a winning combo.  Maybe they should have their own spinoff series. . .  She is more interesting than buffy has been recently.

@tacticalchaos15  yeah i loved the issue too. it was a nice solid look at what is going on in the rest of the world. still want to get back to the main plot and find out who twilight is but this was a good issue

Definate improvement over last month's, but still not amazing. 3/5

Story 5/5 Art 4/5 

Anything with Faith is going to be awesome. Faith is the new and imporved Slayer. Same great slayer flavor, but 50% less whiny. This story was great, especially when Faith did battle with the "Little Shop of Horrors" demon. Awesome, cant wait for the next one. The Jo Chen cover was off thought, Eliza Dusku has never come equiped with dual air bags. Not sure if this make the art better or worse...Ill get back to you on that one.

 Greg from CA

I've been digging these one-shots.

@ohcaroline same here, and this was not a bad one either. The dialog felt a little stiff, especially with Giles, but other than that it was rather enjoyable. Also a great fun was to read through the letters column at the end. It seems that a lot of people were angered by the Buffy/Satsu thingy...

Unquestionably my least favorite issue as yet. I just hated this.

I didn't enjoy this issue as much as I thought I would.  Courtney was annoying, and the plot was too similar to the last story in Fantastic Four.  I'm ready to get back to the main Twilight plot.