Last year Buffy creator Joss Whedon announced something new: a canonical continuation of the Buffy TV show which would be entirely outlined by him and which would be written by him, by various other writers from the show, and by notable comic book authors. The result was "Buffy Season Eight" which began publication in March. The first five issues have now been collected in a trade paperback, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Volume One: The Long Way Home.

Season Eight was originally expected to last 25 issues, but more recent interviews suggest it might go 50 or more, with the possibility of some spin-off series as well.

The Story

Besides the four-issue story, "The Long Way Home" (#1-4), this trade paperback also contains a standalone issue, "The Chain" (#5), all written by Joss Whedon.

"The Long Way Home" opens up a while after Season Seven. One interview suggests that it's at least a year and a half later and thus also after the series finale of Angel.

This first arc highlights two core concepts.

The first is that the end of Season Seven was a pivotal event in the Buffyverse. As Buffy narrates as the start of the first issue, "The thing about changing the world ... Once you do it, the world's all different."

The big change at the end of Season Seven was, of course, the simultaneous activation of every potential Slayer in the world. There's now 1800 Slayers known of, and 500 of them are working with Buffy in ten separate squads. The result is a sort of paramilitary organization with Buffy at the head; they're finding demons in the most organized was that the Buffyverse has ever seen.

The other core concept is that a new Big Bad is rising--because you can't have a Buffy season without a Big Bad. It's called Twilight, and it's largely ambiguous in this first volume, although its definitely opposed to Buffy and her brood.

Beyond this all, we get to see what many of our old favorites have been up to, although some like Willow and Dawn are still somewhat shrouded in mystery. We also gets some returns from some surprise villains who I won't mention further lest I destroy the surprise.

The short story, "The Chain", depicts the fate of one of the Slayers asked to impersonate Buffy because of her new, crucial place at the head of a monster-fighting army.

The Storytelling

Joss Whedon has done a bit of Buffy comic book writing before, and much of it's left me pretty cold. This is the first time that I feel like he's really matched his TV vision of Buffy in comic books.

The characters all seem dead-on, and the writing is as witty as you'd expect from the TV show. However where the comic really shines is in its thoughtful continuation of the events from the TV show. Whedon's really thought about the fallout that the final episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer would cause, and here he's described not just the fate of the Slayer and her friends, but also how the rest of the world reacts to these changes.

Overall, the comic is a great return to a world that I thought I might never get to see again, at least not officially.

I do have one complaint about the writing, and it's that the storytelling sometimes felt a little muddled. Things occasionally jump from scene to scene right in the middle of a page, and I found it a bit hard to follow these transitions, forcing me to backtrack and reread to get the full impact. Oddly, my wife said she didn't have the same problems, leading me to believe that Whedon is flaunting some comic-book conventions in a way that confused a constant reader like me but not someone less conversant with those same conventions.

The Artwork

The artwork is by Georges Jeanty for the first four issues, then by Paul Lee for the standalone fifth issue. I generally found it good, though not exceptional. My biggest problem with TV adaptations is that the artists often have a hard time matching the real look of characters to the comic book form, and thus you sometimes end up with comic books where people look very wrong. That isn't the case here; instead the characters are for the most part recognizable.

Beyond that the artwork is relatively fluid and dynamic. Only its somewhat sparse style keeps it from really standing out.

The cover artist, Jo Chen, deserves some additional note, just because her art is appropriate, recognizable, and beautiful. It's a shame she's not doing more work than just the outsides.

Conclusion

The Long Way Home is a very encouraging start to "Buffy Season Eight" that leaves me eagerly awaiting the rest. The idea of a canonical continuation of the TV series on its own would be very exciting, and Whedon's entirely fulfilled that promise, offering up a book that really shows off the strengths we expect.

A lot of Whedon's previous work has run the gamut from "adequate" to "fun". This is the first time he's truly shined, and its appropriate that it's as part of the continuation of his best-known TV work.

I've rated The Long Way Home an "8" out of "10".