Buffy the Vampire Slayer – “Past Lives”
Dark Horse Comics – November 21, 2001
Writers: Christopher Golden, Thomas E. Sniegoski
Artists: Christian Zanier, Cliff Richards, Joe Pimentel, Lee Loughridge, Clem Robins
Editor: Scott Allie

This comic could probably go in either subsection of comics, but since it is in my Buffy Omnibus, that’s where I’m going to slot it. And you know what? I think it deserves to be there, more, anyhow. Despite having a tighter connection to Angel as a character (honestly the only connective tissue to BtVS is that Giles used to date the bad guy for the story, something clearly shoehorned in to tie them together), the fact is that this is both almost good enough to be a necessary positive influence on the total score for Omnibus comics, and it falters in a classic way that all Buffy comics do.

The story here is that a mysterious woman has it in for Angel because of some nasty business from his past that tainted her family line forever. She joins the Watcher’s Council, studies and trains, and then gets access to all their most powerful artifacts and magical abilities in order to be their top-level operative. But her secret agenda has her betray everyone around her so she can wear down Angel, his friends, and even her old lover in order to avenge her family. Its a nice story and would fit in a season of either show, even with some crossover potential. Hell, even the characters sound right. Willow in particular, who is hard to nail down because of her manic nature of talking, comes across like someone from the show wrote her instead of the usual comic book crap that they shove down my throat each issue.

The art is fine, most of the characters are easily identifiable and showcase some actual telltale signs of who they are (maybe Anya and Tara could use a little work, and Riley looks mostly like a cardboard cutout of what “Man” would be if drawn up by a committee, but that’s also how he comes across on the show so I can’t fault them too much), and the action is actually pretty OK for the most part. Many of the fodder demons are a bit “too otherwordly” to fit the style of the show, but not so much so that they detract from the story at hand.

No, that issue is for Alexa Landry, who I can’t find a great picture of online, but is drawn like someone saw The Matrix and decided that the leather outfits in there weren’t sexy enough and needed more cutout cross shapes on all the characters’ boobs:

There is no reason for this character, who is moderately compelling and has a good, solid arc (if not wrapped up too nicely and who knows, these comic writers love to throw their creations back into the ring from time to time so she might pop up again) to dress like a dominatrix and be all dolled up for her mission. High heels, long painted nails, clearly copious amounts of eye makeup, and then yeah, enough skin showing in suggestive places with a form fitting leather outfit? It just seems like someone had a character design they liked, Dark Horse said “we’ll pass on that”, and so they shoved her into a Buffy comic so they could use her. And listen, I’m not saying that I hate sex-appeal in comics, but one too many pronounced outlines of a nipple and I’m thrown out of my immersion. No one even comments on the outfit, which tells me the script writers got one look at this design and said “yeah now we’ll ignore that”.

So its a mixed bag because most of this comic works, but then the primary antagonist is drawn like the artist listened to a bunch of horny teenage boys about what made a chick “cool” and then upped the fuckability by 69%. Always one step forward, two steps back with these Buffy comics, I tell ya what.

Should You Read This: I mean, you should at least look at the pictures, some of them are really hottttttttttttt