The Long Way Home is a graphic novel based on the hit television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. While the TV show ran seven seasons, this new comic line is billing itself as the 8th season of the show. This graphic novel is made up of the first four issues of that comic, and it basically tells what became of the Scoobies after the show ended, then sets up what is to happen in this new season.

TV Show Spoiler Alert - In case you missed it, the final episode of Buffy ended with the town of Sunnydale being completely destroyed. A lot of other things were set in motion, including the activation of nearly 2,000 different slayers all over the globe. It used to be that only a couple of slayers would exist at one time, but they all had to be activated in order to stop what was ailing them at the end of the TV show’s seventh season. Once they stopped the evil, you had to wonder what all the slayers had to do next. That is answered in this comic book series - End Alert.

Joss Whedon, who is the creator of Buffy and the writer of many of its episodes, also wrote these stories. Knowing that will probably make any fan of the show that much more eager to read these comics. This series takes place about two years after the show ended, and it involves things much larger than what probably could have ever been developed into a new season of the television series.

When this story begins, Buffy is there to narrate the setting. She describes how slayers all over the world are working together in various teams to rid the world of demons. Things have gotten a lot more high tech now, with an eyepatch-wearing Xander working like a commander in some kind of bunker where he has a slew of computers and monitors to keep track of the slayers. In many ways, they are like a full-scale military operation.

Being that the behavior of the slayers is often akin to military action, the United States military doesn’t take kindly to the idea of an independently run militia working within U.S. Borders. Basically, they think the slayers might be a bunch of terrorists, especially considering all the carnage left in their wake. When Buffy and crew encounter a new evil force that bears an odd tattoo on its members, they find themselves (once again) fighting an enemy bigger and badder than ever before. As before, there’s plenty of interpersonal drama with the characters, since they’ve been through so much together.

Since Whedon himself was behind this series, you can expect it to fit right into the Buffy pantheon. From the witty dialogue to the action, it reads just like a proper Buffy story should. Just like the show often did, new characters were introduced in the last scene, and you’ll see a lot of old familiar villains come back to settle the score with Buffy and her gang. There’s also a running subplot where Dawn, Buffy’s little sister, has been turned into a giant, but nobody knows why.

The artwork in this graphic novel is great, and the characters do all look very much like the actors who portrayed them in the series. I was most impressed by how much the artist rendered Willow, because it’s almost photo-perfect in some frames. The artist, George Jeanty, fills each page with all kinds of details, including a lot of subtle references to things connected to the show and Whedon. In one part, I noticed a little toy figure lying on a floor that looked a lot like the Mutant Enemy ‘Grrr Argh!’ monster that played at the end of the credits for the TV series.

If you are a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you seriously need to be reading this new series. It’s already up to 11 issues, with a new issue coming out every month or two. The Long Way Home contains the first four.


Recommended: Yes

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