Buffy Season 8, Vol. 1: 'The Long Way Home' by Joss Whedon

The following review contains spoilers.

The Long Way Home, the first volume of Buffy Season 8, is a wonderful opening for the series comic book continuation. Ultimately, Season 8 on a whole will prove to be a train wreck, but the first volume is still pretty good to read.

Here, Buffy leads hundreds of Slayers in an army and takes them on worldwide missions fighting demons, and it's a great premise. Literally, every one of the core Scoobies have taken a Level in Badass. Buffy jumps out of helicopters with squads of soldiers and makes her Slayers call her ma'am, Xander wears an eye patch and now coordinates her missions as a pseudo-watcher, but the reward for the largest power boost has to go to Willow, who can now fly, teleport across countries, vaporize people, communicate with spirits, and auto-heal wounds even when her body is completely torn apart. For anyone who loves these characters, it is awesome to read about.

Unfortunately, the villains don't fare as well as the heroes. All three of the villains shown in this volume are jaw-droppingly one-dimensional. One is a stereotypical crazy American general who thinks the Slayers aren't good for "American interests"...even though they saved the world from being overrun by the ultimate embodiment of evil. The second, Amy from the Buffy TV show, wants to kill Buffy and her friends even though it's never explained why she would want to do so, but the worst villain brought back has to be a now-skinless Warren, whom Amy apparently saved from death and is now sleeping with.

At first, Warren being brought back might not seem so horrible, since it allows for Willow to confront a darker time in her life and has potential for good character moments.

However, his "resurrection" opens up a ridiculous amount of plot holes: Why did Amy save him? How could she be spying on Willow all this time without anyone noticing? How could Amy have saved him if he was alive all this time? Where was he throughout Season 7?

The plot of this volume centers around the Scoobies fighting off an attempted invasion of their headquarters by the General, Amy, and Warren. The actual quality of the plot varies. Almost all of the fight scenes are good, especially with a now-giant Dawn, but the scene where Amy puts Buffy under a spell so she won't wake up until she's "kissed by her true love" is appallingly stupid. Amy, honey, a lot of people love Buffy. It's not that hard to find someone who cares about her. Also, the General, Amy, and Warren follow a new Big Bad called Twilight. We don't know much about him, but as the series gets worse, you'll wish it stayed that way.

At least the dialogue is good. If I gave every example of a line that warmed my heart or made me laugh, this review would never end. One bit of character development, however, strikes me as odd. Buffy's narration shows that she's still suffering from the loneliness that hit her full force from Season 5 onwards. She may no longer be the only functioning Slayer, but because she's a leader, she presumably can't connect with her subordinates on a meaningful level. By itself, this would make sense, except Xander and Willow now respectively lead the communications and magic divisions of her army. If they manage to have good relationships with their subordinates, why can't Buffy?

So, to summarize, what we have here is lots of fun action and dialogue, but meandering villains and some questionable character development choices. Vol 1 of Buffy Season 8 is still a good read, and I'd recommend it to any Buffy fan, but keep in mind that the small problems in this volume will later rise up and swallow the season whole.