Christopher Golden - Buffy the Vampire Slayer 20 Years of Slaying: The Watchers Guide Authorized

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C hristopher Golden is the New York Times bestselling author of Snowblind , Tin Men , Ararat , and many other novels. He co-created (with Mike Mignola) two cult favorite comic-book series, Baltimore and Joe Golem: Occult Detective . As editor, his anthologies include The New Dead , Seize the Night , and Dark Cities . Once upon a time, he wrote a great many novels, comics, video games, and nonfiction books in the worlds of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel and loved every minute of it. Please visit him at christophergolden.com.

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The Official Post-TV Seasons

S everal years after the final episode of Buffy aired, Joss Whedon decided that maybe the show wasnt as over as the series finale had made it seem. Dark Horse Comics had done Buffy comics throughout the TV series run, but those were never considered to be in continuity, or part of the official story. In 2007 all that changed. Joss teamed up with the folks at Dark Horse to create Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight an official comic-book continuation of the television series, with Joss writing the first story arc and overseeing (or executive producing) the whole endeavor. Season Eight , it turned out, was only the beginning, and the Dark Horse Buffyverse currently runs up through Season Eleven .

So... where did Joss and company take your favorite characters in this official continuity? Were very glad you asked....

Picking up a year after the conclusion of the TV series, Season Eight presents a startlingly different status quo for Buffy and the now-scattered Scooby Gang. Taking full advantage of the comic-book form, Joss and artist Georges Jeanty reintroduce Buffy and Xander as the leaders of a global network of magick and technology, which they and their team use to combat the forces of darkness around the world. Its established that there are eighteen hundred Slayers in the world, roughly a third of whom work for Buffy, broken down into ten squads. Some of the squad leaders are very familiar to us, including Giles (UK), Andrew Wells (Italy), Vi (New York City), and Faith, among others. Willow has become extraordinarily powerful, thanks in part to the demon Saga Vasuki, who is revealed to be her lover.

A variety of villains present themselves, not least of which is the US government, which paints Buffy and her network as terrorists, and which enlists Sunnydales original witch, Amy Madison, and Taras killer, Warren Mears, to try to take them down. We also encounter an evil British Slayer who wants the top position, and a collective of Japanese vampires doing their best to undermine our favorite Chosen One. All these Little Bads are secretly working in service to Season Eight s Big Bad, a masked mystery man called Twilight.

Numerous subplots weave in and out of the forty issues (and three one-shots) that compose the sprawling Season Eight . Buffy sleeps with a fellow Slayer. Harmonythe much-loved airhead who went from Sunnydale classmate to vampire receptionist at Wolfram & Hartbecomes a reality TV star. Dawn loses her virginity to a guy who curses her, causing her to become a giant, then a centaur, before she eventually realizes that it was Xander she loved all alongand Xander loves her back! Buffy time travels, encountering Fray, a future Slayer whom Joss Whedon introduced in her own miniseries. The core gang visits Oz in Tibet to learn how to hide the magickal nature of both Slayers and witches, due to the fact that Twilight has learned how to track them by their magick, a sort of occult GPS.

Throughout these adventures, the core group begins to splinter again, as they have in the past. Trust is destroyed. In the midst of that atmosphere, Buffy turns to Angel, and despite everything at risk, they give in to their love and longing for each other... only to have Angel reveal that he has been Twilight all along... or, rather, that Twilight (a sort of Utopian limbo where they can live together forever) has possessed him. Twilight claims to have only admirable motivesbut for Buffy and Angel to have their happy ending in this new, beautiful universe, theyll have to allow the old one to be destroyed, along with everyone in it.

Angel manages to shake off Twilights influence, andthanks to a tip from Spikehe and Buffy track down the source of Twilights power: a mystical seed that is also the source of all magick in the world. Giles plans to destroy it, and it seems everyone is on the same page until Twilight possesses Angel again. Under Twilights control, Angel murders Giles. In grief and rage, Buffy destroys the seed, which defeats Twilight but also extinguishes all magick in the universe. Supernatural creatures (like vampires and Slayers) remain, but witches and sorcerers are left completely powerless.

Faith learns that Giles has left her his estate, with the expectation that she will step up and become the leader he always believed her to be. She brings Angel there and begins the process of trying to help him heal. Buffy, however, gets no such ending. Hated by Slayers and the now-powerless witches, she moves into Xander and Dawns San Francisco apartment. When we last see her, she has returned to the person she was when we first met her... the Slayer, hunting monsters by night.

Season Eight was written by Joss Whedon, with certain issues by Scott Allie, Brad Meltzer, Jim Krueger, Jeph Loeb, Brian K. Vaughan, and a host of writers from the original television series, including Jane Espenson, Drew Goddard, Steven S. DeKnight, Drew Z. Greenberg, and Doug Petrie. The arc was drawn primarily by Georges Jeanty, with certain issues illustrated by Paul Lee, Cliff Richards, Karl Moline, and Eric Wight.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Nine consists of two ongoing series (and several miniseries). In addition to the flagship title, Dark Horse launched Angel & Faith .

Season Nine begins with Buffy patrolling San Francisco, but in addition to the changes already detailed, other things have changed as well. With the death of magick, vampirism itself has been altered. It had previously been established that vampires were humans possessed by a certain brand of vampire... but now those demons arent able to fully inhabit the dead, resulting in abominations Xander starts to call zompires.

Xander and Dawn have settled down together into a life that seems almost ordinary. Likewise, Willow and Spike make appearances, but the now-magickless Willow soon leaves on a quest to try to restore magick to the universe, and Spike departs as well (the less said about hisahemspaceship, the better). Buffy teams up with a cop named Robert Dowling, and eventually learns that Anaheed, one of her roommates, is a Slayer whos been assigned to keep an eye on her.