Welcome back to This Week in Comics, my reviews of whichever comics I’ve bought for the week. As always, reviews contain SPOILERS. If you’ve got a problem with spoilers, take it up with my supervisor.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 #23 | Cable #12 | Farscape #3 of 4 | War of Kings #1 of 6 | X-Men First Class Finals #2 of 4

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: SEASON 8 #23
Writer: Drew Z. Greenberg
Penciler: Georges Jeanty
Publisher: Dark Horse

Right away, the thing that stuck out the most about this issue was the dialogue. It was completely, absolutely, 100% on point. More than many other issues, the dialogue was written so perfectly, I actually heard the voices of the actors as I read through the story. I had to go back to the credits page to see who the writer was. It’s Drew Z. Greenberg, one of the old staff writers and story editors from the Buffy TV series.

Andrew is heavily featured in this issue, as some of the slayers under his command went rogue some time ago, and he’s finally received information about the capture of one of them. Apparently somewhere in Italy (where Andrew leads a team of slayers as their watcher), a rogue slayer named Nisha has been ensnared by some sort of Ragna demon, and retrieving Nisha could allow Buffy to find and bring in a notorious rogue slayer named Simone. Buffy and Andrew go on this mission alone, which allows us to read some of Andrew’s many geeky musings about Star Wars, Terminator, Jem, V for Vendetta, and Daniel Craig as James Bond. Somewhere along this long trip, Buffy and Andrew finally bond, which makes for an amusing couple of pages. However, things in the story take a sudden turn when it’s revealed that Andrew genetically engineered the Ragna demon specifically to capture the rogue slayers. Simone surprise attacks Buffy and Andrew, then steal the Ragna demons for herself. In the end, there’s a nifty sword fight, gunshots fired, and Buffy wins while the fate of Simone’s rogue slayers remains unknown.

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It’s been a while since we’ve seen Andrew in a significant role in this comic, and he came back big time in this issue. This issue clearly establishes that Andrew isn’t just a tag along who hangs out with Buffy’s crew because he has nowhere else to go; he’s a part of Buffy’s extended family, like Willow and Xander. Buffy expresses her trust in him, and with good reason. Andrew is pretty clever, and aside from the sixteen slayers who left the fold completely, he commands the respect of the slayers he watches over. He also proved to be surprisingly devious, as he went behind Buffy’s back in creating the Ragna demon.

This was a good issue. Certainly the first I’ve really enjoyed in a couple of months.

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CABLE #12
Writer: Duane Swierczynski
Pencilers: Jamie McKelvie & Ariel Olivetti
Publisher: Marvel

When we last left Cable and Hope, Cable tried to timeslide into the future to find food or water, but materialized over a sort of crater. Cable then promptly passed out from hunger and thirst, leaving a seven year old Hope alone for the first time in her life.

Being the foster daughter of Cable, Hope proves to be an enginuitive child. In the corner of her eye, Hope finds what she assumes is a partially buried can in the sand. After digging around it for a while, she discovers a crashed Japanese NASDA vessel, and opens the hatch to reveal a couple of long dead skeletons. Hope then thinks about what Cable would do, grabs his belt and some of his equipment, and climbs down the hatch to find drinkable water and food rationings. She takes them back to Cable, and finally revives him.

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What’s amusing is that as soon as Cable wakes up, he assumes Hope’s mutant powers have manifested early, as he can’t comprehend her discovering food and water when left to her own wits. Granted, she is only seven years old, but he’s been teaching her how to scavenger and survive all of her life. This misunderstanding leads to Cable asking Hope to use her powers “again,” which she finds confusing and frustrating. Eventually, they find the ruins of the Xavier Institute, where Cable discovers the voice recording Cyclops left for him several issues ago. After one last timeslide into the future, Cable and Hope find themselves in a populated future, and Cable has a bad feeling about this.

I think it was pretty funny, being able to read Hope’s thoughts through the narration boxes and see her speak aloud. She’s developed quite the vocabulary, even going as far as saying “fuckin’ A” when she finds water (censored, of course). Also, while I typically enjoy the painted look of Olivetti’s artwork, it was nice seeing McKelvie draw the majority of this issue. Olivetti’s Hope looks suoer deformed, with a ridiculously tiny body, large head, and a face that belongs to an adult. McKelvie wonderfully drew Hope’s little solo quest, and I wouldn’t object to him returning to this title in the future.

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FARSCAPE #3 OF 4
Writers: Rockne S. O’Bannon & Keith R.A. DeCandido
Penciler: Tommy Patterson
Publisher: BOOM!

Somehow, four issues doesn’t feel like enough. Farscape was a series that only got stronger as it continued, and became more engrossing as it played with more plot threads. This is the penultimate issue of this limited series, and it feels like they’ve set up too much to conclude in one final issue.

That said, this was still a very good issue. This is one of those times when Rygel gets to shine, and this comics gets the opportunity to do a few things that I imagine the TV series wouldn’t have done… like show Rygel stand. After being captured during a failed attempt to reclaim his throne, Rygel uses his experience both as a former prisoner and an adventurer aboard Moya to easily escape his shackles, and take over his prison transport ship. At the same time, John and Aeryn confront Scorpius, who has captured their son Deke. John and Aeryn escape Scorpius, reclaim their son, and bust out the rest of their friends. They soon meet up with Rygel aboard his prison ship, and agree to rendezvous with Moya at a Hynerian planet thought to be barren.

There’s something strange going on with baby Deke, and I’m interested to see if they’re going to reveal it next month. He hasn’t cried since Scorpius got his hands on him, and the planet seems to tremor a little when he’s in danger. The tremors started even before Scorpius, in fact. I also may have said this last month, but the writers (who also created and wrote for the old TV series) capture the characters’ voices perfectly.

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WAR OF KINGS #1 OF 6
Writers: Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning
Penciler: Paul Pelletier
Publisher: Marvel

It’s strange reading this issue, since it’s supposed to take place immediately after X-Men: Kingbreaker, and the final issue of Kingbreaker hasn’t been released yet. Still, from what I’ve already read, this issue seemed fairly accessible. In fact, I find that I could’ve easily skipped Kingbreaker. Aside from one missing Starjammer and Rachel Summers appearing to be an 80’s version of herself, nothing obvious has changed from the Emperor Vulcan miniseries to War of Kings. In fact, I probably could’ve skipped Emperor Vulcan. I pray that this miniseries doesn’t turn out to be yet another huge waste of my precious time and money.

My reservations aside, this issue was good if you were looking for wall to wall action. It starts with a chase scene, and ends with a blitz. Vulcan’s hubris is so bold that he had no qualms with staging a surprise attack on the Kree Empire during Crystal and Ronan’s wedding. During the attack, Vulcan sends the Shi’ar Imperial Guard to attack the wedding itself. Two Imperial guardsmen lose their lives, as does Ronan The Accuser. Lilandra gets captured, Ch’od loses a hand, Crystal is more upset than anything when someone tries to light her on fire, and Medusa has declared all-out war against Emperor Vulcan.

It’s on.

There were a few things off about this issue, however. Polaris and Crystal talk to one another as if they’re old friends, but they’ve had little to no interaction in the past. Yes, Crystal is Quicksilver’s ex-wife and Polaris is his sister, but Polaris and Quicksilver’s blood relation was unknown until recently, and certainly wasn’t known back when Quicksilver and Crystal were still together. Yet there’s Polaris, playing with her niece as if she knows her. There were also no panels to establish the actions of characters like Rachel Summers and Medusa during the big fight scene. This wouldn’t have been much of an issue, except that Medusa is badly scratched up on the final page with no explanation, and you need to account for Rachel’s actions when she’s been shown holding off Gladiator in the past.

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X-MEN FIRST CLASS FINALS #2 OF 4
Writer: Jeff Parker
Pencilers: Roger Cruz, Amilcar Pinna, and Colleen Coover
Publisher: Marvel

The X-Men are nearing their graduation from the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, but they first have to survive surprise attacks from practically every enemy they’ve faced in the past. This time, a mutant named Frederick has ambushed the X-Men. Readers might remember Frederick as an enemy from the previous X-Men First Class series, whom Cyclops assumed was dead after dropping him down a mineshaft. Frederick has survived, and he wants revenge. The X-Men are doing fairly poorly, until Juggernaut suddenly runs by, knocks out Frederick, and keeps running into the distance. The team attempts to contact Xavier through cerebro, but Jean instead detects a new mutant signature in an old rock quarry. When they investigate, they’re instead attacked by what appears to be Magneto.

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This issue also finished off with one of Coover’s humorous backup comics.

I can feel this miniseries ending with an “it was all a dream” twist, and that stops me from being excited about this story. As fun as X-Men First Class was in the past, this is a bit of a let down, and feels like such a bad way to end the best of the First Class comics.