#obviously wayne's a parallel to season 1 joyce

[keefechambers]

I DON'T CARE IF ANYONE BELIEVES ME.

[ifeveristoday]

Are we in Bizarro Land?

@jenny-calendar has already keyboard flailed about the progress of Jenny and Giles in the Boom!verse (and I definitely have thoughts of my own) but this issue is so good about picking up from the quiet introspectiveness of issue 7, as if Jordie thought, ‘Okay, I’ve let Willow breathe and Xander come to terms with his new existence...now shit’s really getting real’ and we’re back into action.

A feature of the Boom!verse has been the feeling that each issue has a mini cliffhanger - not necessarily, OMG what happens next?!? in feeling all the time, but ‘why did you end it THERE?’

It happened for me in the Chosen one-shot - I would have liked to have spent more time with the individual slayers (possibly giving each one her own issue instead of sharing?) but the glimpse I got of each life was intriguing.

With issue 8 of the Boom!verse, we’ve definitely hit upon OMG what happens next territory.

And one of the elephants in the fandom - the Buffy/Angel relationship gets introduced in this issue.

There’s a lot of other plot points about issue 8 that I’m going to address in separate posts, but I want to comment on the B/A dynamic as it is in the Boom! verse. OG canon will be referenced but for the most part I want to focus on what Jordie and Bryan have decided to do with them and how that impacts their relationship in 2019.

Did I go down a google deep dive to ascertain if Bats do in fact have tails? Yes. Yes I did. And they do, but it’s not quite to the extent that Handmade Costume Buffy takes it to -- her costume looks more like a cartoon version of a Bat, with the little forked end. There are 1000 species of bats, however, with the majority of them having some sort of tail, both obvious and not so obvious. And there’s a bumblebee bat that does not have a tail. I highly recommend that you google it because it’s goddamn adorable.

Despite his many years existing, I don’t think Angel really was cataloging all 1,000 species of bats and just went with the common perception that bats are tail-less. The bat motif has been repeated over with them in canon, however - there’s Camazotz, Buffy’s pegasus bat (who’s returning for HELLMOUTH), the endless Batman comparisons Angel has (TV and Bryan comparing him to Bruce Wayne) and of course vampire bats (Dracula and his party trick). Buffy dressing up as a bat is pretty on the nose for this ‘verse.

And I like that it’s obviously homemade - Joyce (or Eric! Doctor after all) probably helped her stitch on ears and a tail to a black hoodie and black shorts, and she just needed fishnets to complete the look - cozy with a slight detour into Women’s Halloween Costumes Must Be Sexy All The Time Now, Especially if It Is Not Sexy Before. Buffy wasn’t going to spend Tuna Palace money on wearing a costume for an event that she was forced to unofficially chaperone, hence the surliness/over it attitude with Halloween. We still have no idea what fifteen-year-old Slayer Buffy was like and if her Halloween in Los Angeles was eventful or it’s a Los Angeles vs “small town” approach to Halloween.

Or if it’s Buffy just being annoyed that once again, she really can’t participate in an ordinary teenage ritual, she has to watch over it to make sure everyone’s safe. The visual of Buffy on the fringes of the party, observing, not participating is something that really resonated with me, as a fan of the TV canon and just being a withdrawn person in RL. 

Buffy’s had a setback - her friends have gotten hurt helping her slaying, her crush has fizzled out before it could properly begin (and Robin dancing with a look-alike didn’t help) and as Giles likes to remind her, evil is always in the background. Her doing normal stuff - group date with her friends is directly before Xander gets turned by Spike and Drusilla, and then she witnesses Willow giving up a part of her soul for Xander, and being defensive when Willow tells her she hardly knows herself - Buffy is both a part of their group but separate. The argument the two get into in front of the demon - that Buffy tells Willow she’s pretending, and Willow tossing back that Buffy is a master of pretending and lying (Slayer, secret identity after all) and the demon sneering at Buffy’s overinflated sense of worth - just because she’s the Slayer doesn’t automatically give her soul more weight. Xander and Willow’s bond excludes her because they’ve known each other forever and she is the new girl. The outsider.

We’ve been given more insight to Willow and Xander, but just peeks at Buffy’s mindset - and with all that’s happened, I don’t blame her for being resentful or less sunshine-y than her season 1 TV counterpart. But Boom! Buffy as always, is her own person.

It’s this person Angel is trying to figure out. Over in his world, Buffy/The Slayer is nothing but a flashing danger sign - a shadowy figure that he first mistakes for Mara/Marius - a source of regret/love from his Angelus past. Mara was chosen by Angelus because she was a renowned fighter, and he makes/renames her in his image - possibly referencing the Roman god of War as well. But all the omniscient demons in his life insist that this girl is a danger to him and that love will bring him nothing but pain and she is the instrument of that pain.

Moth, meet flame.

Boom! Angel is not burdened with destiny in the shape of a girl, he doesn’t know anything about the Slayer or what role she’s going to play in his life, only that she’s going to impact it - most likely in a negative way.

So what does he do?

Treat it like a war campaign - do the recon, know your opponent’s weaknesses.

Which brings the comedy, because the Slayer he’s been warned off so many times isn’t the feared creature of vampire myth and legend, but a resentful tired girl in a bat costume who does not appreciate the tall dark ‘looks like a serial killer’ man in a devil mask sitting right next to her. She wants to be left alone.

In any other typical story, there would be that element of fear with a stranger, but because Buffy’s the Slayer, she knows she can defend herself and put the hurt on this guy.

Meanwhile, it’s Angel’s turn to observe. And 2019 Angel’s social skills have ...not improved. There is a slight symmetry to their meeting - Buffy watching a world she’s not quite a part of, and Angel watching her and not sure how she fits into his world, both outsiders looking at something they’re not sure they want but still are fascinated by.

Angel’s initial attempt to get closer to Buffy (literal sitting down next to her, then being a troll and moving up one stair) is the personal approach - he notices that she’s bothered by Robin dancing with another girl and then quickly enters Uncomfortable Job Interview Questions territory - 'tell me about yourself - where would you be if you weren’t here? What if you had more time for you?’

These are not mortal enemy questions, obviously. Angel is trying to decipher Buffy as a person and subtly mirroring her body language.

In a callback to Willow’s accusation that Buffy doesn’t really know herself - she admits she doesn’t know what she would be doing if she didn’t have to be there - she said to Xander that she’d rather be home studying...but come on. That’s not what she really wants to be doing.

To defuse the suddenly personal conversation, Angel makes the observation that the reason no one can tell she’s a bat is that she has a tail - and Buffy is so wrapped up in her situation that she doesn’t clue in on the fact that Angel has used Xander’s words almost exactly. She repeats that she hates Halloween while flaming with embarrassment that she’s appeared both vulnerable and not bright in front of a stranger.

This whole exchange - about who Buffy is and what she presents to the world - no one knows if she’s a cat or a dog - I’m a bat fits neatly with her identity crisis as a Slayer and as a teenager still figuring stuff out. 

Similarities to TV canon - Angel knows more about Buffy than she knows about him, and he’s intrigued by her, and she’s...annoyed by him.

The update to their histories is what makes me intrigued about the potential of their romance/relationship - it’s definitely happening with all the hints that have been dropped, anvil-like from the sky - but Buffy is not Angel’s route to redemption or desire to be useful for the fight for Good. He was already going down that path/doing that before he meets her. Angel is not a romantic figure for Buffy, she doesn’t know what he looks like, only that he’s really chatty (!) and vaguely has motivational speaker vibes. He’s not a canvas for her to project ideal fantasies on, just yet.

They’re both damaged, unsociable in their own ways people - but a connection has been made. Where Jordie and Bryan (and Jordan Lambert for HELLMOUTH) go with it, is the exciting part. The ending we know is inevitable, plus it’s the first year of their series, and creators rarely get OTPs together and stay together that quickly, but because Boom! has them both under their umbrella, crossovers will happen more easily and the mythology will be tighter instead of the same tiresome ‘one is more darker and adult than the other blah blah blah shut up dude creators as if that’s the only worthy characteristic of a story’ box.

So, I’m excited about the journey, and as you can see in my chat bubbles above - any Hades/Persephone parallels.

Look how gorgeous this panel is - the colors and the way Buffy is perched above it all...like a bat. Or Nosferatu.