Review by Ian Keogh
Time has passed for Buffy, and while the exact period past her prime is never revealed, as drawn by Jose Jaro, she looks to be in late middle age. No longer fresh and perky, she’s tired and cynical, an attitude prompted by the fact that to all intents and purposes, she’s lost. Vampires walk the streets in daylight now, and they’ve multiplied exponentially due to humanity living with the sun blotted out. A treaty has been signed, and it greatly favours vampires. Despite fighting a lost battle, Buffy continues to act as a slayer without the support structure of her younger years, yet works hard at alienating the few friends she does have. She’s additionally troubled by her abilities sporadically cutting out.
It’s all rather depressing, and with Buffy so changed, it’s viable to ask to what extent Casey Gilly’s script is Buffy as we know the feature? The chances are that Buffy fans won’t be concerned about that for long as Gilly rolls out this desperate future. There’s very little hope to a downbeat opening chapter, but that’s just the prelude to the introduction of new character Thessaly, perhaps too worldly-wise at twelve, but is she also a slayer? While Buffy more or less operates in isolation, Gilly ensures there’s a crowd-pleasing look at older supporting characters, so for greater or less we see Spike, Tara and Willow.
Jaro has a loose and jagged style, and as all known characters have aged, he doesn’t have to trouble himself with likenesses. The storytelling is focused on people, with backgrounds few and minimal to the point where the story could be set in Bejing or Cairo instead of London, but it’s strong in defining people, what they’re wearing and what they’re doing.
The prevention of what could become an extinction level event eventually takes precedence, and occupies the whole final chapter, but before then Gilly has defined the cast well. Four chapters might not seem much considering everything that’s going on, but this is a dense investigation of a surprising future, including multiple small touches for fans. The Last Vampire Slayer is a page-turner.
