Review by Win Wiacek
The Buffy Omnibus series presents Buffy comics not in the order they were originally published, but in the order events happened in Buffy’s timeline. It explains it being the third volume before reaching the earliest Buffy comics, which were set during the show’s third season.
Well-nigh 300 pages of full-colour mystery, merriment and mystical martial arts mayhem begins with ‘Wu-Tang Fang’ by Andi Watson and Joe Bennett. After a vampire attack easily seen off by Buffy, Xander, fed up with being saved by a girl enrols next day at a martial arts Dojo. He soon painfully discovers his sensei is a bullying brute, even as Buffy and Giles are tracking a string of martial artists killed by vampires.
‘Halloween’ (Watson and Bennett) then delightfully covers the annual arcane imbecility of Trick or Treating in Sunnydale; a night when vamps generally stay in, due to the hordes of happy people wandering about. This time, however, a pack of smart young dead things decide to stock up on tasty human titbits for their enforced staycation. Of course the Slayer does her thing and rescues Willow, but one demon flees with severe – but not undeath-threatening – injuries. That will prove a costly oversight in months to come as grudge-bearing Selke slowly regains her power and feeds a burning hatred.
‘Cold Turkey’ has Buffy tasked by her mother with producing the traditional and daunting Thanksgivings Day fest. Stuck with necessarily late-night shopping in-between school and Slayer-ing, she and Giles are increasingly obsessing over that missing fourth demon.
‘Dance with Me’ by Christopher Golden and Hector Gomez (sample art left) details the Slayer’s brief and final encounter with a boy who used to pester her at school functions. He’s a lot more forceful as a vampire, but still strikes out one last time.
Watson works with Gomez on the festive ‘White Christmas’ and ‘Happy New Year’, starting with the Slayer strapped for cash and forced to work at the local Mall to make money for gifts and a new party dress.
‘New Kid on the Block’ occupies two chapters of Watson co-writing with Dan Brereton. Xander is obsessing over pretty transfer student Cynthia with his pathetic, fawning, drooling attentions cruelly mocked by his best friends – and rightly so. When he crashes a girls’ slumber party he discovers he’s not the only unwelcome intruder. Is Cyn all she seems?
Golden and Christian Zanier (sample art right) supply two chapters of ‘Food Chain’ revealing how new student Sandy is inexplicably involved with bad boy Brad Caulfield and his gang. It’s another new student with secrets, and Golden and Gomez produce ‘Play with Fire’ – a serialised saga in which Willow’s growing facility with and dependency on witchcraft draws the gang into a clash with an earthbound ghost and his demonic abusers.
‘The Final Cut’ by Watson, Jason Pearson, and Cliff Richards details how a student horror movie being made in town masks a demonic entity dwelling in the celluloid and feeding off the young stars. It should never have put Buffy in the spotlight.
Golden, Tom Sniegoski, and Richards then wrap up the monster-mashing madness by reporting ‘The Latest Craze’ wherein an avaricious old enemy introduces demonically-addictive toy to impressionable Sunnydale kids.
Visually impressive, winningly constructed and proceeding at a hell-for-leather pace, this arcane action fearfully funny fright-fest is utterly engaging even if you’re not familiar with the vast backstory: a creepy chronicle as easily enjoyed by the most callow neophyte as every dedicated devotee.
Alternatively these stories are found in the paperbacks The Remining Sunlight, Supernatural Defense Kit and Uninvited Guests.
