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Post by wenxina on Jun 3, 2009 7:18:23 GMT -5
Changed the title of the thread on the original post to be more accurate, since it will be, and has been used for discussion of this issue.
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Post by iamthewalrus on Jun 3, 2009 12:53:39 GMT -5
does anyone think it would be best to read the Tales TPBs before this one-shot?
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Post by AndrewCrossett on Jun 3, 2009 13:09:35 GMT -5
does anyone think it would be best to read the Tales TPBs before this one-shot? The stories aren't directly related, so there's no need to read them in order, or to have read the other ones first.
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Post by Essentially Yours on Jun 3, 2009 13:13:55 GMT -5
Perhaps it's my disappointment from finding out today that the Oz comic is NEXT month and not this month (oops! ), but I didn't really enjoy Tales of the Vampires One-Shot. I'm not sure if I should be spoilering this.... but I had a hard time relating to the main character. He seemed.... emotionless and flat before and after becoming a vamp. I didn't really enjoy the artwork either. It was a good general outlook involving the world's new perception on vampires because of Harmony's sudden popularity, but I really missed me some Buffy (or any Btvs character) in this comic. Ah well. One month 'til some Oz goodness.
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patxshand
Ensouled Vampire
Writer/director/Amy Acker's husband.[Mo0:0]
Posts: 1,918
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Post by patxshand on Jun 3, 2009 16:17:44 GMT -5
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Post by Emmie on Jun 3, 2009 16:19:25 GMT -5
So here enters Jacob "Jay" the misanthropic teenager who gets beat up during lunch and spends all his free time alone in an arcade. Enter metaphor for disconnection to real society through escapist technological entertainment. Jay is a loner with a capital "L" who just wants to feel something, anything. So how does he get his thrills? He offers himself up as food for the local vamps of Nowheresville, New Hampshire. How could this plan ever go wrong? The one shining light in his life is his friend Alex, who he slowly starts to realize he likes more than a friend after a sexy dream where...she bites him. Is he sensing a darkness inside her specifically or just associating his thrills of being bitten with the sexual thrill of attraction? Sex and death becoming interchanged. He asks out Alex for a date the next day - things are finally starting to look up. Maybe he'll have a life. Maybe he'll find connection. Maybe not. Finally starting to feel a connection to life, a connection to Alex, he turns down the vamps who expect to get a little bitey action from him. He doesn't need the thrill, not tonight. The problem with his plan - you don't say no to a bunch of hungry vamps during a blizzard where you're their only food source. They beat him to within an inch of his life and as that life is slipping away... May, the new girl in town, appears and turns him into a vampire. It would have been a "waste" to let him die. And in this transformation, Jay finally feels the thrill because he is "the thrill"; in his own words "Ahhh! I'm alive!" He's finally alive through being undead. His unlife is remarkably similar to his life - he hangs at the arcade, he still lives with his mom though he's moved to the basement, all with the added bonus of the thrill of bloodlust. The rush from drinking down life. Oh, and the scary nonchalance as he contemplates killing his mom so that he can have the house all to himself. He continues his routine of unlife, going to the arcade to mindlessly pass the time only to meet up with a frantically upset Alex. He's been missing for days with no word, not to mention he forgot about their date. May comes onto the scene to amp up the threesome's tension, revealing that she and now Jay are vampires. Alex freaks and then Alex slays. May is dead and Jay is pissed, attacking Alex for being a "slayer" when May had never hurt anyone (as long as you don't count turning Jay into a soulless monster, that is, and feeding off the living like a rotten parasite). Enraged, Jay attacks Alex, drinking her down to the point of death only to realize he doesn't want her to be truly gone and turns her. He wants her to "come with [him]. Live with [him] forever." His life has finally begun through being undead. The thrill of vampirism has filled the vacuum of his empty existence. He felt nothing while he was alive whilst having a soul, now he feels nothing without a soul, nothing but the thrill of power, of thirst and the sexual satiation from feeding. It's a disturbing look at the consequences of a detached life in this modern era, where you can become so numb, so disconnected that you'd actively desire to become a monster just to feel anything. Harkens back to Buffy in Season 6, who just wanted to get "the fire back" and sought it destructively with Spike, and Angel in AtS Season 2 who just "wan[ted] to feel something besides the cold". The villain of the piece isn't May, Sebastien or even Jay. Though I want to hate him for taking Alex's life. The villain is disconnection. And it's the same villain that's been chomping at Buffy's heels all season. "Connection. Why can't I feel it?" - Buffy A Beautiful Sunset
****** So this issue won't be going down as my favorite. It didn't have the exciting thrill (heh, imagine that? theme!) of pacing that normally comes with a BUFFY comic and of course we're reading about original characters so it lacks the familiarity of the other issues. That feeling of sliding into your comfort zone. I suspect another reason this issue is going to be found lackluster is directly related to the tone and POV of the piece (both of which are thematically vital to the story) - Jacob is disconnected, emo, out of touch and depressing. And there is no clear person to root for here because we're looking at the world through his eyes, his warped and disconnected POV. It's supposed to disturb you, make you uncomfortable and unclean. It makes you feel run down and a bit lost. Artwise, I really enjoyed the dream panels. If you're going to do nudity in a comic, do it like that please (looks at Dez in Aftermath judgingly). Here it's evocative, sexy and shows insight into the character. It's as much a part of the character as it is a part of the greater metaphor of the story. This issue finally depicted the world's reaction to vampires going public in Season 8 and illustrated the struggle between vampires and slayers over humanity. What's the deciding factor? Connection. I enjoyed Living Doll more (how could I not with my beloved characters to latch onto and the snappy dialogue by Petrie?) but thematically? Tales > Living Doll. Frankly, I haven't enjoyed the message of an issue so much since Harmonic Divergence. As I reread the issue a second time, I connected more to Jacob and his predicament. I do wonder if it might be difficult for some readers who've never experienced this debilitating ennui. I imagine many won't have sympathy for him. But all I can say is read BtVS' Tales of the Vampires like you're capable of being that disconnected, emo teenager who gets lost to the world. And see how tragically wrong it can all go.
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Post by AndrewCrossett on Jun 3, 2009 16:31:32 GMT -5
Still haven't gotten my comic... skipping past spoilers...
Scott Allie is on vacation right now, isn't he? Maybe this month's Q&A will be delayed until he gets back? Hope we don't skip it, I've got a raft of questions on deck.
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Post by Emmie on Jun 3, 2009 16:38:01 GMT -5
Allie is traveling currently, but he's said he'll still be doing the Q&A...a thread which I've just opened here.
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Post by AndrewCrossett on Jun 3, 2009 18:35:52 GMT -5
Actually, I don't think Alex was dead here... I think Jacob was offering her the chance to feed on his blood and be turned, or to be killed. The question "What will she do?" refers to that, but the real point isn't what choice she'll make... it's the fact that, as the final panel indicates, this is about Jacob using others for his own pleasure.
The thing I took away from this was the fact that vampires are, basically, rapists. Rapists are sociopaths who are not able to understand anything beyond their own wants, or why the wants and needs and rights of others should matter.
Jacob becomes a vampire, and finds fulfillment by raping his best friend.
Very much in line with the Buffyverse concept of vampires, but it hasn't done any more to convince me why society would accept and even endorse this behavior. I guess it's an implausibility I'm just going to have to get used to.
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Post by buffyfan21 on Jun 3, 2009 19:08:27 GMT -5
I enjoyed this issue and found it to be an interesting story. I found myself feeling really sorry for Jacob. The idea that he was so lonely, bored, aimless, etc, that he needed to allow vampires to feed on him in order to spice up his life and feel something was very reminiscent of Riley S5, imo. The sad irony is that Being turned into a vampire did not help Jacob to feel, and he failed to realize just how dangerous hanging out with vampires can be. He found out the hard way that they are not the harmless creatures as portrayed by Harmony's reality series. The whole thing really reminded me of one of my favorite Buffy episodes, "Lie to Me." The idea that a group of kids are so desperate to find comfort in dangerous, murderous, creatures and everything ends with disastrous consequences. Alex turning out to be a Slayer was a twist I didn't see coming (though I probably should have). It will be interesting to see how this plays out. A person endowed with the strength of slayer AND vampire is probably not someone you want to cross paths with. Overall, a good issue.
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Post by AndrewCrossett on Jun 3, 2009 21:08:33 GMT -5
Yeah... while this wasn't a *fun* story to read by any means, it gave us a pretty good street-level look at how vampires think and feel and why they act as they do.
I hope Alex jumps up and stakes Jacob in the next scene.
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Post by wenxina on Jun 3, 2009 23:23:13 GMT -5
First break of the year from the Season 8 story, but instead of taking a jaunt far away from it, this issue offers a complementary view of the world in the Bufyverse post-"Harmonic Divergence". Written by Becky Cloonan, it introduces the protagonist, Jacob ("Jay"), and the world he lives in (i.e. bored teen living in rural-ish suburban small New England town hell). What it does is it finally shows us two things that were quite sorely missed in the "Predators and Prey" arc of S8; how the general public are reacting towards vampires, as well as how Slayers are now social pariahs. Thoughts will follow in the appropriate section.
Art: It's not the best looking art out there, but strangely enough, I found it quite charming. It fits in quite well with the quirky stable of varying art styles of the previous Tales of the Vampires works. However, allow me one MAJOR gripe. In the variant cover by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon, the three vampires that beat Jacob up are shown to be reflected in the screen of the video game! Did someone miss the memo about how vampires in the Buffyverse don't reflect? They don't sparkle either, just FYI. Anyway, moving on. Found the dream sequences to be quite brilliantly rendered. The shot of Alex's butt made me think of that "I Like Big Butts" song.
Loved the deliberate usage of red whenever Jay feeds. Stylistically, it just works.
Thoughts: While in general, this issue does explain why vampires are accepted (as long as they don't kill), there's nothing new there. We already knew this from "Harmonic Divergence". All the issue really does is ram home the point about the "symbiotic" relationship, though one could probably make a case for parasitism too. However, what I found unsatisfying is how it doesn't explore grounds other than the extreme; at least in this bored little town, everyone seems to be down with the vampires, whereas Slayers are considered to be outcasts. Even Jay's mom hardly reacts to her son joining the legions of the undead. Note the metaphor in the scene where she's slicing a pomegranate. Other than the fact that it's all red and juicy, it does bring to mind the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades, where Hades tricks Persephone into consuming pomegranate seeds in order to keep her as his queen of the Underworld. Because she doesn't consume them all, she spends part of the year with her mother, Demeter, the goddess of grain and fertility, during which the Earth is fertile (basically the explanation for seasonal change). It's an interesting metaphor for the themes of death and rebirth that are so intrinsic to so much vampire lore.
Another point to make I guess is the difference between the general population and Alex. While people are bored and getting their kicks by getting sucked on, thus indicating an appreciation for the supernatural, Alex echoes Buffy's old lamentation about never wanting to be a Slayer, and merely wanting a "normal life". Girl however gets screwed over twice here: first, when she didn't get a choice about being called as a Slayer, and secondly, when it's hinted that she would be sired anyway, even against her will, as Jay notes that it "isn't about her choice. It's about [his] choice". I did like that we didn't get the portrayal of vampires as fuzzy cuddlies. In fact, Jay at one point considers killing his mother so that he could have the house to himself and May. It's a stark reminder that the Jay we see after being sired is merely a shell containing a ravening demon.
All in all, enjoyable read. Definitely a worthy addition to the Tales of the Vampires anthology.
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Post by Emmie on Jun 3, 2009 23:55:41 GMT -5
Great review, Xi. I love reading your thoughts on the art especially. Agreed that it works well stylistically. And I did enjoy the nude scenes also lol - for the artistic nature of them, natch.
I agree that no new ground is really covered here, nothing earth-shattering. At least in terms of revelations. But it does drive home the important theme of "connection" that has been ever-present in Season 8.
Excellent analysis of how it's most likely that Jay is going to forcibly turn Alex. I'd processed it as such, but didn't consciously realize why.
I think what I enjoyed most about this issue was the care with metaphor, art and character. Everything just fit so well together. It's a well-crafted story besides being an enjoyable read.
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patxshand
Ensouled Vampire
Writer/director/Amy Acker's husband.[Mo0:0]
Posts: 1,918
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Post by patxshand on Jun 4, 2009 1:46:24 GMT -5
The shot of Alex's butt made me think of that "I Like Big Butts" song. Fact.
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Post by Emmie on Jun 4, 2009 2:03:55 GMT -5
Trufax!
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Iceeh★
Bad Ass Wicca
Also, Angels.
Somewhere, along in the bitterness.[Mo0:7]
Posts: 2,298
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Post by Iceeh★ on Jun 4, 2009 2:30:53 GMT -5
C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!!!
Bwahahaha that made me laugh. Anyways, I rather enjoyed this one-shot. The art was neato, loved the style. And this cover is probably my favorite out of all of season 8 so far! Totally sexical!
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Post by Emmie on Jun 4, 2009 13:29:31 GMT -5
Bwahahaha! Icy's review should be on the issue: "Totally sexical! - Iceeh"
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Post by wenxina on Jun 4, 2009 13:47:23 GMT -5
Bwahahaha! Icy's review should be on the issue: "Totally sexical! - Iceeh" Except that the review wasn't so much about the issue, but rather the cover art. But if Jo Chen ever decides to do an art show, then yes, Icy's review should be on it.
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Post by AndrewCrossett on Jun 4, 2009 14:03:41 GMT -5
I wonder if Joss deliberately set out to have so very much nakedness in season 8, or if it's just worked out that way.
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Post by Emmie on Jun 4, 2009 15:29:07 GMT -5
We should compare the frequency of nudity in Season 8 to Season 6 and see how it measures up.
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