The Riley one-shot

[AndrewCrossett]

Of all the regular Buffyverse girls, I'd say Cordelia, Faith, Harmony, and Tara were above average in breast size; Buffy, Anya, Dawn and Willow were average; Fred was smaller than average.

Ivana Milicevic, who played Sam on the TV show, is average-size in real life but looks quite a bit bigger in some of her modeling photos. (Push-up technology FTW.)

I don't think Sam is so big on this cover as to be distracting. She doesn't look like Lara Croft or anything. I didn't really notice the discrepancy until it was pointed out to me, but I also don't have a mental picture of Sam's figure burned into my mental rolodex, she having been in only one episode that I haven't seen in a while. (It's coming up soon on my current re-watch... I'm up to "Flooded" now.)

[NotaViking]

Just wondering what people here think about the logic surrounding Twilight trying to recruit Riley having read the one-shot.

When you're dealing with a double agent situation there's a lot of questions that need answering. Why does Twilight want Riley, why does Riley think Twilight wants him, why does Riley want to work with Twilight, why does Twilight think Riley wants to work with him, etc. With Angel at this point seemingly still a good guy, most of these questions are quite easy - he wants Riley to pass info to Buffy, that's why Riley will join and Angel knows it. The tricky one is why does Riley think Twilight wants him.

The comic tries to address it through Sam, but the answer doesn't convince. Why would an evil (from their point of view) Twilight specifically want Riley? Because he's so useful and he hates magic so much that he'd fight against Buffy? No. No way should they be thinking that. Obviously, they should be thinking that Twilight wants Riley so he can, in some way, get to Buffy. And that should make them very cautious. But they just go ahead with that never occurring to them.

My other issue in this area is Angel's reply to Whistler's question about Riley because it wrecks one of the bits I just said was "quite easy".

Whistler: Is he gonna sign up?
Angel: Riley Finn? Maybe. He's no fan of magic. Very "humans first."

This, for me, is so annoying. Angel can be completely honest with Whistler, so this is what he really thinks. He believes that Riley will actually join up because he genuinely agrees with Twilight's stated aims. A) That's ridiculous and B) Why is he hiring Riley then? The whole point should be that Angel wants Riley because he knows he'll betray him and pass info to Buffy. That's why you hire Riley and that's why he'll join. Otherwise it makes no sense.

Edit: Forget it. Having read #36 I see that applying logic to the comic, at least at the moment, is a waste of time.

[Shane]

^^One of many possibilities, but Angel could just be putting on a show to deceive Whistler and the Powers.

Regarding Jo Chen's art... I had some concerns with it too when it started becoming clear that her portrayal of female characters was a matter of choice rather than ability. But her art is still quite aesthetically pleasing and, IMO, it looks better than Jeanty's when combined with the rest of the cover. Plus, Chen's not part of the core creative team so I don't feel like they're trying to send some kind of message with it. So if Jeanty was doing the same I would have more of an issue but in her case my gripes probably won't extend beyond this post.

Moving on to the story then... Yes, Allie, she IS HOTTT! But for slightly different reasons. I didn't care much for any subliminal/apparent messages about the Buffy/Angel relationship but I did like that Angel was more in-character here than in any of his previous appearances. It was good to see he was sort of uneasy with the decisions he made. And the creators acknowledged that this is the Angel with all those years of development which was quite reassuring. Gives me hope that they'll explain more about his disregard for Connor once the whole crisis is over or maybe even in the Angel series...

And congrats to Ryan Hill. That was UNREAL! (Does anyone know what he actually won? Ooh, cliffhanger...!)

[beeemkcl]

AndrewCrossett

I think the purpose of the issue wasn't so much to tell us "See? Angel's been good this whole time" as to let us know there's more to the story than "Angel is an evil bastard." It's supposed to calm down the Twangel-hate just a couple of notches so people are more willing to listen to his story without shaking their fists every time he appears on the page from now on.

That was the preview. In 8.36, Angel goes off that he doesn’t trust Spike, that Spike’s being there is too convenient and that Spike must have an agenda.

I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be considered canon, but the MySpace Dark Horse Presents recent Tales of the Vampires story for me gave actual credibility to the whole Harmony thing and vampires being cool thing. (They are something like 31 and 35 or something.) So, at least for vampires, Harmony (or Angel if he’s responsible) made the world safer. But the whole Twilight thing and that Angel wanted to keep Buffy there and let the world be destroyed just so that she could be with him in a happy place is his biggest evil so far. And so far, 8.36 made Angel seem worse, not better.

It's also not lost on me that both of the times Whistler has shown up, it's been to "reluctantly" pit Buffy and Angel against each other.

Well, Whistler’s Angel guide, so it makes sense he’d show up again.



The Girl In Question

My quote: < Willow, Dawn, Faith, Cordelia, etc. all had ‘big’ breasts relative to their figure.
Buffy and Anya are kinda the only ones who didn’t have ‘big’ breasts>

See, I find that strange because IMO Cordelia and Fatih had large breasts (relative to their figure), Dawn, Buffy and Anya were more on the average side (relative to their figure) and Willow was the only one with particularly small breasts (and then there's Fred also). Maybe this is part of the problem? That we are all seeing different breast sizes?

Maybe we all have different ideas about what “large”, “average”, and “small” is. Pretty much in the Whedonverse, the only one who had actual “small” breasts is Amy Acker. Sarah Michelle Gellar in Season 7 at times her breasts were smaller than before but this seems due to her being so thin. Alyson Hannigan I never thought had small breasts, but I don’t consider a solid-B to be small.

Anyway, I think the point of this discussion is that the artist should stay true to the characters an that means their physical attractiveness and body type. And that the reader isn’t reading the comics to see Buffy have huge breasts.



AndrewCrossett

Of all the regular Buffyverse girls, I'd say Cordelia, Faith, Harmony, and Tara were above average in breast size; Buffy, Anya, Dawn and Willow were average; Fred was smaller than average.

Wow, we’ve been talking about the women’s breasts quite a bit.

So, I’d also add that an artist shouldn’t make Buffy taller than she is either. This was never done and shouldn’t be done.


In all though, I never felt Season 8 sexualized any of the women besides maybe the second Buffy/Satsu sex scene. They never even did what After the Fall did with Spider and the other Spike women.



NotaViking

Just wondering what people here think about the logic surrounding Twilight trying to recruit Riley having read the one-shot.

When you're dealing with a double agent situation there's a lot of questions that need answering. Why does Twilight want Riley, why does Riley think Twilight wants him, why does Riley want to work with Twilight, why does Twilight think Riley wants to work with him, etc. With Angel at this point seemingly still a good guy, most of these questions are quite easy - he wants Riley to pass info to Buffy, that's why Riley will join and Angel knows it. The tricky one is why does Riley think Twilight wants him.

The comic tries to address it through Sam, but the answer doesn't convince. Why would an evil (from their point of view) Twilight specifically want Riley? Because he's so useful and he hates magic so much that he'd fight against Buffy? No. No way should they be thinking that. Obviously, they should be thinking that Twilight wants Riley so he can, in some way, get to Buffy. And that should make them very cautious. But they just go ahead with that never occurring to them.

My other issue in this area is Angel's reply to Whistler's question about Riley because it wrecks one of the bits I just said was "quite easy".

Whistler: Is he gonna sign up?
Angel: Riley Finn? Maybe. He's no fan of magic. Very "humans first."

This, for me, is so annoying. Angel can be completely honest with Whistler, so this is what he really thinks. He believes that Riley will actually join up because he genuinely agrees with Twilight's stated aims. A) That's ridiculous and B) Why is he hiring Riley then? The whole point should be that Angel wants Riley because he knows he'll betray him and pass info to Buffy. That's why you hire Riley and that's why he'll join. Otherwise it makes no sense.

Great point. Riley being able to join up could be because given that Riley doesn’t know who Twilight is, he could think that Twilight would think he’d betray Buffy. But you’re certainly right. When really thinking about it, it doesn’t make sense. Riley is simply a former demon fighter and now he can defuse nuclear missiles. Why does he think Twilight will want him, and especially as his second-hand man? He thinks that Twilight knows that he was with Buffy and therefore he could have some insight into Buffy? It’s making my head hurt.

[AndrewCrossett]

Sales figures for August are in.

The Riley one-shot came in at #40 with 38,119 copies sold.

Not bad for a one-shot about Riley, I guess.

[wenxina]

Sales for August kinda blew. No book actually cracked the 100,000 copy mark.

[Hellbound Hyperion]

Sept 16, 2010 8:12:15 GMT -5 wenxina said:

Sales for August kinda blew. No book actually cracked the 100,000 copy mark.

It's generally a bad month across the board. Video game sales were dismal for August as well, with few new games coming out and few people actually buying them. It's the calm before the storm that is "school" and "Hallo-Thanksgive-Christmahannukwanza".

I fully expect that Last Gleaming pt. 1 will fare better, unless more and more Buffy fans are falling off the bandwagon.

[wenxina]

Well, the attrition rate has been pretty steady, but the "Joss Whedon" cred may bump sales up a wee bit. Highly doubt that it'll sell enough to be in the Top 10, though.

[AndrewCrossett]

This is a built-in downside to having a single mega-story arc that plays out over almost 5 years. By the time we're this deep into the story, all new readers are just buying the trade paperbacks because it's too late to jump in. The only ones buying the monthlies are the ones who have been around since early in the season.

Also, the one-shots always tend to sell worse than the main numbered title, especially when it's dedicated to a relatively unpopular character who was only around for a season and a half.

The fact that even so, it still sold 40% as well as Marvel and DC's top titles is good news.

[jellymoff]

Yeah, and it was the top performing title that was not DC or Marvel, so that's something.

[AndrewCrossett]

Sept 16, 2010 10:21:21 GMT -5 jellymoff said:

Yeah, and it was the top performing title that was not DC or Marvel, so that's something.

I think that's been the case with every single issue of season 8, except for one month when Kevin Smith's "Green Hornet" #1, from Dynamite Comics, outsold it.

Interesting to see that good ol' Riley Finn outsold Wonder Woman, the Fantastic Four, and Action Comics.