Frayed ends Buffed up

It would seem from Jo Chen’s cover to Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 issue 16 (found via Blog@Newsarama) that Joss Whedon is planning a crossover with his series Fray, which, you will recall, dealt with the adventures of a Slayer in a Blade Runnery far future. This is not too much of a surprise, given that the Big Bad of Season 8 wants to rid the world of magic, while Fray has already told us that it happened. (Click to enlarge, of course.)


But let’s hope that there’s more to it than tying up dangling continuity threads.

Incidentally, what’s Karl Moline up to these days?

Pictures and Panels
Cover to Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 issue 16 by Jo Chen

Page from Fray issue 3, created and written by Joss Whedon with Karl Moline (penciller), Andy Owens (inker), Dave Stewart (colourist), Michelle Madsen (letterer) and Scott Allie (editor), Dark Horse Comics, August 2001

An Excuse for an Otherwise Gratuitous Picture

News from Variety, by way of Blog@Newsarama: Joss Whedon is working on the scripts for Dollhouse, a seven-part TV series starring Eliza Dushku, due to be broadcast by Fox TV next year.

It’s good to see that Whedon can still get paid employment in Hollywood. But the last time he tried to combine running a TV show with writing comics, we got gaps of up to thirteen months between issues of his Fray mini-series. Let’s hope that Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 is not similarly affected.

Picture
Cover by Jo Chen to Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 issue 9, showing Eliza Dushku as Faith

Portrait of Mademoiselle X

Jo Chen has provided a series of striking and beautifully finished covers for Dark Horse’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight comics, and all I’ve done is poke fun at Buffy’s apparent height, or Willow’s strange wardrobe.

So I thought that I’d point out the virtues of the latest Chen cover to be posted, as part of Dark Horse’s solicitations for October. The composition’s a little awkward, but Chen has caught the faces perfectly, applying just the right amount of exaggeration to Faith’s hooded eyes and cynical mouth (and perhaps a little more exaggeration to her bust). But what I really like is the way that, for a story about Faith infiltrating high society, Chen has nicely evoked the spirit of John Singer Sargent in the black dress and dark pearly background. Classy stuff. Or possibly extreme kitsch. You decide.

You can disguise your face, but not your height

Back when the first issue of the new Buffy the Vampire Slayer series came out, I complained that Jo Chen's cover made Buffy look six feet tall.


Now, I see the cunning plan. The cover for issue 5 shows us that it wasn't Buffy on that first cover at all, but one of her doubles.


Sneaky stuff (and a damn fine cover painting for issue 5, too).

A full review of Buffy issues 1-4 will follow when my fingers are less like bananas.