BUFFY ’97
Writer: Jeremy Lambert
Artist: Marianna Ignazzi
Colorist: Mattia Iacono
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Publication Date: November 2022
What does nostalgia really feel like? Recently each Buffy ‘97 and Batman ‘89 were on comic store shelves, and despite one being a very big property and one being a decently big property, they both deal with nostalgia in an interesting way. I was born in 1989, so it was about a decade before I saw Tim Burton’s reimagining of the Batman world on movie. Really, Batman Forever was the place most of my nostalgia lived (and admittedly, that’s the picture I had in my thoughts once I first heard that Batman 89 was introduced: neon, colourful, slick Batman with the Jim Carrey Riddler and the Val Kilmer go well with). But this overview is about Buffy, not Batman.
I first noticed Buffy the Vampire Slayer a few years after it was canceled in TV kind. We had a rotating potluck, as soon as every week, and for no matter purpose it turned a Buffy watchathon. I used to be in my early twenties and had seen just a few episodes right here and there as reruns earlier than different exhibits. But not like this. Not a devoted, sit-down-and-discuss, ebook membership model viewing. All of this background to say: Buffy ‘97, the new one-shot out from Boom! Studios, feels like how I remember Buffy and how I remember the end of the 90s. Like I said before, born in 1989, so I lived through the 90s, but I wasn’t sufficiently old to essentially take it in. But the TV exhibits I like had been: Friends, Dawson’s Creek, and X-Files, really feel like what I take into consideration once I take into consideration the 90s. And so does Buffy ‘97.
While on the Sunnydale Mall, Buffy and Willow uncover {that a} mysterious designer is having a style present that night in a giant pop-up tent exterior the mall. There’s just one drawback: they’d plans to fulfill up with Giles and Spike on the Strike Zone bowling alley. After promising to assist Giles all subsequent week, Buffy and Willow head out to the style present solely to find – the garments weren’t that good? But as they go away, they discover that every one the opposite fashionistas in attendance are obsessed with the catalog and, proper as they begin to examine, they’re surrounded by vamps!
Buffy ‘97 reminds me of that Doom Patrol run where Paris is trapped in a painting and the Doom Patrol have to go in and fight the Brotherhood of Dada. Madam Want, a demon, has found a way to trap people in teen magazines by either hypnotizing them into buying clothes from her fashion line, or literally pulling them into the world of the teen magazine. This leads to some pretty fun ‘90s rollerblading-at-the-beach action, and ultimately a confrontation with Madam Want herself. So it’s type of like that run of Doom Patrol points, but in addition very Buffy, which labored for me!
It’s not at all times straightforward for an IP to really feel like the unique present, or film, or online game. Voices are tough, the medium is totally different, and, frankly, the tales have moved on from the unique thought. The Vampire Slayer, one other at present releasing Boom! Studios title, for instance, doesn’t really feel just like the Buffy I bear in mind from the TV present. But I additionally don’t assume that it ought to. When it ended in 2003, the present (not together with Angel) had aired 147 episodes over seven seasons. But the comics continued – season 8-12, to not point out quite a few spin-offs. Then in 2019, the Buffy comics moved from Dark Horse over to Boom! Studios, the place a brand new period started – together with Buffy ‘97. So the vampire hunting team have been through a lot. But, due to a lot of great work by both the writer Jeremy Lambert, and the art team: Marianna Ignazzi (art) and Mattia Iacono (color), Buffy ‘97 captures the voice and feel of what I remember about the show perfectly. For comparison Batman ‘89 continues the story of Tim Burton and Sam Hamm’s Batman, however doesn’t fairly really feel the identical once I learn it. The colours aren’t what I bear in mind. The story’s in universe, the author’s the identical. But the really feel is totally different.
Nostalgia isn’t correct. It’s private. But the washed colours (not fairly neon, not fairly pastel), rollerblading on the boardwalk, and the places (mall, bowling alley, style present), push this one-shot comedian in direction of Nostalgia to nice impact. In the top, all people’s bowling. It’s nacho night time. It’s not-quite the millennium. It’s Buffy.
Buffy ‘97 is a one-shot comedian that was not too long ago collected right into a particular twenty fifth anniversary version and consists of a number of brief Buffy comics beforehand launched as annuals, to not point out a fairly snazzy yearbook.
Verdict: BUY
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