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Date Posted: 09:04:35 04/25/07 Wed
Author: Age
Subject: Re: L.W.Look at 8.1 (Spoilers) Part Three.
In reply to: Age 's message, "Re: Long Winded Look at 8.1 (Spoilers) Part Two." on 09:02:33 04/25/07 Wed

Okay, here starts the results of my insane fit of nostalgia: the first issue from start to finish.

If it’s a Joss Whedon work then there can’t be the short or easy way, nope, you’ve got to take The Long Way Home. Certainly in panel one the reader is a long way from home, looking down from the high of space, broad, formless, like the Scoobies’ future at the end of season seven when as the caption reminds us, the gang changed the world. What a high, the First scrunch, the potentials as slayers giving Buffy hope of leading a more normal life; but, with Joss Whedon the fall is never far behind. You have to fall, you have to come down from the bright shiny dawn over the globe moment because it comes and then goes, (i.e., a new day does actually dawn despite the final credits of a TV show,) and you are left with the consequences of your choice which you can either ignore like a child with your head in the clouds or face like an adult, back on earth where up close things are not as shiny and bright and wonderful… like being literally a long way from home because it no longer exists. (The perspective of the panel also contains the idea that you are so far from home you might as well be out in space.) The thing about changing the world, once you do it, the world’s all different. The thing about changing a Jossverse world is there’s always consequences.

From the small picture of the earth from space on the title page (suggesting by its size a memory fading receding into the past) the reader turns the page to find up close and large (as life so to speak) the focus of the series, Buffy, falling to earth from a helicopter, leading a very focused and determined squad of special-ops looking young women that we assume to be slayers. They all look very young, especially Buffy, their youth and perhaps the other slayers’ inexperience suggested in the green costume and jewelry of the slayer on the left. Buffy, in the foreground, much larger than the others, suggests her relative importance as guide, but her image ‘touches’ all the other three, bringing them together, suggesting her role as creator of this new band of sisters. This new sisterhood was made possible by Buffy’s having shared power with the potentials: that end of season seven shining moment has led to this slayer quartet mission just as the shining dawn sky image of the previous page has led to this one. (Note that a day has elapsed between the dawn and night panels, suggesting a figurative passage of time, enough to set up the slayer organization.)

The determination on Buffy’s face as she looks forward, is not obviously to a more normal life, but to her mission, a choice carved out of the limitless possibility as symbolized by the space shown behind her and therefore gone, like the shining moment of possibility from the end of season seven, gone because you either have to act on the possibility or you do nothing; but she’s a long way from home because home is where you put your feet up at the end of the day in your personal space. This is, however, slayer business. In activating the potentials, Buffy hasn’t given herself more opportunity for self, but instead a greater responsibility finding, training and leading the slayers…and like the stars behind her it’s a seemingly endless responsibility. To this end, the Fall that Buffy takes in this picture is not the one from childhood that came unexpectedly when she became the one and only slayer way back when, but a more adult one, chosen, a jump, a leap into responsibility, knowing that she is tied to the other slayers and what they do through her having activated them as they are all literally tethered together by way of the mission vehicle, the helicopter, the up in the sky device, just as in the previous picture the changing of the world was related from an aerial perspective, only the sky this time is a bit murky; there are rocks at the bottom and perhaps storm clouds gathering around to enclose and cut off the openness/possibility. Buffy is tethered by what she’s ‘Chosen’ to do.

And dropping in once again, if you’d forgotten what the series is all about, four young powerful and courageous women, sporting not the phallic wooden stake of teenage years, but the more technologically advanced forward looking phallic ray gun, suggesting a more adult capacity to acquire and command resources like ops equipment and helicopters. It’s not a regular gun as we see in the picture on the next page. In keeping with the feminist theme, and these first few pages may be a deliberate reiteration of the basic feminist themes of the series, Buffy uses the phallic ray gun to eliminate an invisible barrier surrounding an old and decrepit building like the invisible barrier the women’s movement broke down, with the tower perhaps being a symbol for the male establishment in its phallic like shape.

More generally, the state of the building reminds the reader that back down on earth things are not so shiny and wonderful seen up close. Buffy, the only character to figure in the middle of three panels on the page, her image bursting out of the middle panel to reinforce the destruction of barriers, touches the outer two, again showing her importance as guide and her role as sister creator. Clearly, she is the focus of the page, the three panels showing the progression of descent to earth, barrier break, untethering of lines and landing, with Buffy as leader letting go of her tether first, the others doing the same as they follow in what is a leap of faith. All the while Buffy is reminding the reader of the activation of the slayers, of what made this moment possible through her narration, the number of slayers working for the team showing us how much work this new season eight life really is, only to be outdone by how many more slayers are not and could be recruited or may present a problem (the stars reinforcing this.) That isn’t to say that she isn’t prepared; on the contrary, the reader sees through the technology employed that this mission has been planned.

There are three panels aligned side-by-side to represent perhaps the sisterly relationship between them, as opposed to the more masculine power structure that would be implied if the panels were mounted vertically. The first panel reinforces sisterhood as the four young slayers form a circle as Buffy undoes the barrier. The second panel shows Buffy alone because the narration focuses perhaps by implication on her psyche. The third panel uses the other three slayers having gone through the circle opened in the barrier (by the previous generation slayer/women’s movement) to symbolize Buffy’s surprising narration about there being three of her, the split of the three panels themselves suggesting perhaps a compartmentalization of Buffy’s psyche, having split off personal aspects of herself in order to dedicate herself wholeheartedly to the mission she feels responsible for beginning. She has not gained more of a personal life, but more slayer duty. There may even be the suggestion that there’s so much to be done that there’s not enough of her to go round.

On the next page, Buffy continues her narration to the reader as the team penetrates what appears to be a large seemingly disused and derelict church in what looks like the middle of a barren countryside. The location and the condition of the church certainly reinforce the idea that up close things aren’t so bright and shiny; it could also be a signal to the reader that the old series is dead, with its familiar graveyards etc. The church image itself reintroduces the reader to the spiritual aspect of the series: the hardest thing is to live in this world, to remain human and not give into the easy animal way of surviving by predation. The reintroduction comes with a glimpse into the recurring image of the series, the cemetery, in the first panel, reminding the reader where we’ve been and how easily death, spiritual or physical, can come. This is made clear as the panel is shown from the perspective of the ground, of the cemetery itself, and looms large in the forefront, dwarfing the human beings on the roof who appear only as silhouettes, i.e., casting a shadow over them, so to speak. The precarious site of the church, resting just on the edge of a cliff, also reinforces the idea of mortality.

End of Part Three.

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