The Long Way Home (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8, Vol. 1)

I was pleasantly surprised when my comic arrived.For one, it came packaged in gray, plastic packaging. But in the inside it was taped between 2 pieces of cardboard and sealed in plastic! I was so happy.One of my main worries was that it would come to me all beat up, but thankfully it got here in perfect condition.Also, it's thicker than I had thought.When I hear "Comic" I think, really thin paper, easily tearable. But this has the thickness of a paperback book (maybe even a slightly thicker). And the pages are a little thicker than a magazine, so they won't tear or bend as easy as a regular comic.The art work is phenomenal, and the layout is, obviously, like a comic book.I had a really hard time finding a complete, legit list of comics for the Buffy series. So, to save anyone else looking some time, I will post it here (this list does not include the Angel series)BtVS: Omnibus (Vol. 1-7)Issue 1 is a rewrite of the original BtVS movie, but with Sarah Michelle Gellar as BuffyThe other 6 I believe follow the TV series until season 7.BtVS: Season 8 (Vol. 1-8)BtVS: Season 9 (Vol. 1-3)Then there are 2 Spin-offs for Spike and Willow:Spike: Alone Together Vol. 1Spike: Stranger Things Vol. 2Spike: The Complete SeriesWillow & Tara: WannaBlessedBeWillow & Tara: WildernessAlso there is one BtVS Comic called Fray, which follows the story of a girl named Fray, a slayer in the future.And lastly there is the BtVS: Tales. This is "Tales of the Slayers" and "Tales of the Vampires" put together in one issue.These are all the Collected issues. Instead of buying all the different parts separate (for example: The Long Way Home has about 4 parts to it) they are all collected into one volume together.There is also a collectors book from what I read called BuffyVerse Catalog. It's kind of pricey, but from what I've read it's a "Must-Have" for collectors :)I apologize for the length of this review, but I figure this will help SOMEONE out lol.Very excited to collect the rest of the Buffy comics :)

The last season of BUFFY was strictly for die-hards, so I wasn't expecting too much when Joss announced that Dark Horse would print his scripts for Season Eight. And yet there have been some good stories nevertheless, even with all the new slayers that basically I could care less about. They are better than the Potentials of Season Eight, maybe because they're only pen on paper instead of terrible actresses saying stupid lines.Making Dawn into a giant humanizes her ironically enough. Whiny and bratty when played by Michelle Trachtenberg, the new Dawn is still whiny but her dilemma leads to some great double page panels, and finally she gives in and tells Xander how she came to be in this fix, though I can't give away the spoilers. Xander makes a great commander, though it is not clear to me how he has come to forget all about Anya and has given his heart to a new slayer. Still, the producers of Season Eight have not forgotten that we value Xander insofar as his first priority is to Buffy, and they have given us several good X-saves-B sequences. Willow too.The sinister menace of Twilight is clearly limned, but the best stroke is the storyline in which Buffy is branded a terrorist. What a refreshing change for comic books, in which terrorism is supposed to equal evil (like THE DARK NIGHT RETURNS) and anything alien is demonic. This storyline is certainly taking its time, though, isn't it? Has the monumental popularity of the TWILIGHT vampire series derailed Joss' plans to develop his own version of Twilight?

While the book is usually better than the adapted movie, the adapted comic is almost never better than the original movie (or TV series in this case). So it took me a number of years to away from the show and an renewed interest in the comic book industry for me to give this a try.Joss Whedon is one of my favorite writer/directors so I had high hopes for this. There were a couple of missteps in my opinion, but overall a great job in pulling it all together after the Buffy TV show ended. It also had Whedon's excellent dark humor to make it feel like home.The art was amazing. I knew exactly who each character was.I could have used fewer side characters just because I love the main characters so much and wanted more of them. Xander was a particular favorite. I loved to see how he's grown.Reading this really got me excited for the series.

I admit, I was nervous about Joss returning to Buffy. Not because I haven't been eager for his return to the Buffyverse, far from it. But I didn't really love Angel (too campy, too many cheap-looking sets, too much soap opera, too much focus on sunlit fantasy instead of gloomy horror) and didn't know which Joss we were going to get here.It turns out that Season 8 holds up to the best of the original series and is substantially better, in pacing, theme and tone, than the last few seasons. We jump forward in time (apparently about a year) from the 2003 end of the series, find out how much of what we thought we knew about Buffy's fate from the final season of Angel was true and immediately plunge into a new saga that both spins out of what's come before and stands alone as something new and different.The dialogue is letter-perfect, as it should be, the art is almost perfect (Jeanty, strangely, can't draw a recognizable Andrew, and it took a phone call sequence for me to figure out who he was supposed to be) and Joss uses the unlimited special effects of comics to give us otherworldly menaces with nary a rubber suit in sight.The worst part of this TPB is that the wait for the next volume will be so long. But that's a good problem to have.Unreservedly recommended to fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Enjoyed the book very much. Will be ordering the second volume soon.

Le ha gustado mucho a mi hijo.

Avrei dato una stella perché nell’acquisto ho selezionato la rilegatura americana e mi è arrivata quella flessibile. Una stella in più perché nonostante tutto la qualità del prodotto è più che buona.

would love to have seen this 8th season filmed... though on the other hand, a lot of it probably would have been out-of-budget, so that's an adavantage of the comic format. very worth reading!

Ce volume est en fait le début de la saison 8 de Buffy. SI vous n'avez pas vu la série TV, inutile de vous plonger dans cet ouvrage, vous n'y comprendrez rien. Déjà, en ayant vu la série TV, c'est pas forcément évident... Fidèlement à la série, il y a beaucoup de personnages, qui sont plus ou moins ressemblants. Ensuite, l'histoire reprend un certain laps de temps après la saison 7. Les personnages ont évolué et se sont installés dans une nouvelle vie.En bref, il faut un temps d'accoutumance. Mais, même si le premier tome est un peu ardu dans sa mise en place, tout devient bien plus facile avec les suivants, bien plus passionnant aussi. Pour les fans donc, et à consommer sans modération...Buffy un jour, ....