Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 Motion Comic

Four years after Buffy left television, ending her seven-season run, the eighth season began as a comic series with creator Joss Whedon at the helm. Now she returns to television in a motion comic adaptation. In this format, the camera creates a narrative by zooming and panning across the comic panels as an audio track fills in for speech bubbles. In a frame, parts of a scene receive the movement implied in print, such as lightening or a punch, but fluid animation is infrequent. This creates a stylistic treat akin to paintings turned marionettes. The isolated motion intensifies the beauty and horror of the story, which is as good as anything Whedon’s previously delivered. Beware: The comic lasted 40 issues and this only contains the first 19; Fox didn’t bother to include “Volume One” on the package. After Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse, Fox continues its mission of screwing the Whedonverse. Without the original cast, the voices are hit-and-miss but it’s worth it to have a place to turn where the vampires don’t sparkle and emotions don’t fall on a scale of emo to super-emo.