We are back in the world of the slayers, away from those pesky vampires as Rebecca Rand Kirshner tells us the story of a girl, Sonnenblume, who grows up in Germany just as the Nazi party is taking over. She is friends with a Jewish baker and her family but as the anti-Jewish sentiment reaches an all time high. She tries to do her part as a good German but it never really feels right to her. She feels that something is wrong but her family keeps telling her that good German's have to know their place in the world. That they are above everyone else, better than everyone else and has to remember that. One night while walking down the street looking for the undead she sees some Nazi breaking into the bakery looking for the Jewish family that she use to be friends with. She finally figures out that vampires aren't the only evil things out there. That sometimes people can be evil too. She fights the German's and saves the family. Vowing to protect people from the evil that man does as well. It is a tale of someone learning that their government isn't to be trusted. That just because we are told something doesn't make it true and that we have to figure out for our-self what is right and wrong.
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Welcome to the second battle between Spike and Dracula by Peter David. In this story David managed to do something that we never really saw in the show. A relationship between Spike and Darla. The two members of the whirlwind who had the least in common. No real connection to each other.
The story is told between two different points of view, that of Spike writing to Darla and that of a young boy Edward Wood Jr. who is telling his class about his weekend. Spike takes Dru to see Bela Lugos, the actor who plays Dracula in all the movies do a live play of the story. Ed Wood sits next to them. In the front row sits the real life Dracula. After the show Dracula tries to kill Lugos, only for Spike to jump in at the last minute and stop him. They do battle till Dracula turns to a bat and tries to fly away. Spike gets a hold of him and goes for a ride. They end up crashing on a plane and Spike makes it away while Dracula is believed dead. Meanwhile one of his brides tries to kill Lugos for him only to be dusted by Dru. She then tries to turn him into a real vampire but is stopped by the young Ed Wood. He saved his hero, the greatest vampire ever, the non vampire Bela Lugos. Ed Wood's teacher is not happy that he is telling tall tales in her class. He tells her that he won't tell vampire stories in class again. Instead he will just make horror movies. And so he does. He goes on to make many horror and sci-fi B-movies. Including Plan 9 from Outer Space. Over all this issue has been a great addition to the universe. Any time we get to see Spike and Dru it is always a treat. Welcome back to another Jane Espenson issue. Do I really need to say anything else? I mean her name is enough to inform us that the story is amazing. There is nothing this woman can't write. I would kill for half her talent.
Anyways, enough about the master that is Espenson. Now on to the Dust Bowl. It is a heartbreaking tell about a boy who lives with his mother and works on their farm. A bad dust storm hits and they have to bring all the animals into the barn. His mother invites a stranger into his home to protect him from the dust. He promises that he will be gone by morning. So he is. But something isn't right with his mother. She asks for a hug and bites him. Without thinking he bites her back. The next day he wakes up and his mother comes to talk to him, he thinks her crazy and stabs her. She turns to dust. It is then that the hunger sets in. He goes to his neighbors house, just as the sun comes up, catching him on fire. His friend puts him out and he tells her that he wants to make her like him. He bites her but she never wakes up. He never figured out that she has to feed on him in return in order for her to become another vampire. The dust starts to clear up and he knows that he will soon need food. What to do? He opens up his mothers room as a guest room. Making his house into a kind of bed and breakfast. He dumps the dead bodies in the barn. It is a sad tale but one that is well told. It has just enough heart and irony in it to make even this short a tale so memorable. The tale to end all tales, well the tale about other tales. That's the one! All the other stories in Tales of the Vampires is just a tale being told by the vampire Roche. But he is not the center of this story. That would be Giles Mother. Joss Whedon wrote this tale full of twists and turns. The watchers take these young soon to be watchers to go and learn the tales of vampires from this vamp. She just feels something is wrong but can't figure it out. No one else there seems to think that anything is out of place. As Edna, Giles mom, listens to Roche's story she figures out that the other little girl is in fact his sire. She slays the sire and is knocked out. When she wakes up everything is under control and she blows up at the watchers, pointing out how pathetic they all our. She leaves and makes her way to a nearby Bakery, a bakery run by a family with surname Giles. Where she has a crush on the oldest son. It's a great story that serves as a kind of origin story for Giles, kind of. Welcome the Whirlwind, well minus Angelus but he is mentioned a lot in the first chapter of Peter David's tale. In the first episode of season 5 of Buffy we meet Dracula for the first time. Yes in this verse he is real. And he can do all the amazing things that he can do in the books. Normal vampires can't but he is different, he is better he is after all Xander's master. In the episode Spike tells the Scooby gang that Dracula owes him 11 pounds. He didn't go into detail about the why or how they know each other, so welcome to these five chapters that give us all the information that we need. In this first chapter we learn that Dracula was in love with the Gypsies who cursed Angel and wanted revenge on Darla and Drusilla because he wasn't sure which one killed her. He knew that the three of them killed the rest of the clan and for that they all had to pay. Dracula hypnotized Dru and Darla to come with him and love him. They wanted to be his brides, he asked them to kill each other and they wanted to but Spike got the villagers to attack him and got the girls out just in time. Now how does this explain the money? Well Spike bought Dru a signed copy of Dracula as a gift and Dracula threw it into a fire pit. Spike wanted to be repaid for it. After all back then it was a lot of money. He even tells him in a note as he saves the girls that he will be back for his money. This is a great addition to the Buffyverse, it's fun and catches the voices of the different whirlwind members well. The only thing that bothers me about this issue is when Spike talks about Angelus being cursed. No one knows about that except for Darla. She wouldn't tell Spike or Dru, they kept asking but she wouldn't tell them. That's why Angel came and hung out with them for a while. Because they didn't know and Darla wanted to believe that he could still behave like Angelus. Spoiler, he couldn't. Spike still didn't know that Angel had a soul in season 2 episode 3 School Hard, when Spike first showed up in Sunnydale. That is a mistake that bothers the hell out of me. Other than that this is a great first issue to a great series. Welcome to an important issue for many reasons. Show writer David Fury steps in to give us not only the origin story of Sunnydale, or Happydale/ Sunny Acres as it was almost called but also the first chronological appearance of Richard Wilkens AKA the Mayor. In this tell a slayer comes to a town full of vampires and slays them while looking for the vampire who killed her watcher. The vampire was a young girl who hates herself for being half white and strikes out against the white man. She fights with the slayer and is bested by her, turning to dust in the process. All of this is told to Wilkens who is buying the land to build a new city. Why is this land so important? Well it might be the hellmouth underneath it. I'm just saying, having a gate to hell might be a big selling point for a man who would go on to become an old one himself. It's a cute story that sets up a lot of the universe that we know. It tells an important part of the back story without feeling like that is its whole purpose or that it is even doing it at all. The story itself is so good that even if you don't know about Season 3 or the hellmouth you would still enjoy it. Brett Matthews brings us the true tale of Jack the Ripper. The tale that we knew had to be coming. The shocking truth that Jack was in reality a vampire! The store follows an inspector by the name of James. He's an older man who was assigned the case and has become consumed with by it. He puts all of his time and energy into finding Jack. At the scene of the latest victim there is blood everywhere, Jack is stepping up his game but it is just enough for James to put the last of it all together. He has figured out Jack's secret. He knows that all the blood spilled at the crime scene likely means that Jack is still hungry and is out hunting once more this night. Sure enough it isn't long before he finds Jack about to feed. His theory is proving correct, Jack is a vampire. Now comes the twist. . . James is also a vampire. Far older and more experienced. The two blood suckers fight it out till James kills Jack and retires from the case, stating that Jack is in the wind. Very punny. This is a fun tale that takes a real life mystery and gives it a supernatural twist. Expanding the Buffyverse but fitting right in with it at the same time. It's an amazing addition to the cannon. Welcome to easily my favorite story in the Buffyverse not featuring the main characters. Once more we are back with the Slayers. Welcome to Presumption and like the title this issue is all about people presuming things before getting all the facts. The story takes place during a ball held by a single man. A young girl shows up and dances with the man. She is not your normal girl, even less so in this olden age. She speaks her mind and isn't afraid to offend people, while the man doesn't wish to be noticed by anyone. The writer lets us know quickly that one is the slayer and one is a vampire. Although everyone could have guessed that from the start. The man and woman go their ways and figure out how to go about their goals, killing each other. The two step outside and we learn the clever twist. The girl is the vampire and the man is the slayer. Only he isn't a man. He is in fact a woman pretending to be a man in order to go unnoticed. It plays on our expectations and spins them on their heads. The mark of a great writer. So who is the writer? Jane Espenson. You want a good bit of advice? If you want to watch good TV just follow her career. She knows how to write, how to tell stories better than almost anyone else. I mean anyone who worked on both Buffy and Battlestar Galactica and Once Upon a time and The Next Generation and Firefly, my god this woman is Geek royaltiy and should get a lot more respect and notice from the fans. Also if you want to be a writer, check out her blog! http://janeespenson.com/ We finally made it to the first story inverse that doesn't take place inside the Tales of the Slayer series. Welcome to the first tale in Tales of the Vampire! So different right? Ok so Some like it Hot, written by Sam Loeb. It is a great tale all about being careful of what you wish for.
In this tale a vampire longs for the days when he could lay out in the sun and enjoy its warmth. Something that vampires can never do, one step out into the deadly rays of the sun and they go up in flames. Not a fun way to spend your last day. Now there is only two ways for a vampire to go out in the sun, not counting throwing a blanket over your head and running. You can either get the Gem of Amara or have your heart removed. The problem with the second option is that after 24 hours you burst into flames and die. In this story a doctor figures out a way to get around the 24 hour rule. He builds him a robotic heart that allows him to go out in the sun without dying. It works and he finally goes out and feels the warmth that he has been so longing for. His enjoyment of it doesn't last long. It turns out he has grown fond of the cold and quickly losses interest in the sun light. It's a good morality tale about a guy who gets his hearts wish and becomes bored with it. On that level it's an amazing story but it also suffers from a problem that the Buffyverse tends to have. They open up a lot of plot lines that they leave alone never to touch again. The praying mantis eggs, Marcie and the FBI school for invisible kids. This story tells us that there is a vampire out there who can't be killed! Ok well cut off his head and he dies that is fair but still! This is big! That is a story to tell! Let's hope that Buffy or Angel season 11 can give this character his return! I'd love to see that story! So next up on our Buffyverse Train is Tales of the Slayer: The Innocent. This story takes place during the French Revolution. The slayer fights side by side with her love who sends her after Vampires that he finds throughout the city. He sends her after a vampire aristocratic. She does her duty and kills the vampire, only plot twist, he isn't a vampire. He is just an aristocratic and she killed him right in front of his family. She figures out what happens almost at once, I can't imagine how traumatizing that must have been for her. The man she loved, the man she worked with sent her on a fools errand. He turned her noble quest into something dark and dirty. He made her a murderer and she doesn't know how to live with that. It is something that Faith will go through in the 3rd season of the show. This is the first story in the Buffyverse, timeline wise, that isn't written by Joss Whedon. It was instead written by Amber Benson. If that name sounds like one you have heard before it might be because she played Tara on the show. |
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