Graphic Novel Review--The Long Way Home by Joss Whedon & Ill. by Georges Jeanty

Collects: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight, #1–5

Since the destruction of the Hellmouth, the Slayers-newly legion-have gotten organized and are kicking some serious undead butt. But not everything's fun and firearms, as an old enemy reappears and Dawn experiences some serious growing pains. Meanwhile, one of the "Buffy" decoy slayers is going through major pain of her own.

Buffy creator Joss Whedon brings Buffy back to Dark Horse in this direct follow-up to season seven of the smash-hit TV series. The bestselling and critically acclaimed issues 1-5 are collected here for the first time, as are their covers by Jo Chen and Georges Jeanty.

So I decided that I wanted to see what the Buffy the Vampire Slayer graphic novels were all about. In particular the season 8 collection to see what's happening with Buffy and the Scooby crew now that Sunnydale is no more. The Long Way Home is the first installment in the series with Joss Whedon doing the words and Georges Jeanty doing the drawings. And while it was good, I couldn't help but be a little confused at times.

Perhaps because I feel like we don't necessarily pickup right where the show left off. Lots of things have happened. Willow is missing, Giles is off doing something else, Dawn is a huge giant...and yeah, you see where I'm going with all this!

What made things more confusing was the omniscient narrator I felt we had at certain times. Granted, in the beginning we knew Buffy was narrating, but the last "issue" or "chapter" had someone different and that's what really threw me off.

We learn early on that there's Buffy decoys, not robots, decoys. Other Slayers who resemble Buffy and go on secret missions around the world fighting evil. We even saw one in that episode of Angel in the last season on TV! Totally loved that little tie-in bit! 

I guess because it's a graphic novel, we don't really get the whole scoop on what's going on! Like what happened from the time Sunnydale went kaput? How did Buffy and everyone else windup across the world?! It was a little frustrating!

What I also enjoyed was seeing other characters from the series pop up. Sadly, not our favorite vampires, at least not yet! But I like that well-roundness feeling of that!

I guess the plot is what is throwing me off since I didn't really grasp what's going on with that since I struggled with the unsaid backstory. We basically have another enemy group who wants to stop the slayers, to put in mildly.

The illustrations were pretty nice, not at all like the cover image though! I guess that's just special artwork! Wasn't really expecting to "see" that in the novel, but it is what drew me to the series once I really realized what these books were about!

I'm not sure if I will read more of these. Possibly, if the library has them and I can track them down. But it was pretty confusing at times, I almost need like some sort of prequel to this series and it being post-season 7 just so I can know what happened and all that I missed. Maybe it was events from previous graphic novels. Really no idea. But it was a pretty decent read, and a quick one!


Overall Rating 2.5/5 stars