Buffy #6 & Angel: Afte the Fall Preview

Brian K. Vaughan's 4 issue Faith arc begins next Wednesday. It finds Faith assigned to the infamous Cleveland Hellmouth. She's looking to ditch, but hasn't been able to secure a fake passport. Giles offers her a generous "early retirement package" if she will take on a delicate wetwork operation. The target: a rogue slayer. (Ironic, huh?)

BTW, IDW--which holds the license for Angel comics--is prepping Angel: After the Fall, the "cannonical follow-up to the TV series." Whedon isn't as involved in this as he in the Buffy project, but hopefully it will still be worthwhile. (And where else are you gonna get your Illyria fix?)

Writer Brian Lynch:

Angel and his friends took a stand because he thought it was the right thing to do. They fought the good fight even though they were probably going to lose, even though they were facing insurmountable odds. But that's the thing about insurmountable odds...surmounting them can be quite a bitch. The series begins to tackle the fall-out of Angel's stand, and what it cost everyone near, around, and close to him.

P.S., my guess for how they resolve the "it's not a cliffhanger" cliffhanger is: Angel, Spike and Illyria all survive--but Gunn gets vamped and becomes the big bad. (J Richards has actually said that's what they were planning to do with his character in Season 6 if the series hadn't got the chop.)

Ripper in 08?

“Ripper,” a Rupert Giles-centric BBC project Joss Whedon has been talking about since the fifth season of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” may yet manifest.

Speaking at a Dark Horse Comic Con event in San Diego Saturday, Whedon says he now hopes to launch “Ripper” as a 90-minute BBC movie in 2008.

They've been talking up this project for so long that I have to say, I'll believe it when I see it... but I *want* to believe.

When Rippre was first proposed, it was meant to be a pilot. No word on whether that possibility has survived.

Source: Ain't-It-Cool-News

Meanwhile, the Buffy Season 8 comic (which is *outstanding*) is about to launch its second 4-issue story arc under writer Brian K Vaughan. In it, Giles offers Faith an "early retirement package" if she agrees to hunt and kill a rogue slayer. Kinda ironical, huh?