Buffy The Vampire Slayer: A Stake To The Heart
May 25, 2004 | Trades
Buffy The Vampire Slayer: A Stake To The Heart
Fabian Nicieza, Cliff Richards, Brian Horton
Dark Horse Books
$12.95 US (Paperback)
*** (out of five)
Buffy Summers is one of the most powerful people on the planet. She is the Slayer.
But even she is helpless against something as horrifying to her as her parents’ divorce.
This illustrated adaptation of the popular TV series is set just prior to the show’s first season, when Buffy’s parents announce they are calling it quits. An inexperienced Slayer, suffering with this turn of events, is spied by her future lover, Angel, who secretly tries to cast a spell to take away her pain and sadness. But, as often happens when dealing with black magic (especially in comic books and fantasy TV shows), things go haywire and Angel ends up unleashing a quartet of Malignancy Demons upon the unsuspecting Summers family.
Each chapter deals with another demon — Deceit, Guilt, Abandonment and Trepidation — and another stage of Buffy’s familial destruction.
Written by comic veteran Fabian Nicieza and featuring an interesting mix of pencilled pages by Cliff Richards and painted illustrations by Brian Horton, A Stake To The Heart is much darker than typical Buffy fare. It still has many of the show’s hallmarks — dry wit, solid dialogue and bad-guy butt-kicking — but the mood of sadness and loss is striking.
For those still dying for another Buffy fix over a year after the series left the airwaves, A Stake To The Heart should do the trick. It may even send you running to your DVD player to watch the first season of the series over again — even if it is kind of weak.
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