Issue: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Nine #11
Release Date: July 2012
Writer: Andrew Chambliss
Pencils: Georges Jeanty
Inks: Nathan Massengill
Colors: Michelle Madsen
Letters: Richard Starkings and COMICRAFT’S Jimmy Betancourt
Cover A: Phil Noto
Cover B: Georges Jeanty with Dexter Vines and Michelle Madsen
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Destiny is calling Buffy again. Her dreams of a simple life went up in smoke when Wolfram & Hart started targeting her newest client. Even from another dimension, the old mainstay is still creating havoc and setting themselves up to return to power. Whatever shall a Slayer do?
We start off with the image of a tentacle playing on TinCan, the comic world’s answer to Facebook. Except, whereas Facebook is earth-bound, TinCan’s reach is all the way to the hell dimensions. That’s right, it’s a social network for demons, and guess who’s behind it? None other than Wolfram & Hart. They paid Theo to insert some code when he developed the program and now he can’t remove it. Instead, he gave the evil entity its own personal front door to our world when all others were shut. He should really have a better handle on coding procedures, don’t you think? Threatened with death, he came to Buffy and Kennedy for protection. He may be able to afford Slayer body guards, but that doesn’t guarantee that he’s getting out of this situation alive.
The choice Theo is left with is simple, though hard to make. He can either erase TinCan’s existence, saying goodbye to all his life’s work and the gathered information of countless people, or he can allow the demons to infiltrate our world. But it’s not as easy as just unplugging one cord and being done with it. He’s got to get to the main server, housed under TinCan’s headquarters, and overheat the machine. This is made more complicated by the fact that the tentacle thing we saw before? It’s there, too, and it’s a Teuth demon. It’s huge and not something that Buffy, Kennedy, and Theo can take on by themselves. Good thing Buffy’s got Koh on her side. By Nitobe code, he owes Buffy a favor and she’s calling it in. It’s four against one, but the odds aren’t necessarily in their favor.
Not only do they have to deal with the Teuth demon, but also their own self-doubts. Theo doesn’t want to kill his life’s work, even if it’s the best thing to do. Buffy brings up the parallels between his choice and the choice she had to make with The Seed. They’ll both lose friends and have plenty of people who won’t understand, but they’re doing it for the right reasons. Kennedy has her own doubts as well, and wonders if they should go through with the plan, since they could use TinCan’s connection to another dimension and bring magic back to their world. Willow could regain her powers; not that it’s Kennedy’s only motivation for considering it. What she doesn’t know is that Willow’s doing just fine without them, over with Angel and Faith and Connor, doing the exact same thing. I wonder if the storylines will ever intersect.
It wouldn’t be an issue without a cliffhanger thrown in. This time, Koh is the one bringing the drama. He offers to double-cross the gang and kill Theo for Wolfram & Hart in exchange for learning which demon imprisoned him. What sacrifices will be made and what choices will they have to live with before this is all over? That’s what we’ll have to wait and find out.
Rating: 4 / 5 Stars
hi! are you going to do a review of charmed issue 22? i hope so ;)
I’m not sure if we ever received it. The last mention of reviews I have in my list was #21 back in May, but since then it’s been Charmed-less in my inbox.