BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: UNINVITED GUESTS
The multimedia franchise is a monster Buffy can't overcome.

Writers: Andi Watson, Dan Brereton
Artist: Hector Gomez, Sandu Florea
Colorist: Guy Major
Letterer: Janice Chiang
Trade Pperback
Published by Dark Horse Comics/Titan Books, 1999
$10.95

Reviewed by Andrew Wheeler

The town of Sunnydale is situated over a gateway to hell, making it a centre of weird occult activity. Buffy Summers is the Slayer, charged with the task of fighting and destroying vampires, while at the same time trying to cope with the challenges of being a teenager. Set during the second season of the hit TV series, UNINVITED GUESTS has Buffy getting a holiday job, falling out with best friend Willow, and attending a slumber party, all the while running into demons, vampires, and big monster dogs.

In a recent poll by a UK science-fiction/fantasy magazine, the BUFFY comics were voted the second best of 1999, with PREACHER coming in at first place. Elsewhere in the same poll, THE MATRIX and THE PHANTOM MENACE were voted among both the best and worst science-fiction movies of last year, suggesting that these polls do not reflect quality so much as they do visibility. There were certainly more than three sci-fi movies that were worse than THE MATRIX in 1999, but no-one went to see them. Similarly, BUFFY was far from the best comic last year, but it had the advantage of having been seen. BUFFY came out on top because more BUFFY fans voted than comics fans.

"everything must fit within an established continuity"

All of which can be taken as a preamble to the conclusion that BUFFY the comic is not very good. Multimedia franchise comics like BUFFY, TOMB RAIDER and the WWF wrestling comics act as ambassadors for the industry to the wider world, and for that reason, it is probably in the industry's interests to make them among the best. Sadly, that rarely seems to be the case, and that can be attributed to a simple question of scale. To the comics industry, these comics are significant, and ought to be a home to major talents. To the industry that owns the franchises, the comics are just another money-spinner. They don't want anything too controversial. They don't want anything that diverts too far from the source material, or that shows too much originality. In a television series especially, everything must fit within an established continuity.

Therefore, it is in the interests of the franchise-holders to make sure these comics are just good enough to sell. The franchise itself is often more tightly controlled than the X-MEN books. Most talented creators would turn down the opportunity to work in such a straightjacket. A few, not unreasonably, would accept the limitations in exchange for the generally better pay such projects offer. They almost certainly would not be doing their best work. Thus, almost by necessity, the comic industry's great ambassadors are second-rate, factory-produced vacuums of creativity. They're not good, but they are widely read, and a popular consensus that knows no better will still vote them the second best comics of 1999.

Andi Watson, a writer who has done some excellent work at Oni, is the poor hired-hand brought in on UNINVITED GUESTS. With no opportunity to develop or change the characters beyond the parameters of the inviolable 'season two', there is little for Watson to do here but tread water with a few formulaic monster-of-the-month plotlines. Watson clearly has an ear for the sort of snappy dialogue that made the TV series so popular, but without the actors to deliver the lines, that dialogue falls flat on the page. The sort of script that might have been perfect on camera needs some adapting for a comic, but the creative mafia have evidently established a formula, and no upstart comic book is going to be allowed to break out of it.

"It's as if Gomez only had one Teen People pin-up of each cast member to draw from."

The British magazine poll also lauded BUFFY for its casting. Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz, who play Buffy and her sometime vampire boyfriend Angel, were voted sexiest female and male in science-fiction and fantasy TV. The rest of the cast slotted in elsewhere in the relevant top fives. Perhaps this is why artist Hector Gomez is trying so hard to achieve a competent likeness of the cast in his artwork, to the extent that he doesn't have time to give any of the characters facial expressions. On every page, the characters have the same blank looks, like poseable action figures. It's as if Gomez only had one Teen People pin-up of each cast member to draw from.

Meanwhile, any attempt at intelligent visual storytelling is flung out the window. Without character development, the stories are reliant on monsters and fight scenes to hold the audience's interest. Sadly, Gomez is no HR Giger, and the monster in the swimming pool in the last chapter is largely distinguished from the monster in the ice rink in the first chapter by the fact that it's a different colour and temperature. Nor is it clear in either instance how the monster is eventually defeated. Gomez is not a fluent action artist. The figures tend to look uncomfortable and strained, and the shots jump about with little regard for perspective or fluency.

UNINVITED GUESTS is not the second best comic of last year. With luck, it may not even be the second best BUFFY comic of last year. If it is representative of the title in general, it's safe to say the book would not exist at all if it were not for the popularity of the TV series. Unfortunately, it does exist, and so long as books like this keep drawing in the big numbers, what incentive will they have for change?

Avoid.

Andrew Wheeler is a Staff Writer for PopImage.

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