Getting into the Fray

No, it's not misspelled. About two years ago, Joss Whedon began a comic series spin off of his TV show "Buffy". Since I had heard rumours and stories to the effect that it was kind of linked in to the Season 7 finale, I thought it might be worth a read. But I'd never bothered to pick it up.

It's not that I think comics are childish and no self respecting adult would read them. Far from it. I guess it's just because I haven't read a comic in something like ten years, and back then I was a Marvel guy through and through. Superman could kiss my ass. Anything Marvel written by Chris Claremont, Frank Miller and the like, were the only things worth reading.

It became obvious though that Marvel couldn't continue to exist on the path it was heading, and I jumped ship like a lot of people.

Anyway, today I saw the first six issues of Fray going cheap, and rather than read them all in the shop (which always looks bad) I said fuck it, and took them home.

The storyline is very iffy. I can't really tell it's written by Whedon. It's not witty or engaging enough. And you can tell sci-fi is not his forte. The world he writes is more likely to be similar to 20 years from now, rather than 200. But there are some nice moments of slayer mythology in there.

Given how predictable some elements of the story are, I'm kind of amazed he took as long as he did with the later issues. I understand there was something like an 8 month wait on the last issue. I can only assume that it has something meaningful to the tv show in it, and he was reluctant to let it go, or he is really busy with other stuff. The story practically writes itself.

I'm not particularly inspired to go out and buy issues 7 and 8, which isn't a good sign.



posted by Manchild at 11:09 PM