Buffy the Vampire Slayer • Volume 3: Wolves at the Gate   ★★★★★
Drew Goddard (Author) • Georges Jeanty (Artist) • Jo Chen (Artist)
136 pages • Dark Horse • March 5th, 2008    [PB]
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wolves at the Gate is the third collection from the comic book series Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Joss Whedon’s Season Eight, which, as the title suggests, picks up where the television series left off. The four editions of the monthly comic in Wolves at the Gate make up one story, and span episodes 12 to 15 of the series. The author of the script is Drew Goddard, who joined the cast of scriptwriters for Season Seven of Buffy. He wrote ‘Never Leave Me’, ‘Dirty Girls’, and the outstanding episode that flashbacked to Anya’s past, ‘Selfless’. He was also writer for two of the best episodes from Angel Season Five, ‘Lineage’ and ‘Origin’.

What makes Joss Whedon’s Season Eight stand out as a comic book is that it is a continuation of the show’s narrative. It is helmed, as the title suggests, by the show’s creator, Joss Whedon, who is listed as the Executive Producer, and it follows the episode format of the television show.

It is a somewhat disorienting transition from television to comic book, which, I suspect, is what a lot of readers of Joss Whedon’s Season Eight will go through. There has always been the geek squad who live and breathe comic books, and there have been plenty of spin-off comic book stories written for them from the start. What Season Eight does, however, is take the story forward in a way that the spin-offs could not, and so it is far more attractive to an audience of fans who are not seasoned comic-book readers.

“As cartoonists and their longtime admirers are getting a little tired of explaining,” writes Douglas Wolk in Reading Comics, “comics are not a genre; they’re a medium.” (Wolk’s book is a fascinating read, although he does at times exhibit that world-weary ornery nerd style of know-it-all cynicism. ‘I mean, really, fellow geeks, I can’t believe people don’t know this. What is their, like, problem!’) This is an important concept in making the transition from television to comic but it is one that is one that is worth remembering.

In Season Eight, Buffy is the leader of a group of slayers that now amounts to more than two-thousand. A base in the Scottish highlands, where she trains the slayers, is the head of global operations. Fans of the show will be relieved to find out that there are many Buffy decoys out there, and so that lame Buffy-wig glimpsed on the dance floor in the Angel episode ‘The Girl in Question’ was not the girl herself. Phew! That brushes that obvious casting problem out of the way.

Often throughout Season Eight a classic character makes a reappearance at a critical turning point in the story. It is rather like 24 in this way. And it easier to pull off when one does not have to schedule with the original actor. It is such a reappearance that Wolves at the Gate hinges on, and it is one of the most successful of the series to date. For those who do not want to read any spoilers I would suggest you do not read on.

The catalyst for the story is the attack on the castle by shape-shifting vampires who steal the scythe. The scythe, the Buffy equivalent to the Sword in the Stone from the King Arthur legends, was the conduit through which the army of slayers was born at the end of Season Seven, and so it remains a focus throughout Season Eight. The scenes are wonderfully paced, and recall the best elements of the television Buffy: the slapstick comedy bang up against the heightened drama. When the wolves appear Xander rushes in to alert Buffy, who has just had her first lesbian encounter with one of the slayers, Satsu. Both the girls are naked and just about everyone who matters – even twinkster Andrew – interrupt their post-coital embrace.

Buffy’s lesbian encounter, it is hard not to feel, is a sideswipe at Sarah Michelle Gellar, who was rather put out by the sexual depravities she and Spike indulged in as the character of Buffy went off the rails in Season Six. That said, it does not read as deliberately scurrilous, and the writers had clearly prepared for it in previous stories. It adds an emotional depth that is crucial to the story.

That done it remains to return to the shape-shifters. The only vampire who could shape-shift known to the crew is, of course, Dracula. It turns out that Xander had an internship of sorts with the dark master the preceding summer, and with his new love-interest, the slayer Renee (not, she isn’t a demon!) they go to Dracula’s castle to find out that his powers have been stolen. From there they track the vampires to Tokyo, with Dracula in tow, to find out exactly what the gang of vampires plan to do with the scythe …

Wolves at the Gate is vintage Buffy in its humour and its emotional pathos. It is the most satisfying of the three collections, even outshining the first, The Long Way Home written by none other than Joss Whedon himself.

“I can change. I can be less … enticing. In a lesbian sense. That didn’t come out right.”