The Buffy franchise had a big problem after the Season 8 comics ended: the ending had grown out of control and alienated some of the fans. Even Joss Whedon came out and said that the end of Season 8 didn’t quite work because it tried to go bigger and bigger and lost some sight of what makes Buffy compelling in the first place. It’s not the monsters that make Buffy the Vampire Slayer attractive; it’s the people.
Looks like no lesbian hookups for Buffy this season.
At the end of Season 8, Buffy destroyed the Seed of Wonder, the source of all magic in the world, and Season 9 (both the Buffy comic and the companion Angel & Faith) has done a good job so far of developing that darker, unhappier world; the end of magic wasn’t the end of the adventure, it was the beginning of a whole new set of problems. Demons are trapped in our world. Willow is powerless. The laws of demon physics have warped and contorted. And most troubling of all, newly sired vampires are now little more than beasts — “zompires,” as Xander so eloquently coined it.
Buffy is now in San Francisco with Willow, Xander, Dawn, and Spike. She’s waitressing now to make ends meet, hunting vampires by night. But she’s got some personal problems — most notable is that she’s avoiding doing much heavy thinking about Giles being dead or the Seed being destroyed. The first major story arc, “Freefall,” has had Buffy adrift and aimless. In issue 1, Buffy argues with Willow that the world’s not much different, that there’s still “monsters and stuff” out there, but Willow sees the big picture — the entire world has changed and everyone needs to adapt. Riley is now fighting conventional terrorists. Andrew has started his own Slayer relief organization. Willow has gone back into computer programming. Demons are now taking day jobs.
It’s a bit of a waiting game to see how Buffy adapts, because like it or not, her situation is now changing on a more personal level too. Willow has left to try to bring back magic (that this is exactly setting up the future seen in “Time of Your Life” is not ominous at all, no sir). Buffy’s past is about to come back to bite her in the form of Simone, the vicious Slayer with a grudge. Severin, a very powerful young man, has the power to drain what little magic remains in the world, and was capable of nearly killing both Buffy and Spike. (Severin — great pun for the name, by the way — represents the very dark side of what Buffy accomplished by destroying the Seed, and I’m very hopeful to see what happens with his character.) And now Buffy’s pregnant, and doesn’t know who the father is. I’m not going to comment too much on this yet — taking a “wait and see” approach — but it does tie strongly into how “nothing will ever be the same again.” Buffy is cast more into roles she’s not particularly interested in, while her enemies are gathering their strength. But let’s hope she gets it together soon — so far, the Buffy comics have been a bit shapeless, and this might be the kicker that make the series a little more cohesive.
The Angel & Faith comics have been a bit more promising, not only because the art has been significantly better, but also because it’s got a much clearer notion of where it’s going: Angel wants to bring Giles back from the dead, somehow. Even if the world were still full of magic, that would be a nearly impossible task, but in a world without magic, that’s purely delusional. Faith is there to keep him grounded, to keep him from going off the deep end again like he did as Twilight, and given the characters’ history, putting them together in a comic was a stroke of genius. There’s a part of me that hopes Angel can find some way to bring Giles back — after all, Angel has lost Doyle, Cordelia, Fred, Wesley, many people over the course of his career, so I’d like to see him get a win once in a while — but I’m content to be kept guessing for now. And the implication that Angel might be becoming Giles forbodes strange things as well.
Blah, I'm so evil they don't even have a word for me.
While I’m enjoying Angel & Faith, the strength of that comic comes from its central twosome, balancing Angel’s desire to make right after having regressed back into evil with Faith’s desire to keep both herself and Angel on the straight and narrow. I don’t find the two main villains, Pearl and Nash, particularly interesting; they’re a reminder of Angel’s sins, but not much more than that, and the fact that Whistler is leading them around so far is less “intriguing mystery” and more “huh?!” My other gripe — and this is a petty one — is that the Angel & Faith comic has drawn so little from the Angel show. I know the core two are in England now, but part of me wonders how some of the old gang could help Angel on his quest for redemption — Gunn? Illyria? Connor? And isn’t Angel’s current dark period the perfect opportunity for Wolfram & Hart to swoop in and take advantage?
So far it’s been a promising start for Season 9. I can’t see where the future leads, but that’s a good thing — I’m glad the series can still surprise me after so long. And as long as they stick with what makes them great — supernatural heroes who struggle more with their own humanity than the monsters they fight — I’ll be sticking around.
Benton Sartore has been reading comic books off and on since his age was in single digits, and playing RPGs since college. His bookshelf is now full of 1960s Marvel Comics, Batman trades, and Star Wars comics, and he's been known to DM Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, and Serenity. He's most proud of his DVD collection — Joss Whedon is his master now.
Benton is also an acting editor at In Genre. 
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