I've got a theory. (Actually, I've got a couple, but the other one
involves bunnies). Vampires' hair (and fingernails) always resets
itself to the length it was when they died - if they cut it shorter,
it quickly grows back to the default length. However, if they treat
the hair with chemicals - such as hairgel or bleach - it stays at the
shorter length and doesn't regrow.

(The alternative is that Angelus was wearing a really bad wig in his
19th century heyday...)

Anyway, on with the review:

Looks like Wesley wasn't dematerialised as a direct result of Gunn
blowing up the W&H offices, but rather the Senior Partners called him
back to chew his head off for letting them get blown up. Of course, we
now have the big quiestion as to exactly what his duties are... by the
sound of it, I'm guessing "keep Angel alive so he can suffer until we
eventually kill him" would be along the right lines.

Lorne definitely has a drink problem, doesn't he? Interesting comments
about Fred - firstly, we were told her soul was destroyed, not sent to
the afterlife. And secondly, when Buffy went to heaven, she wasn't
with her loved ones either: she just "knew they were okay". (Which
wasn't actually true, but anyway...) So either Lorne and his
colour-coded cohorts don't know what they're talking about, or we were
fed false facts on Fred back in Season 5. There's also a lot of
foreshadowing going on here re Fred, Illyria and loved ones, apart
from the obvious "Let's assemble the gang!" idea.

And how symbolic is it that Lorne's words here duplicate Angel's last
words in 'Not Fade Away'? "Let's get to work." Back then those words
heralded destruction and breaking apart; here they may herald the
reconstruction. Especially since Lorne, the non-fighter and the one
most disaffected by Angel's actions before, is the one to say them.

Angel shaves in a mirror - hence my theorising in the introduction.
And I really don't want to know about how the vampire glamour works,
nor who inserted the object projecting it... (Can't have been Wesley,
after all. Maybe it was the dragon?) So did Gunn blow up the builing
so that Angel would lose the fight? Doesn't exactly fit with what we
hear from him later. For that matter, does he know Angel is mortal? I
can't see how he would...

Spider's posse swap their bikinis for tight black leather bodysuits...
not sure how 'appropriate' these are but at least they're more
martial-looking. And Spike appears to still feel like their prisoner,
wanting to escape from them... especially if the alternative is having
to fight Angel. Certainly he isn't the one giving the orders here. And
is that Lorne teleporting in at the end of this scene?

Liked the banter between Connor and Gwen. Nothing more to say there,
really.

So Gunn still feels responsible for saving helpless civilians from
demons, even though he's one himself? Interesting.

More amusing asides in the big fight scene, especially the riff on
"knife to a gunfight" and Angel attepting to try the same trick on the
dinosaur as he did with the dragon.

Lindsay gets a namecheck! Yay! Though that probably means we won't be
seeing him for real... unless Brian put him in 'Everyone's Dead' as a
zombie? And more sinister speculation - what exatly is the "desired
reaction" that Angel is supposed to be having, and that Wesley is
trying to bring him around to? Even if we assume Wesley has his own
agenda, that doesn't sound good...

And everyone gets together to fight. Aww. (Cheats.) Although points to
Lorne for some inspired rules-lawyering... and this was all Gunn's
plan? Hmm. The attack on Kr'ph makes sense now - Gunn killed the
civilians in vampire stylee and left the primeval Sanskrit runes so
that Angel would suspect Spike and Illyria and go and talk to them,
leading to them teaming up instead, which was apparently Gunn's plan
all along. Not sure how he got Connor, Gwen and Nina on board, though,
if he did.

Apparently when Buffy 8.12 was published Brian's inbox was deluged by
a flood of requests asking for some Angel/Spike to balance out the
Buffy/Satsu. Not sure if he listened, but we do get a touching bonding
scene between the two of them. Where Spike all but admits that Angel
falls into the category of "those we care about"... and gets all lost
for words for a moment and almost says something non-macho, until he
recovers by saying that now Angel owes him. and Angel's own reaction
is priceless. He's even less able to express his feelings than Spike.
:-)

Loved the way Spike assumes Wesley's return is due to an amulet, and
the sarky remark about nobody ever staying dead...

And Illyria's reaction on seeing Wesley walking and talking again
is... to turn into Fred? Um. Given the situation, I'm assuming that
her continued erratic behaviour - that had Spike so worried he asked
Angel for help - is due to grief over Wesley's death. Now I'm
wondering if she adopted Fred's form because she associates those
weird human emotions like love with that shape, or because she is
trying to please him.. or even because Fred's memories/soul/whatever
is reawakening within her?

And now we have to wait three months before we find out...

Stephen

On Mar 20, 2:07 pm, Stephen Tempest <step...@stempest.demon.co.uk>
wrote:
> I've got a theory. (Actually, I've got a couple, but the other one
> involves bunnies). Vampires' hair (and fingernails) always resets
> itself to the length it was when they died - if they cut it shorter,
> it quickly grows back to the default length. However, if they treat
> the hair with chemicals - such as hairgel or bleach - it stays at the
> shorter length and doesn't regrow.
>
> (The alternative is that Angelus was wearing a really bad wig in his
> 19th century heyday...)

I'm glad other people are picking up on the rather obvious fact that
the long-lived vampires' hair/other dead skin length has varied quite
a bit throughout BTVS and ATS. It's the first thing that I thought
about when that line came up, although I don't know if it was the most
pressing thing on my mind after reading the comic or anything...

> And how symbolic is it that Lorne's words here duplicate Angel's last
> words in 'Not Fade Away'? "Let's get to work." Back then those words
> heralded destruction and breaking apart; here they may herald the
> reconstruction. Especially since Lorne, the non-fighter and the one
> most disaffected by Angel's actions before, is the one to say them.

To get technical, Angel's line was "let's *go* to work." It's also
common enough phrase that one can expect to see it pop up from time to
time anyway. Neither of those facts contradict the idea that the
parallelism could very well be intentional, but I'm just saying.

(There's a rather hilarious moment in an episode of _Curb Your
Enthusiasm_ in which a character whose brother died on Sept. 11, 2001
gets angry and offended whenever anyone uses the phrase "let's roll"
in a trivial situation.)

> So did Gunn blow up the builing
> so that Angel would lose the fight? Doesn't exactly fit with what we
> hear from him later. For that matter, does he know Angel is mortal? I
> can't see how he would...

I don't know if this is rhetorical speculation or what, but we're back
at the point where Gunn's motivations aren't at all clear to me.
Presumably there's plenty more story to tell there. Pretty much all
of his comments in this issue take things to a different place than
previously (to me) suggested. But this has just been the first half
for him.

> Spider's posse swap their bikinis for tight black leather bodysuits...
> not sure how 'appropriate' these are but at least they're more
> martial-looking. And Spike appears to still feel like their prisoner,
> wanting to escape from them... especially if the alternative is having
> to fight Angel. Certainly he isn't the one giving the orders here. And
> is that Lorne teleporting in at the end of this scene?

But he manages to join the fight on the side he wants and get a
promise of undefined help for Illyria. Not doing too badly for
himself.

> So Gunn still feels responsible for saving helpless civilians from
> demons, even though he's one himself? Interesting.

The ones he doesn't eat, anyway. Although I forget whether the
slavegirls or whatever from issue #1 were human.

> More amusing asides in the big fight scene, especially the riff on
> "knife to a gunfight" and Angel attepting to try the same trick on the
> dinosaur as he did with the dragon.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU --? ARE YOU HIGH?"

I like the deflating of his attempt at a big speech. But in response
to the "here I am... again" thing, it reminded me of how constant
things can be in Angel's life sometimes. And maybe I'm just being
spoiled, but I was musing over whether the comic has told us anything
particularly new about him or his world.

> Lindsay gets a namecheck! Yay! Though that probably means we won't be
> seeing him for real... unless Brian put him in 'Everyone's Dead' as a
> zombie? And more sinister speculation - what exatly is the "desired
> reaction" that Angel is supposed to be having, and that Wesley is
> trying to bring him around to? Even if we assume Wesley has his own
> agenda, that doesn't sound good...

Eve too; unclear whether she'd be a zombie as well or if she
eventually worked up the will to leave that building. I also doubt
that either of them will actually appear, though; it's more of a
throwaway gag for the fans. After the initial disorientation, Wesley
seems pretty unfazed by what they throw at him, like he knows what
he's doing with the "making himself indispensible to both sides"
thing. To what purpose, well, who the hell knows anymore?

> And everyone gets together to fight. Aww. (Cheats.) Although points to
> Lorne for some inspired rules-lawyering... and this was all Gunn's
> plan? Hmm. The attack on Kr'ph makes sense now - Gunn killed the
> civilians in vampire stylee and left the primeval Sanskrit runes so
> that Angel would suspect Spike and Illyria and go and talk to them,
> leading to them teaming up instead, which was apparently Gunn's plan
> all along.

Maybe.

> Loved the way Spike assumes Wesley's return is due to an amulet, and
> the sarky remark about nobody ever staying dead...

Me too.

> And Illyria's reaction on seeing Wesley walking and talking again
> is... to turn into Fred? Um.

Um is right. Nice big battle, and then an ending that's less a
cliffhanger and more of a "huh."

Well, that was pretty fun. I'd already basically decided that I'm no
longer going to collect these comics, so this was a good note to end
on. Thanks for being our discussion leader.

-AOQ

Well, #6 came out last week, so I guess it's time for me to comment on #5.

I have to say I liked Urru's artwork more in this issue. Not that I ever
hated it the way some fans do, but I would've preferred something more
detailed. (Like the slightly less unpopular work Jeanty does for Buffy
S8.) But I think Urru's style works better for epic fight scenes than
anywhere else, and there was a lot of fighting here.

In alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer Stephen Tempest <stephen@stempest.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> I've got a theory. (Actually, I've got a couple, but the other one
> involves bunnies). Vampires' hair (and fingernails) always resets
> itself to the length it was when they died - if they cut it shorter,
> it quickly grows back to the default length. However, if they treat
> the hair with chemicals - such as hairgel or bleach - it stays at the
> shorter length and doesn't regrow.

Heh. But Angel also mentions cutting his hair, so it must still be
growing, and he *surely* hasn't stopped using product. And in Lessons,
Spike's bleached hair has grown out a bit and shows dark, unbleached
roots. Though maybe that just means the bleach has to be reapplied
regularly to stop hair growth.

Seriously, I don't think there's any way to make vampire hair entirely
consistent in the Buffyverse, especially with the bit here in #5. One
theory I sometimes toy with is that vampires' hair and nails stop growing,
unless the vampire *wills* them to grow and drinks extra blood to fuel the
growth. But I don't offer it as an explanation: there is no textual
evidence whatsoever that any of the writers have anything like this in
mind; and anyway it still wouldn't account for Spike's hair in Lessons,
when he was too demented to be working on his appearance. I think we're
just going to have to live with inconsistency as far as vampires' hair
goes.

> Looks like Wesley wasn't dematerialised as a direct result of Gunn
> blowing up the W&H offices, but rather the Senior Partners called him
> back to chew his head off for letting them get blown up. Of course, we
> now have the big quiestion as to exactly what his duties are... by the
> sound of it, I'm guessing "keep Angel alive so he can suffer until we
> eventually kill him" would be along the right lines.

Makes sense that that's his assignment. They don't seem to have been
directing his every move, though. Have they been dumb enough to just
trust Wesley all this time? Are they relying on threats to keep him in
line? Or are they confident that what Wesley does for Angel will serve
their purposes, regardless of what Wesley intends?

> Lorne definitely has a drink problem, doesn't he? Interesting comments
> about Fred - firstly, we were told her soul was destroyed, not sent to
> the afterlife. And secondly, when Buffy went to heaven, she wasn't
> with her loved ones either: she just "knew they were okay". (Which
> wasn't actually true, but anyway...) So either Lorne and his
> colour-coded cohorts don't know what they're talking about, or we were
> fed false facts on Fred back in Season 5.

Well, the cohorts might not know what they're talking about; but Lorne was
there during S5, therefore *he* shouldn't be simply ignorant. So, is this
a deliberate change to the S5 story that will become significant later?
Or did Joss and Brian just forget what was said about Fred's soul in late
S5? There is precedent for the latter in Joss's little boo-boo about
Warren's death.

At first I was confused by the mysterious blue figure was that appeared at
Spike's place and on Connor's roof. Probably some sort of projection of
Lorne's, allowing him to rally the troops without attracting attention by
physically traveling to each of them. Or was it something else entirely
that I missed?

I liked the gag about Angel's lame speech. Instead of having him start
off lame and eventually build to something moving, the comic goes all the
way and lets Angel's speech just awkwardly peter out. And yet the people
still apparently cheer him. I guess they hear what they need to hear.
(Parallels there to the Hero of Canton's speech in Jaynestown.) Or else
they're just cheering at his showing up for the fight, not at the speech.

> And everyone gets together to fight. Aww. (Cheats.)

"I was as surprised as you," Angel says. I for one was NOT surprised at
all. As plot twists go, Angel's friends joining him is pretty untwisty.
But it's satisfying anyway, for the same reason that it's usurprising.
Where would Angel, and indeed the whole Whedonverse, be without the heroes
coming back together to help each other in the face of death?

I really liked Groo freeing the dragon so it could fight the T-Rex. "Now
that is something I would very much like to see" was perfect for his
character.

> Although points to
> Lorne for some inspired rules-lawyering...

So there was nothing in the rules forbidding any hell lords from fighting
on Angel's side? That was a pretty big loophole, though perhaps an
understandable one if the other lords don't really know Lorne.

> and this was all Gunn's
> plan? Hmm.

I took him to mean the coming-together part, and not the whole duel
between Angel and the other hell-lords. But maybe it's both? I too am
unsure how Gunn can take credit for Connor and his crew rejoining Angel.
Maybe he figures that once he got the ball rolling by sending Angel to
Illyria, the rest would all follow naturally.

> Loved the way Spike assumes Wesley's return is due to an amulet, and
> the sarky remark about nobody ever staying dead...

Spike really doesn't look happy to see Wesley again. "Wouldn't have ever
come here if I knew he was back" were his last words of the issue. I
don't think it's just fear that Wesley might be working for the Senior
Partners (if Spike has even had time to realize that yet). He seems to
have known that seeing Wesley would have a major effect on Illyria. And
in S5 Wesley was closer to both Fred and Illyria than Spike was, so poor
Spike might be feeling a wee bit threatened now.

> And Illyria's reaction on seeing Wesley walking and talking again
> is... to turn into Fred? Um.

So there was a surprise in this issue after all! The rest of this issue
unfolded in an enjoyable but very straightforward fashion, but that last
page really spices things up.

> Given the situation, I'm assuming that
> her continued erratic behaviour - that had Spike so worried he asked
> Angel for help - is due to grief over Wesley's death. Now I'm
> wondering if she adopted Fred's form because she associates those
> weird human emotions like love with that shape, or because she is
> trying to please him.. or even because Fred's memories/soul/whatever
> is reawakening within her?

The reawakening soul could be the reason for that discreet change to the
S5 story about Fred's soul being destroyed. If it was a deliberate
change, that is. Another possibility is that Illyria is now having
episodes where she thinks she *is* Fred, and seeing Wesley brought one on.
I like that idea. However, Illyria never forgot who she really is in any
of the previous issues, did she?

> And now we have to wait three months before we find out...

Evil.


--Chris

__________________________________________________ ____________________
chrisg [at] gwu.edu On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog.

On Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:51:19 -0500, chrisg@removethistoreply.gwu.edu
wrote:

:In alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer Stephen Tempest <stephen@stempest.demon.co.uk> wrote:
:
:> I've got a theory. (Actually, I've got a couple, but the other one
:> involves bunnies). Vampires' hair (and fingernails) always resets
:> itself to the length it was when they died - if they cut it shorter,
:> it quickly grows back to the default length. However, if they treat
:> the hair with chemicals - such as hairgel or bleach - it stays at the
:> shorter length and doesn't regrow.
:
:Heh. But Angel also mentions cutting his hair, so it must still be
:growing, and he *surely* hasn't stopped using product.

Uh, you *did* get that Angel isn't a vampire
anymore? That's what inspired the tonsorial
ponderings.
--
Doesn't the fact that there are *exactly* 50 states seem a little suspicious?

George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'

In alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer George W Harris <gharrus@mundsprung.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:51:19 -0500, chrisg@removethistoreply.gwu.edu
> wrote:
> :> involves bunnies). Vampires' hair (and fingernails) always resets
> :> itself to the length it was when they died - if they cut it shorter,
> :> it quickly grows back to the default length. However, if they treat
> :> the hair with chemicals - such as hairgel or bleach - it stays at the
> :> shorter length and doesn't regrow.
> :
> :Heh. But Angel also mentions cutting his hair, so it must still be
> :growing, and he *surely* hasn't stopped using product.
>
> Uh, you *did* get that Angel isn't a vampire
> anymore? That's what inspired the tonsorial
> ponderings.

Ooops -- that part didn't make sense, did it? I guess I still haven't
really assimilated post-vampiric Angel on a gut level yet. Of course, all
my other deep thoughts on vampiric hair still stand.


--Chris

__________________________________________________ ____________________
chrisg [at] gwu.edu On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog.

chrisg@removethistoreply.gwu.edu writes:

>Makes sense that that's his assignment. They don't seem to have been
>directing his every move, though. Have they been dumb enough to just
>trust Wesley all this time? Are they relying on threats to keep him in
>line? Or are they confident that what Wesley does for Angel will serve
>their purposes, regardless of what Wesley intends?

I suspect that they *think* they've arranged things so that whatever
Wesley plots, he won't actually be able to help Angel in any
substantive way - and that he will know that, and the helplessness
will be an added refinement of the torture.

>And yet the people
>still apparently cheer him.

I think it's left ambiguous what the noise they're making really is.
They might be cheering because they think he's about to die...

>Spike really doesn't look happy to see Wesley again.

I assumed that's purely because of the effect he knows seeing him will
have on Illyria, and he's protective of her.

>The reawakening soul could be the reason for that discreet change to the
>S5 story about Fred's soul being destroyed. If it was a deliberate
>change, that is. Another possibility is that Illyria is now having
>episodes where she thinks she *is* Fred, and seeing Wesley brought one on.
>I like that idea. However, Illyria never forgot who she really is in any
>of the previous issues, did she?

Well, the information that Fred's soul was destroyed came from a
gloating evil minion, so may not be entirely trustworthy. I've always
liked the idea that Fred's soul is now part of Illyria in much the
same way that Angel's soul is part of Angelus... it's her conscience,
and it's humanising her.

Stephen