We Take Look At Boom Studios! 'ANGEL' (2022): Issues 1-3
Though multiversal stories are quickly becoming the next big bandwagon (though it isn’t exactly a new concept to comic), it looks like Joss Whedon’s legacy IP is trying to jump on it early. Unfortunately, they missed the memo that an alternate universe is supposed to make things different.
The preface for the series is “Angel, a Champion and Vampire with a Soul, has taken many forms. This is an alternate world, with familiar faces..but the story remains the same. Angel runs Angel Investigations with his fellow Rogue Demon Hunters. It’s the little details that might change...”
And they certainly mean it. The differences are almost entirely cosmetic. Cordelia is alive and stars in a cop drama show with Angel, Charles Gunn is his agent, Fred is a Slayer (somehow) and Wesley is her Watcher, and there appears to be no mention of Wolfram & Hart. Otherwise it may as well be the same story, with the same incessantly quippy dialog. Though if all you want is just more Angel and his team, all playing the same clichéd archetypes, then more power to you. I prefer writers who are willing to take some chances when they give themselves the creative freedom to really shake things up, rather than continue to write half the group being wracked with mis-laid guilt and martyr-complexes, and the other half being constantly and unnecessarily sarcastic.
I’m not sure that Fred as a Slayer is as good an idea as they seem to think it is.
I will hand it to Christopher Cantrell, he does show his skills for writing for TV, movies and comics. He has quite literally captured the dialog, frame and flow of the original show, so much so it was impossible for me not to hear the original actors and imagine the movement between the frames. Daniel Bayliss has also done well in capturing the look and sense of movement from each of the characters. It is a real testament to the creative team that they can refresh memories in me that are nearly two decades old, since I haven’t watched or read anything in the ‘Buffy-verse’ since the Angel finale in 2004.
But that’s just it, it’s well-crafted, but utterly too close to the source material. To only introduce the multiverse as a concept, but change so little, makes it look like they have absolutely no faith in their fanbase and are afraid that the even the slightest change in formula will make fans abandon it without hesitation. After the most recent Buffy comics brought everything to a screeching halt, this series actually had serious potential to breathe some new life into their franchise. Instead they decided to pump out the same stale air that had been recycling through the series ever since the earliest seasons on TV.
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