Day: February 13, 2003

Wow. Gotta admit I’m somewhat rocked by the editorial shake-ups at DC currently being reported by Newsarama.com. I’ll tell you, if Mike Carlin is privately annoyed and/or angry (which I’ve no idea if he is) you sure can’t tell by his public face. Maybe he really, truly is more comfortable getting his hands more deeply back into editing. And Dan Didio has a lot on the ball. He’s one of the spearheads behind getting “Fallen Angel” up and running. Truth is, these days if you look at the major new titles with original characters that folks are talking about, they’re coming out of DC.

We’ll see how it all shakes out.

PAD

Not by leaps and bounds, certainly, but by bits and pieces, BTVS is getting up to speed and back to form.

Downsides: Certain tropes of the series are becoming so cliche that the characters have come to expect them. Willow’s trouble-making observation that Xander is a demon magnet back in season 4 continues to hold true. The problem is that making fun of a cliche doesn’t make it less of a cliche. Meantime we see Giles now touching everything in sight, after poor Tony Head had to spend weeks avoiding everything to the point where it was getting distracting. Now that he’s fondling every prop in the house, though, I wish he hadn’t chewed out the gang for making jokes. It was the first time they sounded like themselves in ages. After all the stuff about them growing up, *now* he addresses them as “children?” What the–?

Upsides: Plenty. So Principal Wood is essentially Blade the Vampire Hunter minus the vamp blood in him: Ultra cool vampire-fighting black guy seeking out the light-haired vampire who killed his mother. And yet for all that, I didn’t see it coming, and I don’t recall noticing anyone else coming up with that theory either. Be interesting if Wood actually dusts Spike, thereby earning Buffy’s enmity. Hope it doesn’t, but you just *know* it’s gonna end in tears. The subplot with the Asian potential slayer was beyond hilarious (“What are you, trying to poison me?!”) I wonder if Willow knows a language-bridging spell. If so, she better crank it out before the girl bolts the country. Anya’s jealousy was charming, Dawn wasn’t annoying, the running gag of both Willow and Wood laughing at the notion of Buffy being competent and then realizing their error was great. And Spike actually seems at peace with himself, which really couldn’t be worse for a character on this series than to find ANY degree of happiness. Because that’s when the boom is usually lowered.

Moving on:

Angel. Kicked ášš even more. Minor quibble over why no one questioned that Lorne totally misread the situation. Definite shock ending: Most folks, including myself, seemed to tag correctly who was going to be killed off, but the circumstances caught me off guard. My only real complaint: THREE WEEKS?!?

Hey, anyone want to see Faith team up with someone named Begorrah?

And hey, food for thought: Physical prowess aside, who could outhink the other: Angelus or Smallville’s Lex Luthor?

PAD