Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Volume 4 | Various

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Volume 4 | Various | Still Way Too Much Watson (read review, follow links)

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	Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Volume 4 Various Dark Horse, 2008 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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Volume Four of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus series concludes Buffy's high school career, wrapping up Season Three of the show's storyline. Collected in this volume are: Buffy issues #9-11, 13-15, 17-120, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Bad Dog, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Spike and Dru, Who Made Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: The Hollower. The complete "Bad Blood," saga written by Andi Watson (Clubbing), the first attempt at making a "season" of the comics, where Buffy battles a sultry vampire who hungers for a lot more than blood.

For any true Buffy lover...

this book is for you. The continuation from the other 3 volumes. amazing artwork, stories and every new and true buffy fan will love it!

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Still Way Too Much Watson (read review, follow links)

If you would-be-buyers don't mind, I'll start this review off with a snippet from my review of the first three BUFFY omnibus volumes. Don't fear, it's as relevant here as it is there:

"Unless you're a completist with oodles and oodles of cash, this is the way to go if you want to collect the older Buffy comics. Before this, they have been collected (for the most part) into smaller trade paperbacks, each of which cost almost as much as this volume. Now, before I get into my review, let me explain the omnibus series, as I've seen a lot of people misunderstanding.when talking about it on message boards: This is not the only omnibus. There are to be seven of them all together(...)"

I didn't expect much when I bought this book. The first two omnibuses were good, but the third was mediocre at best, mostly because it was dominated by one-shot comics written by Andi Watson. Watson, who is probably the worst Buffy writer there is, also wrote the majority of this book. In fact, the first two hundred pages of this volume make up one story called "Bad Blood," written by Watson. It's story about a vampire named Selke who seeks revenge on Buffy for scarring her face. But first, Selke seeks out a plastic surgeon who resorts to magic AND mayonnaise to try to make Selke think he's successfully helping her. The few glimmers of good story you'll find here are snuffed out by the shocking lack of quality in Andi's writing. Everything that makes Buffy more than just your average genre show is not present in Andi's writing. The only thing that will keep you from skipping through these two hundred pages is the fact that Cliff Richards pencilled two thirds of it. There are two other Andi Watson pieces in this volume, but they're short enough that they won't take away from your enjoyment of the book more than "Bad Blood" already did.

Things start to look up a LOT when you get past "Bad Blood." The rest of the book is made up of one-shots and one more miniseries. The miniseries is called The Hollower, and shows Angel taking on a demon that sucks the demon spirit out of vampires. It's written by Christopher Golden, and is mildly entertaining. Hector Gomez's art does nothing but take away from that, but the story was good enough for me to ignore it. There are a few other Christopher Golden tales here that range from mediocre ("Who Made Who," a Spike/Dru story, and "Cursed," a pointless story about how bad Angel was in the past), to GOOD ("Stinger," which great dialogue and a demon with very interesting motivations), to GREAT ("Hello Moon," which Golden co-wrote with Daniel Brereton). The latter comic I mentioned, "Hello Moon," is one of my favorite Buffy comics ever, and I think it alone is worth buying this book.

Something that will make Buffy fans very happy is that this book includes two short stories written by Doug Petrie, who was a writer on the television series. Not only did he write great episodes, he also showed how good he was at writing comics, with the Angelus-centric Ring of Fire, which was featured in the second Buffy omnibus. The first story he contributes to this book is "Bad Dog," which deals with Oz going all wolfy and a nerdy sorcerer seeking revenge. It wasn't as good as I expected, but was way better than some of the other stuff here. Petrie also closes this volume with a short story called "Graduation Day," which catches up with Buffy and Angel right after they parted ways in the ground-breaking finale of the third season. Not only was it a perfect way to have a final statement about Buffy and Angel's relationship, it was also a great note to end the book on.

The art in this book was way better than what we saw in the third volume, but fans should expect about the same quality of writing. There are some great stories here, but most of it is still overshadowed by Andi Watson's work. I'd say it's definitely worth buying (both for the Golden and Petrie comics, and pretty much just to have it), but it's no where near as entertaining as the first two. I know that, with the fifth volume, things will be looking better (as there is no Watson work in sight).

6/10

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Generic artwork, sloppy story (mostly)

The short stories aren't bad, but seeing as "Bad Blood" dominates this volume I'm basing my review on that story. The artwork is not very good in this volume, compared to volumes 1 and 2. It isn't necessarily bad, but the artists don't capture the likenesses of any of the actors. Furthermore, the artwork looks rushed. Most panels in Omnibus 1 and 2 seem like paintings; most of the work in this volume are nowhere near the same quality.

As for as Watson's story, it's full of things that make no sense; either that or quotes that seem to only be there to take up place. Sometimes though the story is interesting, but it took a long time to get through for me. Perhaps Watson isn't a bad writer, but he certainly doesn't have the knack for all-things-Buffy.

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