Reading the first issue of Leaves on the Wind, Dark Horse’s answer to a second season of Firefly, put me on a Joss Whedon kick, so I went through my collection of Joss-created comics. I wasn’t surprised to find that even though it’s been ten years since Fray was released as a graphic novel, it still holds up as an excellent comic.
One doesn’t have to be a Buffy fan to enjoy the comic. It’s structured so well that readers new to the Buffy-verse will still know what’s going on. For Buffy fans, though, it’s a great chance to jump back into the world of vampires and Slayers.
Fast forward a few hundred years; the rich live miles above the earth in mega-skyscrapers, and the poor in the slums near the ground. Melaka Fray travels between both worlds as a thief. She’s a good one too, since she’s fast, strong, and very hard to kill.
She’s also never heard of vampires.
She knows what lurks are, though; humanoid monsters that feed off of people and are better left alone. She doesn’t give any more thought to them than that, until someone arrives to tell her she is the newest Slayer, when Slayers haven’t been seen in centuries, and it’s her destiny to kill the vampires and save mankind.
She has no idea what he’s talking about. And doesn’t want to either. Her life may suck, but it’s her life, she’ll live it however she wants, never mind any weird talk about “destiny” and “chosen one” and “Slayers.”
The book is a great example of Joss’ signature style: full of quippy remarks, powerful speeches, reluctant heroes, and villains that always have some redeeming value. It really does feel like dropping back into a particularly good episode of Buffy.
The artwork by Karl Moline is excellent. It’s consistently excellent too. In eight issues the quality never dropped off; there’s always some beautiful panel full of motion and depth. His depiction of Mel, too, is wonderful. She’s slim and strong and beautiful, but realistically so, and marred by an obvious scar near her mouth, or by an ugly scowl when she’s furious. As Joss says in the introduction:
I wanted a real girl, with real posture, a slight figure (that’s my classy way of saying “little boobs”) and most of all, a distinctive face.
Moline captures that perfectly, as well as some great depictions of fight scenes and huge cityscapes.
If you’ve never read it, I highly recommend it. If you read it a while ago, I recommend taking a second look. There were all sorts of details I missed the first time I read it. it’s well worth jumping into again.