FRAY

Fray, by Joss Whedon, Karl Moline, and Andy Owens: Damn you, Joss Whedon, for everything you touch is brilliant and leaves me wanting more. Your shows get canceled too soon, or teeter on the brink of cancellation. Dr. Horrible is only 45 minutes long. You make me start reading comic books just so I can get Buffy Season 8. Then I hear that Volume 4 features a crossover with one of your earlier comics, Fray, so now I have to go get that out of the library because apparently I have become a feverish fangirl, in thrall to your every whim. And of course I end up loving Fray by the time I finish it, only to discover THERE IS NO MORE FRAY. What kind of sick game are you playing, Joss Whedon? Anyway, if you can stand the frustration and are a Buffy fan, you should read Fray, which takes place hundreds of years in the future, when slayers and demons have been forgotten; there are still vampires, but people assume they’re just homicidal mutants, which apparently is nothing to get too worried about in the future (Whedon’s vision of the future: the rich are richer, the poor are poorer, and there are flying cars). It’s the typical reluctant-hero scenario: Malaka Fray is a thief who discovers she’s a slayer and has to learn to become one without the help of a watcher or the usual prophetic dreams and visions (there’s a very good plot twist about why she doesn’t have those). I really liked the art, more so than in the Buffy Season 8 comics—especially the fact that Mel has a more realistic body (a deliberate request on Whedon’s part, as he discusses in his foreword), whereas the Season 8 people look like comic-book versions of the actors from the show (in other words, uniformly boobtastic).