 What's up everybody? Today we're talking about Angel Issue One recently released by Boom Studios. This is a spinoff of their Buffy reboot, so this is the Angel reboot. This is going to be a full recap and review, so it'll be full of spoilers. That's your warning if you haven't read the issue yet. With that, let's dive in. The issue opens with a flashback to a couple hundred years ago when Angel is still Angelus. He doesn't have a soul yet, which means he is evil. We see a horde of vampires attack a town, and that town is defended by a hunter, a woman named Mara. She starts slicing and dicing vampires, but then Angelus shows up and stops her. He mortally wounds her, and as she starts to die, Angelus tells her that she doesn't have to die. Then he cuts himself and tells her to drink his blood. And we understand from this that he is trying to sire her, turn her into a vampire. She's reluctant, but then Angelus gives her a speech. The angels lied to you, Mara. They said the light would save you. But the light only exists to make the shadows. And when the light fades, only the shadows will remain. Why fade, Hunter? Ask me to save you from this fear. And Mara, near death, replies, God forgive me, I don't want to die. And then he sires her, I think. So one of my criticisms of this flashback is that it felt a little clunky. For example, we understand from the scene that for her to be sired, she needs to drink Angelus's blood. So I expected the final panel for her to be drinking the blood. But instead, we see her appear as give out blood curdling scream. So I interpreted the scene as her turning into a vampire just based off all the setup that led to that final panel. But I found that final panel to be a little bit confusing. Also, I'm assuming that Mara is going to show up in present day, or we're going to see more of this flashback in future issues, and it'll have some meaning. But so far, they haven't really given us anything in this flashback to care about. So during this flashback, I was mildly curious, but generally felt kind of disengaged from it. So I didn't think it was a strong opening for the issue. Besides the artwork being on point, which it was throughout the issue. In present day, Angel is providing a narration about how hellish it is to be young these days. And this plays out over images of what appears to be a comic book version of Instagram. And we basically see how horrible these young people are to each other. So for example, towards the end of the page, we see a comment that says, kill yourself fatty. And then the next picture is an image of a young girl who looks very upset, looks very timid taking a picture of herself. Now, I thought this scene could have played out as super cheesy and sort of, oh, you young young people, how horrible you all are these days. But I thought the artwork really sold this. I mentioned that last panel of the roughly 16 year old taking a picture of herself. That picture was so heartbreaking the way it was drawn that it sold this for me. And instead of feeling cheesy, it felt pretty realistic. From there, we cut to a scene where Angel is sitting on a bench doing what he does best, brooding. When a kid approaches him with a camera and asks if he can take Angel's picture. When Angel asks why, the kid explains that he really digs the A-B-E look and explains that A-B-E stands for all black everything. Then Angel replies, black is the combination of all colors and the absence of light. I thought that was a little uncharacteristic and kind of clumsy coming from Angel. That felt more like something Illyria would say for you fans of the classic Angel TV series because it felt like a sort of robotic, somebody mentions black and you say black is the absence of all color. It didn't really seem like something Angel would say. So that felt a little off to me. And then when the kid takes a picture of Angel, in the picture we see Angel shows up as sort of a blurry, translucent figure. Establishing what we all know that vampires and pictures, vampires and mirrors don't get along all that well. So so far I had a couple of knocks against the issue, but here's where it starts to get good. We see Angel meet with somebody named Francis. Francis is a middle-aged man and through the conversation we learn that Angel saved Francis when he was 10 years old. And Angel is as brooding as ever. We have an exchange here between Francis and Angel. Francis tells Angel, I have a daughter now, 16. She's at a friend's house tonight, but I would love to introduce her to the man that saved my life. Angel replies, I'm not a man. And it's better if she didn't know that what I am exists. Francis replies, it might change your point of view. She's miserable now. High school is hard for her. Angel reassures him, tell her what is now won't be forever. Francis asks, you believe that? And Angel replies, I have to. Then Francis reassures Angel, you are good. You know that, right? Angel replies, what I've done isn't what I am. And what I've done is all I'll ever be. Francis insists that he wants to call his kid so she can meet Angel. He says, you should see what you made possible, Angel. Angel looks sad and insists on leaving. So I mostly like this scene. I think it does a great job of establishing Angel's struggle. We see that he wants to help people and he will help people. He'll do everything he can to be good, but he struggles to see himself as a good person. And he doesn't believe he can ever truly redefine himself as someone righteous. My one knock against this scene is every once in a while we see some sort of clunky writing. So for example, the line. I kept going over this line in my head, trying to piece together. Does this really make sense? What does it really mean? But Angel says to Francis, what I've done isn't what I am. And what I've done is all I'll ever be. And after thinking through that, I think what Angel's trying to say is that he is a good person. Inside he's good in a sense, but he's done horrible things. And ultimately those horrible things are what will define him. I think that's what they were trying to say, but it was sort of clumsily communicated. Otherwise, I do think this was a great scene. You immediately buy the relationship between Angel and Francis. You feel for Angel. You feel for Francis. And you feel for Francis's daughter who we haven't even met yet. We then see Angel return to his current home. And there waiting for him is a woman named Lilith. She, similar to Angel's narration earlier in the issue, talks about how self-absorbed the youth is. Today, how much they judge themselves. They judge themselves too much. And this narration plays over a scene of a young girl receiving a text message from someone named Friend to the Lonely. The text message simply says, You're beautiful. I want you to know it. Please click here. And the word here is all caps and it's a link. Presumably she clicks that link. We see her eyes go all black. And then she says, I feel beautiful as she picks up a canister of gasoline and a candle so we can all see where this is going. As that scene plays out, we cut back and forth between the scene of the young girl with the fire and the exchange between Angel and Lilith. Lilith talking about the young people of today says, I'm sorry to say something awful has found them. You're going to lose an old friend tonight. Again, I'm sorry. Angel replies to her, tell me what's happening. How can I stop it? Lilith tells him, you can't, not this one. Then we see that young girl approach her mother and father in bed. And we find out that she is Francis's daughter, Francis being Angel's friend from earlier the person that he saved at age 10. Julia tells her father, he said I was beautiful dad. And then Lilith tells Angel, you're not the only creature that feeds on the living and some of them don't want blood. As she says this, we see that Francis's house is burning. Meaning Angel's good friend Francis is being burned alive by his daughter who seems to have been possessed by whatever demon or creature texted her that she's beautiful. As the house burns down, Lilith continues speaking to Angel. She tells him, my condolences for your friend, Angel begs Lilith. Lilith, tell me what's happening, tell me what's... And before he can finish his sentence, Lilith simply tells Angel, avenge them Angel, avenge all of them. Then she disappears and the last thing we see this issue is that little girl Julie's hand lying on the floor as she's engulfed in flames. And we see her phone next to her and on the phone we see a text message, all of you are beautiful to me. Please click here. So overall I was a fan of this issue. Angel appeals to me in this comic in the same way that he appealed to me on the television show. I think that in this issue they've done a great job of capturing his struggle. He's constantly facing tragedy, he's constantly trying to escape his past, amend for his sins. And I think they captured all of that really well here. They set the right tone between the writing and the art. It all feels like Angel in the same way that the Buffy reboot feels like Buffy. So overall I think they're doing a great job here. I commented on the art a couple of times. I think it really fits the tone of this comic well. I'd also add that I think it strikes a good balance of looking pretty realistic. It captures the likeness of David Boreanaz, the actor who played Angel. Oftentimes when an artist tries to capture the likeness of a real person, it can come off as very stiff. But here that wasn't the case, all of the action was fluid and looked natural. I'd also add that one of my criticisms of Boom's Buffy reboot is that the pacing felt a little off. It all felt a little too fast paced, which I think is a symptom of the fact that they're trying to take longer form storytelling and put it into a comic book where you're sort of limited to 20 or so pages. Angel didn't suffer from that issue for me here. I think part of that is because it's so focused, it's so singularly focused on this one character versus Buffy where it'll actually cut back and forth between several characters. Now, a couple of knocks against the issue. As we went through it, I mentioned a couple points where it felt a little clunky to me. I would add to that that Angel is a character who's so brooding and so dark in deals with so much tragedy that sometimes they'll even joke about how brooding he is. I think you have to sort of straddle this fine line where you don't want to go too far and become cheesy. I think they're risking that a little bit because we've now had two issues in a row where Angel loses someone who is very close to him. He lost Helen in issue zero. He lost Francis in this issue. I think we need to pump the brakes on that a little bit. It kind of can feel ridiculous when he keeps going through the same tragedy over and over. I don't think it's quite there yet where it feels cheesy but it got close. I'm just crossing my fingers that when we get to issue two, we don't see the same thing happen again or else it really will start to feel like too much. I'd also add that it's been sort of frustrating so far to watch Angel sort of just bounce from one scene to another without really taking much action or showing much agency on his own. He went to Sunnydale not because he chose to but because this witch told him to. Then he finds Lilith at his house and she basically tells him, someone's dying, your friend's dying but you can't do anything about it. We haven't really seen him take any action yet. I'm hoping next issue, because this horrible thing has happened, we'll see him put his detective hat on and we'll see him really get to work. Anyway, on a more positive note, it's so fun reading Angel, reading Buffy. It feels like getting to relive the glory days of both of these series but they're different enough so it doesn't feel like we're retreading the same stories and I'm crossing my fingers that these stories will go on for years. I would love to see how they evolve, how they take different twists and turns, how they take events we're familiar with from the show and play them out differently. So like I said, overall really enjoying the series. Can't wait for the next issue. Can't wait for the next issue of Buffy and I'm looking forward to seeing what the dynamic will be between these two characters. How will it be similar to the show? How will it be different? We'll find out. 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