Comments on: Buffy, Season 8 #13

By: J. Hunt

J. Hunt — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:25:51 +0000

It’s true that the line is blurring now that Goddard and Lynch are referencing their own Buffy and Angel comics (respectively) that were previously considered out-of-canon.

Likewise, there are plenty of other things in Tales of the Slayers and Tales of the Vampires that can be considered canon because they either happened in the past, were written by an “official” Buffy writer and haven’t been contradicted. Certainly, that Fray story in Tales of the Slayers is in-canon, so why not the rest of the book? Like I say, the line is blurring.

And yeah, that episode, “Normal Again” is great, besides for two scenes - the one with the pre-Season 1 asylum retcon, and the one where Dawn discovers she’s not in Buffy’s delusions and screeches at Buffy that it’s her “perfect life” and it doesn’t include her. Er, hello? Perfeclt life? She’s in an ASYLUM. Yeesh.

By: Carl

Carl — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:42:22 +0000

Oh, and regarding the first retconned you mentioned in the TV series with the mental hospital - that one paid off when they showed the episode where Buffy wakes up in a mental hospital, where she’s told that she’d made up a life of vampire slaying the past 6 years… one of the best episodes of the series, I think.

By: Carl

Carl — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:37:56 +0000

Well, it would appear that the non-Fray Buffy comics have better canon status than the novels. So far, none of them have been contradicted in the Buffy Season 8/Angel Season 5 stuff - and elements from them, such as Spike’s supporting cast of telepathic fish and snarky ninja from his mini-series, have started showing up in the “main” comics.

And the “Tales of the Vampire” Dracula story seems to be set post-Season 7, but before Season 8 rolls around - note that Buffy rescues Xander with Rona and another Slayer as back-up. So as a Retcon, this isn’t too bad. As retcons go, it’s not too bad - it’s only a category 1 retcon, by these standards: http://www.websnark.com/archives/2008/01/retconning_just_1.html

Anyway, I expect that as the Buffy and Angel comics continue, they’ll begin to acknowledge more elements from the earlier Buffy comics.

By: J. Hunt

J. Hunt — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:14:04 +0000

Ah, now, I never read the other Buffy comics because, Fray aside, they weren’t technically canon, even when they were written by the TV writers. If Goddard’s referring to his own comic, that’s fair enough, but it’s still a retcon certainly, we saw no letters from Dracula during season 5, 6 and 7, he’s just said “Oh, in S5/6/7, you saw one thing, but what also happened was this!” which is the very definition of retcon ;-)

This getting nerdy even for me, but thanks for pointing this out, I’ve been trying to find a copy of Tales of the Vampires for a while (having recently bought Tales of the Slayers) so now I’ve got even more reason to go find it!

By: Carl

Carl — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:42:53 +0000

Actually, it’s not a retcon - Xander became Dracula’s thrall in his appearance in the TV series, and he really did spend a year with Dracula as his manservant - click here to see that story.