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A review by kimberlea
Angel #0 by Joss Whedon, Bryan Edward Hill, Gleb Melnikov
2.0
BOOM! announced that they were publishing Prologue about a week before it was released, which meant that there was a bit of furore online about it. I will say that Hill does a great job of establishing who Angel is for the uninitiated (if I had to sum him up in one word? Broody), but I feel like this issue didn't really hit the mark the way I wanted it to.
Given that this issue opens with three pages of artwork from the fourth issue of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I feel like it's fair to compare artwork between the two. I can't help but note that the illustrations for Angel aren't as clean as Buffy's. I think it's just Melnikov's style, but at times the linework looks unclean or the artwork itself looks unfinished. It's not bad, and it makes sense to make different stylistic choices for Angel. It's just that comics books are medium where you don't have a lot of pages to tell a story. Dan Mora made sure that everyone from background characters to Buffy herself had facial expressions, and it meant that things could be communicated to a reader without having to explain it. With Angel, there are panels where, if it wasn't for the lettering, I would have no idea what's happening. There's a panel where Angel put his arm out into direct sunlight, and it took me a few glances to realise that his arm was on fire. The colouring really shines when there's a focus on the Los Angeles skyline, but I'm not really sure that the shadowy palettes work as well in a comic book as they did in the show.
I will say that this issue was much better plotted than any of the Buffy comics have been so far. My biggest complaint with the Buffy comics so far have been that they feel like little bits of a big story being doled out intermittently. Prologue feels like its own story, but I can also see how it slots into a bigger story — that's what you want in a comic book. I thought that the Buffy comics suffered from having familiar faces introduced at every turn, but Angel — at least in Prologue — has nobody. At least, nobody the audience is familiar with. It's hard to talk about without spoilers, so I'll just say this: it feels odd that they would introduce an entirely original character and then kill them off so quickly. It would be sad if they only existed to give Angel a reason to go to Sunnydale, so I hope they make a reappearance again in the future (if the television show could bring back Darla back from being dusted, the comics are capable of anything). I feel like we had elements of a great character with Helen Choi, but we never really got to spend enough time with her to see if she'd really take off into one. I also really enjoyed Fee-Fee, another original character. She seemed to have a similar role in the comic book that Doyle had in the television series (knock on wood, but if she meets a similar fate to Doyle...). I know Angel told her to never contact him again, but personally, I hope she does.
The events of the Angel and Buffy comics are supposed to run parallel to one another, so I'll be interested in how Hill — and, presumably, Bellaire — fleshes out Angel. Supposedly his origins have been reimagined slightly, but based on this prologue alone, it feels considerably more than slightly. While I will keep reading the Angel comics, I don't think this issue did its job of hooking me into a bigger story. In fact, I would say that Angel's brief cameo at the end of Welcome to the Hellmouth #4 did more to interest me in Angel's appearance in Sunnydale than this prologue did. There were moments of greatness, but they never seemed to take off.
Given that this issue opens with three pages of artwork from the fourth issue of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I feel like it's fair to compare artwork between the two. I can't help but note that the illustrations for Angel aren't as clean as Buffy's. I think it's just Melnikov's style, but at times the linework looks unclean or the artwork itself looks unfinished. It's not bad, and it makes sense to make different stylistic choices for Angel. It's just that comics books are medium where you don't have a lot of pages to tell a story. Dan Mora made sure that everyone from background characters to Buffy herself had facial expressions, and it meant that things could be communicated to a reader without having to explain it. With Angel, there are panels where, if it wasn't for the lettering, I would have no idea what's happening. There's a panel where Angel put his arm out into direct sunlight, and it took me a few glances to realise that his arm was on fire. The colouring really shines when there's a focus on the Los Angeles skyline, but I'm not really sure that the shadowy palettes work as well in a comic book as they did in the show.
I will say that this issue was much better plotted than any of the Buffy comics have been so far. My biggest complaint with the Buffy comics so far have been that they feel like little bits of a big story being doled out intermittently. Prologue feels like its own story, but I can also see how it slots into a bigger story — that's what you want in a comic book. I thought that the Buffy comics suffered from having familiar faces introduced at every turn, but Angel — at least in Prologue — has nobody. At least, nobody the audience is familiar with. It's hard to talk about without spoilers, so I'll just say this: it feels odd that they would introduce an entirely original character and then kill them off so quickly. It would be sad if they only existed to give Angel a reason to go to Sunnydale, so I hope they make a reappearance again in the future (if the television show could bring back Darla back from being dusted, the comics are capable of anything). I feel like we had elements of a great character with Helen Choi, but we never really got to spend enough time with her to see if she'd really take off into one. I also really enjoyed Fee-Fee, another original character. She seemed to have a similar role in the comic book that Doyle had in the television series (knock on wood, but if she meets a similar fate to Doyle...). I know Angel told her to never contact him again, but personally, I hope she does.
The events of the Angel and Buffy comics are supposed to run parallel to one another, so I'll be interested in how Hill — and, presumably, Bellaire — fleshes out Angel. Supposedly his origins have been reimagined slightly, but based on this prologue alone, it feels considerably more than slightly. While I will keep reading the Angel comics, I don't think this issue did its job of hooking me into a bigger story. In fact, I would say that Angel's brief cameo at the end of Welcome to the Hellmouth #4 did more to interest me in Angel's appearance in Sunnydale than this prologue did. There were moments of greatness, but they never seemed to take off.