Loaded Couch Potatoes

Honk Mahfah reviews “”Living Doll,” the latest issue of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight.

The Whedon-produced comic finally gets around to dealing with the whole Dawn thing, and it’s an entertaining conclusion, though after a 25-issue run, it can’t help but feel anticlimactic.

In fact, the whole series is feeling rather anticlimactic to me these days.  Maybe it’s just the fact that we’ve gotten a long string of stand-alone stories, I dunno, but this title is starting to feel like it’s got no direction.  That’s a shame, as for a while there, this really did feel like a genuine Season Eight of the show.  I’m certainly not ready to give up on it yet, though; as long as the individual issues can manage to be as entertaining as this one, I’m okay with the overall series feeling a bit aimless.

Written by Doug Petrie, this issue has, if absolutely nothing else, some of the sharpest dialogue the comic has seen in many a month.  This might be due to the fact that Petrie worked in the Buffy writers room from seasons three through seven; this guy knows his way around a Hellmouth.  Which is not to say that there’s a Hellmouth in this issue; there isn’t.  There is a lot of Xander, and a decent amount of Andrew, though, so score.

There is some weird, creepy stuff involving dolls, and the relationship the painting at the end of this review references is strangely touching in that way only a show comic like Buffy can provide.

Oh, and a plot point revolves around Veronica Mars.  Gotta love that.