Buffy the Vampire Slayer The Latest Craze

Turning a TV show into a comic is a matter of tricky choices, what model do you follow first of all? Star Trek ran into that headfirst with its comic book adaptations that made the effort at mimicking Star Trek episodes and were invariably dreary. A lot of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics would not have even qualified as episodes, by contrast Buffy the Vampire Slayer The Latest Craze is fairly close to an actual Buffy episode somewhere around Season 2. Unlike most Season 2 episodes there are no true moments of peril or twists but it matches an entirely plausible Buffy episode otherwise and anyone not too familiar with Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes might be forgiven if on hearing the description they decided that they were hearing about an actual Buffy episode they had just happened to have missed.

One of the reasons The Latest Craze is such a plausible episode is that it's such a close imitation of Bad Eggs mixed with doses of the Ethan Rayne episodes like Band Candy. It is no surprise than that The Latest Craze features a return by Ethan Rayne himself who is running a new sort of shop in Sunnydale. Like Bad Eggs, The Latest Craze begins with Sunnydale's kids becoming fixated on living objects that have an unhealthy hold on them. In this case The Latest Craze features a neo-Beanie Babies spawn, namely, Hooligans, little demonic figures dressed in a variety of outfits who have become instantly collectible items with Ethan Rayne cashing in by charging high prices for premium models according to social status and then having the hooligans steal valuable property from their owners.

Meanwhile a sort of magic causes the owners of the Hooligans to become obsessively attached to them and even prepared to violently fight over them. In the Scooby Gang though only Willow really becomes fixated on a Hooligan of her own, while Xander remains apart cracking jokes and Buffy views the whole thing cynically when she even has time to notice it. That is until she catches a Hooligan stealing her ring. But the Hooligans endgame is far more sinister as in the hollow of a haunted tree, the mother which spawned the Hooligans is preparing to return to this dimension and devour the owners of the objects the owners were emotionally devoted to which the Hooligans stole and use the emotional attachment to nurture the Mother Hooligan in order to permit her to break free and penetrate into this dimension. But the showdown with the Mother Hooligan when it does take place is underwhelming.

Still Buffy the Vampire Slayer The Latest Craze is an entertaining issue. From the beginning with a confrontation between Buffy with Scooby Gang in tow and a water demon that ends with a rooster weatherwane being used as a makeshift stake to Giles' entertaining confrontation with Ethan Rayne that's so good you really miss the fact that it never happened in the show (and is actually a good deal better than Ethan Rayne's final appearance in Buffy, minus the crypt scene which admittedly was a spectacular bit of fourth wall reversal and one of those cases where the film theory Joss Whedon spends so much time on actually paid off) to Buffy using Oz's guitar to hit the Mother Hooligan, promising she will do it gently, there is a lot of fun to be had in Buffy the Vampire Slayer The Latest Craze.

Willow's sudden embrace of the Hooligans makes little sense but this was fairly typical of Willow's likelihood to just fall into things in earlier seasons, as the 'damsel in distress' whether it was demons eggs or emailing with a demon robot from the past. Cordelia hangs around exchanging her usual quips about poor people and class and an aspect of the Hooligans touches on class in High School and the need students have to reinforce their status with status symbols. Willow's mother makes a brief cameo appearance too.

Visually the artwork doesn't perfectly duplicate the Scooby Gang but neither is it insulting and Joss Whedon's complaints about how Buffy was drawn don't apply here. The art is bright and shiny. The scripting is somewhat uneven but overall pretty decent with Rupert Giles getting the benefit of the best writing, especially when dealing with Ethan Rayne and Cordelia gets some decent lines as well. Oz and Willow have glimmers of some cute interplay and while Buffy is generally detached and out of things, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer Reunion, The Latest Craze is in many ways more a story about the rest of the Scooby Gang anyway.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer The Latest Craze isn't perfect but if you are feeling a touch of nostalgia and want to rexperience some of Buffy Season 2 that you never saw before, The Latest Craze is an easy way to do it.