Book Review: Buffy The Vampire Slayer Omnibus 1-7

 Buffy The Vampire Slayer OMNIBUS 1-7

 

This is going to be a little different as we are going to look at an entire series of books. I won’t go too in-depth into each story or each book, this is a guide to help you decide if you want these or not. All these graphic novels are published by Dark Horse.

The Buffy the vampire slayer omnibus comes in seven volumes, starting off at a retelling of the original movie and moving all the way to the end of the television series. I should note that pretty much everything in these comics happens “off screen” in relation to the TV show.

The books themselves are well made, with bright colourful art, they do suffer somewhat from the problem that a lot of graphic novels suffer from, and that is “hidden crack”, I am not sure if it has a real name, but this is where it is difficult to see the entire panels of art or dialog in the middle or “crack” of the book. This was not a consistent issue, which kind of made it more obvious where it did occur.

One of mine did have an issue with the binding, but I purchased it as “nick and dent” so that was expected.

The stories are a varied lot, with some funny and sad moments, the dialog was very good and I found myself actually reading with the TV characters voice.

The art varies a lot between stories and volumes, but is generally of a consistent quality. There are a few very simple short stories with very cartoony art, but these are the exception.  I was kind of surprised to see bat-like monsters hanging out with the vampires at first. Then I realised they were also vampires, being in comic form they could explore more the idea that the vampire grew more monstrous over time. Some lucky vampires started off their undead existence looking like man-bat from batman.

All in all this was a great read, and really made me realise how much I missed shows like this. I am happy I purchased this and can recommend it to any fan of the show. I don’t know how consistent or coherent the whole would be if I had not seen the TV show, I would definitely watch that first.

 I am seriously thinking about grabbing the continuation of the TV show in graphic novel form. 

 Volume:              ISBN:                                PAGES:

1                                 978-1-59307-784-6                                          312
2                                 978-1-59307-836-3                                          316
3                                 987-1-59307-885-0                                          302
4                                 978-1-59307-968-0                                          368
5                                 978-1-59583-225-3                                          368
6                                 978-1-59582-242-0                                          388
7                                 978-1-59582-331-1                                          404