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I was in Santa Cruz so I stopped by Joe's or Atlantis to see what I was missing. I picked up Angel: After the Fall #1 and The Goon Chinatown. I really liked The Goon comic. We find out what happened in Chinatown, the dame that messed him up, all told while facing a new villian, and finished with superb artwork. I found myself looking at one of the pages enjoying the pencils, ink, computer coloring, and watercoloring all complementing each other on one page. Angel was disappointing. I always felt let down by the ending of the TV show the silly line about wanting to fight the dragon.

It's been some months since I finished the Angle TV show on DVD so I couldn't quiet place who everyone was, like I couldn't recall who Gwen and Nina were on my first read. Yes I've read it twice. We haven't seen what everyone else is up to, but it seems like the gang has completely fallen apart. I think its a wait and see in this comic. I mostly read it twice because it seemed like I missed something and I couldn't decide if I like it or not. I'm sticking with disappointing.

I think I feel that way about Buffy season 8 too. These are characters and stories that we're used to in 44 minute format. Comics are typically 22 pages. Not enough space to tell a story so the pacing and timing is off as they break these longer stories into smaller chunks. I know you collect issues in TPB to get the complete story, but its still not the same type of story in the end.

One more note on Angel. On first read I thought it was Wesley having the end internal thought or monologue. This suggests the first story or the overall arc will be about him, but then I thought it might be Gunn during the second read. This is because of the way it ends on Gunn showing how he has changed. Going back to the start of the monologue I'm pretty sure it belongs to Wesley and ending on Gunn was revealing a twist and making the point of how things have changed. As if moving LA to a hell dimension and having everyone running around on there own wasn't enough. But this goes back to my point above. The comic was rushing around setting the tone of this new place trying to visit all the characters which it still missed some and it revealed something that in TV format would have been a secret for longer.