Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 9 Volume 3: Guarded (2013) (Dark Horse)
Andrew Chambliss (script), Jane Espenson (script), Drew Z. Greenberg (script), Georges Jeanty (art), Joss Whedon (creator) etc
Grade: C+
Genre: Buffy / graphic novel
The destruction of the Seed destroyed all magic. Suddenly,
hundreds of Slayers were left defunct as the world no longer needed their help.
To add insult to injury, vampires are now everyone’s best friend, largely
thanks to Harmony’s glamorous reality television show. As might be expected,
slayers are finding it difficult to adapt to this new life, and none more so
than Buffy, the woman responsible.
Kennedy and her team have taken their shared plight and
found an innovative solution. She’s found a way for Slayers to continue to
serve and protect: as private bodyguards. For those that can afford it, they’ve
got themselves the ultimate protection – and paying through their nose for the
privilege. Buffy’s first charge is a high-profile tech entrepreneur, who is
hiding from an enemy that Buffy is all too familiar with …
Parts four and five take us to a small town who is not
unaffected by the Zompire epidemic spreading its way across the country. These
Zompires are – you guessed it – as powerful as zombies and vampires combined,
and the disease doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. We watch as the young
Billy, in his search for self-discovery, realises that he has the potential and
strength to fight back where others dare not …
This was a bit meh.
More than a bit meh, if I’m really honest, and that’s pretty upsetting. At the
moment, all the arcs seem completely unconnected and while I know that that
isn’t the case, I’m finding it annoying that the overarching theme/message/plot
hasn’t been revealed yet and if it has, then I’m annoyed that I haven’t been
able to see it.
Now that I’ve had some time to think about it, the
Buffy/Billy stories complimented each other very well. They’re both exploring
different options in their life after some major event/upheaval and their
respective ways of dealing with their situations contrast nicely. Buffy tries
to carry on business-as-usual, with terrible results. Billy, on the other hand,
embraces this new direction and only flourishes. Unlike Buffy, he has the youth
and inexperience that allows him to take chances and make mistakes for the overall
learning experience.
The Billy story was cute. Where you’ve got the majority of
the general public regarding Slayers with disdain, here there’s an outsider
determined to make his mark and join in in the fight against evil, and not
doing a bad job of it. With the way that those two episodes finished, I hope
that we’ll be seeing Billy again.
So I read somewhere that Buffy: Season 9 will be finished at some point this year, but the prospect of spoilers freaked me out so much that I didn't carry on reading to find out when that will be and how many volumes I've got left. I've seen the cover and read the description for Volume 4: Welcome to the Team which sounds like the action will be picking up, but to be honest, I've gotten a little disillusioned. I'm having to read my old reviews to remember what has already happened in this series, and that depresses me. I'll carry on reading to the end, because I can't not finish, but it would be nice if the plot makes itself known soon. 
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