Review (and thoughts about Buffy and Angel) coming up later. Whenever I figure out how to write about this stuff without sounding like a squeeing fangirl. Haven't had that feeling for a long time. Damn it.

Edited 13.8.2012 Right, let's try this. NOTE! If you haven't seen Buffy or Angel yet, you might want to skip the following chapters and move on after the asterisks. Then again, if you're not interested in the TV shows, you might not care.

I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel when they were first shown on TV. The former especially was the highlight of my week, campy after-midnight fun. Although I only watched a couple of episodes, don't know why. Maybe the channel at that time didn't show it from the beginning. Anyway, a few days ago I felt like watching the whole series again, plus the last season of Angel (reason will be specified later on). That might have been a bad idea, considering that instead of studying to my entrance exam for minoring in history, I barely ate and slept while I watched all seasons during a very short time period. Ok, I did go to work, but needless to say I couldn't focus there very well. I knew I'd be in trouble when the series didn't have any episodes left, but I just kept on going like a steam train.

Now, the character of Spike. He first appears in Sunnydale in the episode School Hard, where he tries to kill Buffy during a parent teacher meeting, but her mother hits him with an axe and he escapes. See, campy fun! Here we also learn that he has a girlfriend named Drusilla (eery nutcase), and together they're like undead Sid and Nancy. Well, maybe girlfriend is not the right word, but they are definitely the best example of affection between vampires in the Buffyverse. Turns out that I loved this kind of portrayal of vampire villains. Spike has the funniest lines in the entire series, and the fact that he's British makes him a tad more funnier. He's also an incredibly complex character.

What's weird, though (and kind of spooky) is that I don't seem to remember him very well from the time I watched Buffy for the first time. Granted, I only watched a couple of episodes, but I remembered the episodes where he was really well. In his place there was just black, like there had been no one! Though now that I watched every single episode and all seasons from start to finish, it hit me what I had missed. I don't normally go for his kind of guys, but I can see why Spike has a large following. It's like he has this strange magnetism that even came through my computer screen.

Then about halfway through season four I got spoiled about his fate. Damn it Whedon, why always the good ones? During season seven finale it didn't stop me from crying my eyes out, though. Fortunately I found out that he's resurrected at the beginning of season five of Angel. I was a bit disappointed that his character was reduced into a very small sidekick-y part, but at least he was alive and well! And he was awesome in the episode where he's kidnapped by a demented slayer. I wasn't that interested in Angel to begin with, so I decided to just watch the cross-over episode where Spike makes an appearance and the whole season five.

Now, let's go back a bit. When I said Spike iss one of the most complex characters of Buffy, I meant it wholeheartedly. There are many flashbacks of Spike when he was still a human, an aspiring poet named William who got heartbroken and later turned into a vampire by Drusilla. All these flashbacks give depth to the character. Although Spike got his nickname from torturing his victims with a railroad spike, you are reminded that there are still some of his human traits in him even as a demon. First off, he's a one woman man. Second, as a devoted companion he is motivated my love. He might make (a lot of) wrong decisions, but he does everything he can to maintain or get the love of the woman he wants (whereas Angelus only cares about lust). When Drusilla left him, he was a real wreck and returned to Sunnydale without his usual swagger. He even tried to get Willow to make a love spell to get her back.

As a kid I liked Angel, now he annoys me. I don't know how I'd have felt about Spike if I'd gotten a full picture of him, but most likely I'd have still fallen for the more broody type. Now Angel just seems like a broodypants to me, with the words of Spike. Angel and Buffy were kind of like Romeo and Juliet, a young and sweet high school couple that would never have worked in the real world. When Spike fell in love with Buffy, it caught me off guard. I wasn't sure what I felt about this turn of events, but it worked out great and made Spike even more complex. Everything Whedon did with them, I approved. Considering Spike's personality, having a real fucked up relationship with Buffy made complete sense.

There's a couple of things people tend to ignore. First, Buffy didn't love Spike. She was confused and numb, because after she died she was resurrected by her friends. They thought she had been in hell, but in fact she had been in heaven, where "There was no pain / no fear no doubt" (according to the lyrics of one of the songs at the end of the awesome musical episode). Just before Spike's and Buffy's kiss, she sings: "This isn't real / but I just need to feel". Says it all, doesn't it? No matter how much I and others wanted this to be a fairy tale, it was far from it. Buffy wanted to wake up her frezed emotions and become part of the world again. It was obvious that these two had raw animalistic attraction to each other, just look at the scene where Buffy wanders off to Spike's crypt and stays behind the closed door, while he's on the other side and can feel fer as well.

Then the rape scene. It was so uncomfortable that I doubt I want to see it ever again, but it was an important reminder that even though Spike loved Buffy passionately ("There's a traitor here beneath my breast / And it hurts me more than you've ever guessed. / If my heart could beat it would break my chest."), he was still a demon. In Buffy vampires are real monsters. The chip the government implanted into Spike's brain (...) made him more mellow, but his instincts didn't die even if his behaviour changed. In fact, after the attempt of rape he was horrified that he tried to do it, but he was also equally annoyed that he wasn't himself, that he stopped. This sparks him to go on his journey to "give what Buffy deserves". I'm not sure if he intended to get his soul back, or to get his chip removed and got tricked by the demon (I think by what he said he meant that Buffy deserved an ensouled Spike, just as she had had Angel, and with the soul he wanted to punish himself for what he had done), but he got his soul back and things changed.

Now he was comparable to Angel who also has his soul. Yet again people tend to forget that Angel's soul was forced on him as a curse, whereas Spike fought for his soul (even if he didn't mean it to happen). Buffy is horrified, but I think from here on she begins to feel emotionally connected to him (the comfort scene where she just laid there in his arms was beautiful, not to mention the scene where Buffy tells Spike that she believes in him). I don't know what would have happened if Spike hadn't died, but I think Buffy will always consider Angel as her friend and lover, and Spike as her protector and ally. Then again, I guess I'll see if I was right when I start reading the next seasons of Buffy in comic form. I hear Whedon has not completely forgotten Spike, they just had problems because some other company had rights to the character. Good, good! Can't wait what Whedon has in store for him!

Oh, and a few words about Angel vs. Spike. The way I see it, Angel as Angelus (his soulless alter ego) is a more conventional evil (BUAHHHAAAHHAA, I'm EVIL!!) and Spike is more layered. In Lies My Parents Told Me (I think) Spike says that Angel made him the monster he is. He's right, you know. Angelus had made Drusilla into a vampire, and when she did the same to William and brought him to him, Angelus was glad that he finally had some male company. They rampaged together and killed and killed and killed, and Angelus was the one who taught William to be a vampire. Eventually he became Spike. But not before Angelus had had his way with Drusilla, angering William into a point of no return.

It was also pretty annoying that Spike saved the world by dying, and no one even said thanks...

* * *

Finally, a few words about these Spike comics. I didn't particularly care about the one-shots, the artwork looked too Photoshopped, the stories weren't that special, and they had continuity problems. The artwork in Spike vs. Dracula varied (sometimes making Spike ridiculously unrecognisable), but the stories were entertaining and you learn why Spike had the two weird vampires with him in the submarine in Angel's episode Why We Fight (gotta love the comics' references to both series). Asylum and Shadow Puppets on the other hand were great. Franco Urru is a fantastic artist, I'd like to read more of his comics. These two were also the only ones where Spike's personality fully came through. The following quote is a great example.

"- Alright, you sodding son of a... No. No no no.
- Yes yes yes, sodding bloody brilliant wanker luv git bollocks. Pip pip, long live the queen, bangers and mash. Any and all spike-isms out of the way, cupcake? Good good.
- For one thing, admiring your decor. I mean, wow. It's Dungeons & Dragons meets freshman college dorm.
- It's from something called Ikea and it's cheap. A champion doesn't need much, just...
- a Klippan love seat with lumbar support. No, I can see that."

And another one:

"This group is a joke. No slayers, no Vahla Ha'nesh demons, not even a smart-ass with an eye patch. And they want a vampire with a soul to lead them."

I also spotted a comment in some random post about Spike vs. Angel, and I think this sums up my post pretty well:

"He was never either the guy who broods or the eeeevil guy, he could be funny and scary and annoying and sweet and murderous and loving and vulnerable and snarky and sexy and sappy and silly and smart and bad and good - all AT THE SAME time, within the same episode or even the same scene. He could be a punk rebel and a dorky Victorian poet and a dark demonic lover one moment and a bloke who’s into watching soaps the next one... He was a far more unconventional and unpredictable character than Angel."