First of all, any book with a map of the fantasyland it inhabits is an instant selling point to me. But I’ll be honest, the last one I read was disappointing, so I was especially excited when I immediately fell in love with this universe.

Joey and Taurin are both sweet, adorable, insanely giant hot messes, and I loved that they didn’t really fix themselves over the course of this book. Like it was okay for them to still be works in progress in other parts of their lives.

It’s also a wonderful introduction to Taurin’s flatmates who will populate the rest of the series and I love them all. And this world of monsters and humans interacting was well-fleshed out and easy to comprehend without bogging us down with backstory. (I love Darren & Todd though.) My one minor complaint is the generalization that all dragons are assholes, just cause meh to generalizations. I hope they all come across a decent dragon later in the series.

Loved every minute of Buffy season 11. The difference in quality between this and Angel Season 11 is like night and day. Gage and Isaacs hit it out of the park. The ending is so good, I’m just over here hoping Whedon doesn’t destroy it all in season 12.

This whole season was just awful, and now this volume’s whole premise is to say they never should have done any of it?? And now Angel is in a relationship with both Illyria AND Fred? Is that what’s happening?? I just don’t understand. Why did any of this even happen?

Borges is back as the artist here, and his characters are slightly more accurate, but on the whole the quality is completely inconsistent. Also I feel like the colorist didn’t even read the script— see the aunts fighting over which dress to pick out, Angel picks the green one and they say “what green one?” Except there clearly WAS a green one.

Oh. Well. Thank baby Jesus that’s finally over. God, the most bananas thing to drive me nuts in this volume though is they switch artists for one issue, and suddenly no only are all the characters borderline or actually unrecognizable, but suddenly they’re not even wearing the same outfits? In the middle of the battle? Thanks, I hated it.

I’ll round 2.5 stars up to 3, just cause it’s such an improvement over the last few volumes. Finally some sort of cohesive story coming together and I like the multiverse stuff, but still confusing as hell. The art is very stylized in a mostly nice way, but Buffy and Anya are indistinguishable from each other, for example.

I seriously don’t know what’s even happening anymore, and it’s not cause I took a four month break from reading these, it’s just they seriously make very little sense at this point. At least the art has improved in the last two very short volumes (7 & 8).

Ok, so this Hellmouth event is a WHOLE mess if you’re reading the trades. In order to truly understand what’s going on, you need to skip between this volume, Angel Vol 2, and the Buffy/Angel: Hellmouth trade, in the following order:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #8 (aka the end of Buffy Vol 2)
Angel #5 (The Road to Hellmouth)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: Hellmouth #1 (of 5)
Angel #6 (Tie-in)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer #9 (Tie-in)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: Hellmouth #2 (of 5)
Angel #7 (Tie-in)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer #10 (Tie-in)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: Hellmouth #3 (of 5)
Angel #8 (Tie-in)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer #11 (Tie-in)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: Hellmouth #4 (of 5)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer #12 (Tie-in)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: Hellmouth #5 (of 5)

I started this volume coming off Buffy Vol 2 and was SOO confused, but it all made sense once I picked up the Hellmouth trade. (Also read the Buffy: Chosen Ones one-shot before this and just know that the Buffy in there is from another dimension.) But also, you need to finish this volume for the end of the Hellmouth volume to make sense. It’s ROUGH.

That said, I want to like this but the art is such a horrible mess that I can’t even enjoy the story. Characters are just completely unrecognizable, and that’s true of the other titles in this event also, but the art in this one is actively bad. For some reason Lopez draws the whites under everyone’s pupils, so every single character constantly looks like they’re bug-eyed. He gets a special mention of the straight-up AWFUL job he does with Cordelia, who is only occasionally recognizable by her ombré hair. Characters show up and you genuinely don’t know who they are from panel to panel.

Why did they change the artist?? Oof, this is a rough transition, with absolutely bug-eyed Willow, and a weirdly frumpy Jenny Calendar? Like yay, Jenny, but Jenny is HOT, so what the hell?

The story is a little all over the place in this one, I don’t really understand the soul tie business or how they save Xander— he’s a half a vamp? What does that entail? But I’m still interested, and Dru’s betrayal of Spike is going to make for some good drama I think.