Soul retrieved, body not decayed. So what’s going to go wrong?
Creative Staff:
Scripts: Christos Gage
Pencils: Rebekah Isaacs
Inks: Rebekah Isaacs
Colors: Dan Jackson
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt
What They Say:
“Spike and Faith”
The final piece of Giles’s soul has been gathered, but naturally, bigger problems arise for our heroes! Having three personalities within Angel—himself plus Angelus and Giles—has the ensouled vampire struggling for his sanity. And, since he’s the only one who was actually privy to the ultimate plan for Giles’s resurrection, Spike and Faith have their hands full working out how to safely bring Angel back to his senses…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Spike’s been going through a lot. Buffy sort of dumped him, but he also sort of just left. They love each other in their own weird way, but it’ll never work out between the two of them. He got his soul back so he could be loved like a real person and Buffy rejected him more because of it.
Angel’s a bit of the same way. He’s a vampire with a soul and Buffy wants to love him. But they’re opposites. She’s literally a vampire slayer. The wonder boy with a soul has to run off sometime because he can’t stick around Buffy forever. Spike just has difficulty letting things go. Angel has just as much difficulty, but he’s better at running away. So he did run away to LA after season three of Buffy. Spike chose to sacrifice his life.
They both still love Buffy, but they both know it can’t go anywhere. Buffy knows that. That’s why, despite loving them both, she slept with Satsu. That’s why she tries to love Detective Dowling.
It won’t work for any of them.
And Faith, poor Faith, has no one except Giles and she’s trying everything in her power to get him back. Even where they are now, it’s but a glimmer of hope. They can dream this will work and that’s the best they can do: Dream. Hope that it’ll all work out because, in the end, it might or might not.
In Summary:
We get to the heart of the issues facing everyone’s lives in this issue and it’s hurtful. We’ve seen Angel walk away from the girl he loves, we’ve seen Spike drop to his knees after seeing that same girl sacrifice herself, and we’ve seen both of them sacrifice their lives so she could live. Despite that great characterization, the issue is, like a lot of these single issues, interim. It’s caught in the in-between of the last storyline and the final one and it suffers for it. But it does spell some excitement for Angel’s team.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B+
Released By: Dark Horse
Release Date: March 27, 2013
