Buffy Goes Lesbian*
March 7th, 2008




I’ve been waiting to mention this, just in case anyone out there was (a) reading the Buffy Season 8 comics and (b) hadn’t gotten to this week’s issue yet. But now that the New York Times has done a story on it, I guess we’re out of the spoiler zone.

So yeah, here’s the deal: Buffy banged one of her slayerettes.

I’m with Buffy. Wow.

Except that I just don’t know that they (meaning Whedon and writer Drew Goddard) earned it. The choice feels a bit off. I don’t think it’s exploitive, but it does feel a bit sensational. Left a vaguely metallic taste in my mouth.

* A quick end-note: Whedon says that Buffy isn’t gay, just that she’s experimenting. Good for her! Except that one of the things the writers had done nicely over time was grow Buffy to the point where she was world-weary soul aged far beyond her years. She didn’t have time for juvenelia of any sort. She was Batman–scowling and laying down the law and being sort of annoyed at her peers who weren’t as dead-serious. All of sudden she’s doing sorority-house sex play? Like I said, this character evolution just doesn’t feel earned.

All of that said, Goddard gets in enough funny in the ensuing four pages to nearly justify the entire thing.

There’s a longer interview with Whedon here where he unveils the rest of the writing line-up for the series, which is pretty much a comic-geek dream team: Jane Espenson, Drew Greenburg, Doug Petrie, Steve DeKnight, Jim Krueger, and then Brad Meltzer.

Doesn’t get much better than that.



  1. Buffy. Whedon. Abortion. — Jonathan Last Online March 14, 2012 at 2:17 pm

    […] Buffy comics have been breaking bad for while now. There was the ridiculous Buffy lesbian romp. The second half of Season 8 was often incomprehensible–I mean this literally, not […]

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