Billy the Vampire Slayer - Part 1

[lucky_gamble]

Not long ago, a new issue of Buffy put the spotlight on a new kind of "slayer" - a boy. Generically called Billy the Vampire Slayer, here is part one of the two issue story.

The scans are a total of seven pages from a 22-page issue.

It all begins in a small town somewhere in the U.S. where a young boy and his best friend chit-chat while resting on the hood of their truck. Like any teenage gay kid in a small town, Billy has had it rough. Kicked out by his parents for being who he was, his grandmother, Sky, took him in without batting an eye.



Any who, while the friends talk about their lack of love lives, something interesting happens in the town's airport. A single Zompire manages to kill the crew of an airplane.

Skip a few days ahead ( and couple of bullying incident involving two of the high school's football players) and we see Billy working out at the schools gym.



It's cute Devon. They banter on about why Billy doesn't fight back against the bullies during school hours. Their exchange ends with this...

Billy: "Yeah, sorry i'm not more picturesque, then."
Devon: "You think so?"

While Devon and Billy interact, we get a glimpse of what is going with the Zompire.



As Billy walks back from working out, one of his bullies (now a zompire) tries to kill him only for Devon to show up and help him escape into Billy's bedroom.



Turns out Devon wants to help Billy become a Slayer, or at least as close as a human male can be. Their conversation is interrupted by the bully/zompire.



The zompire gets slayed and the comic ends with this....






It's a cute story and I'll post the rest as soon as my finals are over this Wednesday. Peace!

Comments

[darkknightjrk]

This...doesn't look bad. O_O

I've kinda avoided these books since 1) I've barely gotten through the first season of the series and 2) everything I've seen of the comics seem like they're second only to Archie in terms of "LOOK! We're hip and edgy and controversial and using contemporary issues! PLEASE buy us!"

[donnblake]

Well, Buffy at least for the first four seasons, is basically a coming-of-age story with demons in, so it makes sense for characters to be dealing with 'contemporary issues' (which more often than not seems to mean things that have always been issues, that it's just now becoming okay to talk about) as well as demonic metaphors for the same.

[darkknightjrk]

True, but from what I've seen, the way they approach it is just...half-assed. Like, "Oh no! Buffy is preggers! Will she get an abortion? LOL NEVER MIND--she was a robot this whole time!"

[shadowpsykie]

i don't know...i kinda liked that issue. it didn't take it lightly. and it didn't really feel half assed to me... i mean i suppose it could have taken more time... but i don't know.. two or three issues dedicated to whether or not she should get an abortion...

unless you mean the robot part (which is actually something that probably would have happened in the show) though how does a robot take a pregnancy test....

[darkknightjrk]

The robot part was really what soured me on it, yeah. It sorta felt like, "Oh shit, I just realized I don't have a story for this--ABORT ABORT ABORT!"

[greenmask]

Iiiiiiiiironic

[darkknightjrk]

Oh snap, I just saw what I did there. O_O

[shadowpsykie]

yeah this new... umm season is much better than the first, (mainly i think due to the fact that the last season lasted WAY too long. story arch wise)

[long_silence]

I haven't been keeping up with the season 9 stuff (I'm still seriously burnt out by season 8) but how did the zompire get into the house? Do they not need an invite?

[terrykun]

Okay, so.... he's NOT tapped into that power that made the army of Slayers, correct?

That's... hm. Honestly, it's kind of a relief. A previously female-only power being passed to a male for the first time, who in this case happens to be a gay male, would come off a little too heavy-handed as equating homosexuality to femininity.

But just a normal dude deciding to fight the good fight because it needs to be fought? No divine selection process or anything? I kinda dig that.

[skemono]

Those were my thoughts as well. Well, those and it'd be interesting to have a transgender Slayer.

[lucky_gamble]

I'm honestly surprised they haven't done that yet.

[long_silence]

Well there was Melaka Fray's twin brother. Fray got the slayer skills and strength, but her brother got the connection to past Slayers and the prophetic dreams

[pyrrhocorax]

I hope he doesn't die.

[donnblake]

Slayers haven't traditionally had a huge life expectancy (Buffy included, except that she had people to drag her back), although perhaps that's changed in season 8/9?

[lucky_gamble]

Not really. Season 8 shoved a lot of Slayers through the meat grinder.

[liliaeth]

And destroyed the character of Angel doing it.

[long_silence]

His life expectancy is probably a lot lower considering his utter lack of powers

[donnblake]

Hard to say. Slayers have historically the added problem of being a big target for the gribbly types, and the interference of the by turns corrupt, incompetent and sinister Watcher's Council.

[outlawpoet]

add to that the likelihood of him skipping the traditional trash-talk and bit of self-aggrandizement the capital S Slayers tend to engage in and there's a good chance the bad guys won't even know who the hell he is, further cutting down on the possibility of them going after him or anticipating his further involvement in things.

It's not like any vamps, demons, assorted bad guys (or indeed any of the good guys) had a particularly advanced intelligence capability in the Buffyverse. They tended to rely on either mystic visions or someone showing up, telling everyone their name and why they would win, with an optional monologue to explain their plan.

I always got the feeling that a third party could have found the building a vampire group was living in, burn it down during the day without entering, and any survivors would just assume the last enemy they tangled with did it.