Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 12: The Reckoning Paperback – December 24, 2018

This is an overview of the canon Buffy comic. As a TV series, Buffy's glory years were in high school. After that, the show lost its sense of magic and romance, gradually becoming a gloomy, poorly plotted bummer. Season 7 is littered with continuity errors. Enter season 8 in comic form, widely touted as JOSS WHEDON's season 8! Season 8 generally had very good artwork and got off to a strong start. Then it all went goofy. Whedon is a woke feminist so, of course, Buffy goes temporarily "gay now". Without spoilers, the last two thirds of season 8 are a dull mess. Season 9 is stronger, even though wokeness rears its grisly head again. Buffy might need an abortion! What choice will she make? Surely there's more to feminism than being gay or debating abortion. Even philandering Whedon's fake brand of feminism. After season 9 the artwork declines, by season 12 it's at Bazooka Joe level. Seasons 10 and 11 are ok storywise, then 12 limps to its death in a single, snoozer volume. Narratively, it's pretty iffy. A Big Bad that was surely long dead is now alive, doing, as it turned out, nothing. The ending is a dud and after all these years it's tempting to wonder if Buffy's legacy wouldn't have been stronger if it was cancelled after the wondrous season 3.

I'm a hard-core fan of the Buffyverse for many years, so the ending of the canonical series is a really big deal for me. And it did not dissapoint; actually, the final volume was very rewarding and satisfying. My personal favorite is everything Fray-related and Faith-related. I loved the art--as I always love the art by Georges Jeanty. The only thing that slightly spoiled the treat (spoiler alert) is that there is no mention and, hence, closure about a certain huge-importance let-it-stay-unnamed prophecy from Angel TV Series; I really hoped it would be used. Otherwise, I love it so much! Thank you, Joss, for this fantastic journey!

For the final installment of Dark Horse's Buffy I expected to have more closure with the Scooby core. Aside from that, I enjoyed the story and how they tied back in the Fray storyline.

Although it was refreshing to have a briskly moving plot after dozens of tediously slow story arcs in earlier volumes, this was overly rushed and could have used a second book's worth of development. Especially the inexplicably jolting ending in a scant few pages.But what really disappointed was the horrible art. I can't tell if its all on the inker or colorist but the character's faces and expressions were barely recognizable. So possibly the penciler as well. The facial close ups were especially misshapen. A sad finale after so many beautifully rendered previous volumes. I strongly vote for a redo.

This should be considered by all fans as the REAL Buffy the Vampire Slayer ending, very emotional.

I did not like the ending. Especially regarding Spike, Buffy and Angel. Whedon likes to ruin things

I loved this ending for the Buffy comics. After ending the show twice, this third conclusion was very satisfying. I was glad to see all the beloved characters again and how they’ve grown. The story overall was well thought out. It didn’t feel rushed, and the writing was right on. Now if we could get the actors to play this out—it would make a great reunion movie. ;) In the meantime, I’m happy to read this again.

Adored this!

Eigentlich war die Geschichte im letzten Band schon mehr oder weniger beendet und dabei hätte man es belassen sollen. Die Story war einfach nur an den Haaren herbei gezogen und fühlte sich beim Lesen nicht richtig an. Die Zeichnungen waren nicht besonders, aber generell in Ordnung. Wenn man mit dem Ende von Staffel 11 zufrieden ist, sollte man sich den Band sparen.

A fit ending for a wonderful run. I was sad to see the series go but glad it good the ending it deserved.A five by five review for this one.

Une ultime saison grandiose, qui met un terme à cette série culte, après 20 ans d'existence !Chaque personnage principal est là, pour une dernière bataille, la plus épique et la plus importante !Un peu dommage néanmoins que certains passages soient vite expédiés, à cause de la Fox qui a empêché Joss Whedon et Dark Horse de faire plus d'épisodes.Et Buffy a enfin la fin qu'elle mérite !

Loved the read, but the book was a little damaged when it arrived. Stupid winter, wrecking everything.

As a comic the story and art is great and nice end to series, as a physical thing my comic arrived massively bent, difficult to open due to that and very poorly cared for in packaging and posting