Title: Buffy/The Guild: Free Comic Book Day 2012Issue: 1
Date: 2012
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer:Felicia Day, Andrew Chambliss
Artist:Jonathan Case, Georges Jeanty, Dexter Vines, Michelle Madsen
Letterer: Nate Piekos of Blambot, Richard Starkings, Comicraft's Jimmy Betancourt
Cover: Adam Rex, Georges Jeanty, Michelle Madsen
Editor:Brendan Wright, Scott Allie, Freddye Lins, Sierra Hahn
Flip book.
First part is "The Guild", which is basically a nerdy sitcom about a group of MMORPG players. In this installment, the members engage in a fight to the death (in-game) to decide who will get to choose the location of their next (out-of-game) meetup.
The result is a trip to the beach and the result is, well it's supposed to be funny, but it's just kinda there. The problem is that this story needs to be witty and geeky, and it ends up being a rather generic comedy bit that could have been done with any set of sitcom characters in the same situation. They go to the beach. Funny things happen. Allegedly funny, anyway. I know a lot of people love the web series version of The Guild, and it may be great, but this was not a very effective introduction.
Flip the book over and there is Buffy in an adventure that rips off... Oh, sorry, parodies... Alien. Buffy is on a space ship with a creature that bears a lot of resemblance to the monster from the Alien films. Buffy gets to do her best Ripley imitation in between occasional moments of silliness. The serious scenes were pretty highly derivative, but were still effective. The silly moments (the friendly insectoid aliens eating all of Buffy's stakes, and so on) were less effective.
These are two pretty strong properties, and I feel like they both could have been done better for this book.
Rating: 4.5/10
