Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales is a dynamic and historical anthology of the Buffy mythos, collecting various stories that happen before and after the show. The exciting thing about this anthology is that you do not need to have any experience with the franchise: this text stands completely alone, with stories that are pulled from both slayers and vampires that enrich the Buffy-verse. The text originates from the cult-classic film Buffy the Vampire Slayer created by Joss Whedon, which later evolved into the popular television series starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. However, as I mentioned earlier, the particularly convenient aspect of this text is that you do not have to have experience with either the film or show to read and get involved with this text. I would personally recommend reading this book before beginning the show or indulging in any other Buffy-verse mediums, because this text stood out as an intriguing introduction to the concept of slayers and vampires.
Not only do we receive a storyline that leads to a terrifying twist in a fiction world of vampires, but it is rather the elements of seclusion, female empowerment, historical exploration, and psychological analyses that make this text much more than just ‘another vampire fiction’. This graphic novel begins the text with the stories “Prologue”, “Righteous”, “The Innocent,” and “Presumption”. “Prologue” explores the story of the first slayer, hundreds of years ago cursed with the power of multiple magic men in a grand effort to fight against the impending growth of vampires. Upon the woman’s death, the power would pass from woman to woman continuously. She will fight, and she will die. The process will be infinite. The slayer saves her village from a vampire and, in return, the village gives her a fruit basket and asks her to leave. They say, “They say you are part demon… they say the shadowmen made you born with demon inside. That is how you fight the vampires” (Whedon 15). In “Righteous” (17), we see a young, pious girl who is in denial of her ‘curse’, for God would not do such a thing to her. She eventually assumes her responsibility, as issued by her Watcher (AKA Slayer Guide & Mentor), and when the town bears witness to her killing a vampire, they burn her at the stake as a witch. The stories continue to explore the harshness of being alone and secluded, while exploring elements of what it means to be secluded as a female. In “Presumption” (37), written by the show writer Jane Espenson, we see a young woman in 1813 who assumes the identity of a man, for women did not have many rights. In “The Glittering World”, we get a historical exploration of the Indian perspective, where two sisters, one a slayer and the other a vampire, must fight to the death. The vampire sister killed the slayer’s watcher, and says “One less white man!” (53) It is interesting that in this text of vampires and slayers, we get a glimpse at the reality of what it means to be someone who must fight the darkness, and what it even means to be dark. At the end of this text, we see a man named Richard Wilkons purchasing the land, the 200-year old demon mayor of Sunnydale and the villain we see in season 3.
Furthermore, we get this idea of psychological analysis through the lens of the Tales of the Vampires section, which shows what it means to be evil. The description is scientific and animalistic: we are food, fear spices the blood and that is why vampire craves the hunt. They are one step higher on the ladder of the food chain, and we see the psychologies of the various vampires in stories like “The Thrill” and “Father”. In “Father”, a young man is sired (turned into a vampire) and returns home after he rises from the grave to retrieve his son. We understand that vampires have no morality or conscience, but still have the ability to feel pain and to love. The father raises his son and eventually their relationship dwindles when the father kills his stepmother, the mother of his wife who grew suspicious of the father’s behavior. 50 years later, the still 30-year-old vampire father sees his son on his deathbed, before being slain by a slayer. The relationship between the vampire father and mortal son show that vampires can love, but have a demon within them that give them the urge to hunt and drink blood. It is what makes them survive, it is who they are now. The text really makes us feel sympathetic for the vampires, even though they do as they please and are opportunistic when it comes to humans and their lives. In “The Thrill”, we see a young boy who is turned into a vampire and finally feels like he fits in somewhere. An outcast all his life, he received the curse and finally felt apart of something bigger—he had friends, he had a purpose, he finally knew what he wanted to do. The psychologies of the various vampires were staggering throughout the text, and we even get a continued storyline that has a terrifying twist at the end! I don’t want to spoil it, but I will say that the stories we read gives as an understanding of vampires so well that we discover that someone in the room is not who they say they are, when, at the beginning of the text, we trusted to be innocent and… mortal.
Not only is the storyline and mythos incredible, but the way they chose to present it in the panels allows the reader to be interactive with the text. In “Spot the Vampire”, we see a large panel with various characters in it, and we must ‘spot the vampire’. However, after we follow through the pages that zoom into the larger panel, we discover the panel had a golden border that implied it was a (twist) mirror! Since vampires don’t have reflections, we cannot see it in the mirror, and therefore enforcing the claim that vampires are always in the dark and are there when you least expect it. Concluding the text was an issue that blends with the season 8 Buffy comics, “Carpe Nectum”. Although maybe giving slight spoilers, like Harmony Kendall’s exploitation of vampires as ‘celebrities’, we still don’t need any experience with the Buffy-verse to read it. This story explores a young girl who wants to kill her prey, instead of just feeding on them slightly. In this new world where vampires are celebrities, the new vampire standard is to only ‘bite and feed’, not kill. Some vampires play by the rules in order to live freely, but others claim that this is ‘putting the beast on a leash’. This text also included small images of the Twilight films, playing off the fact that today’s society is very interested in vampires. It seemed very fitting for the Buffy-verse to take vampires out of hiding and put them into the spotlight of fame.
This text was very exciting. The hardcover is beautiful and the canonicity of the text makes it fit perfectly into the shelf of a Buffy fan, or even someone interesting in reading a great graphic novel. This introduction to the Buffy-verse will allow someone beginning the show to be so fully equipped with Slayer and Vampire knowledge, they can be a Watcher themselves.