Spike: After the Fall #2
Posted: Thursday, August 14, 2008
By: Dave Dykema
Brian Lynch
Franco Urru
IDW Publishing
Truth to be told, Spike has never been my favorite character. Sure, he provided laughs on the old shows, but I didn’t love him as much as fandom seemingly did. He was too smug, too full of himself to sustain a whole comic title, I thought. If this were a TV spinoff, it would never survive. But since this is a mini-series, it might do OK. It’s directly related to the Angel comic, so I picked it up.
The art of Franco Urru goes down better in this series compared to Angel. I think that’s because Spike’s world is darker. With Angel, we want to see some hope, something heroic. That’s anti-Spike. His world is rough and goofy. The art looks much the same. People are almost sketches, filled in heavily with thick, dark inks. If they don’t always look like the actors who portrayed them, at least there is a consistency where you can tell who’s who. The creatures shine though. I’m guessing that’s Urru’s strength.
The story shines pretty well too. Was it necessary? Perhaps not. So far, we’re finding out little nuggets of what happened to Spike after Los Angeles went to hell. Literally. Basically, it has to do with Spike watching over a conclave of humans who look to him for protection from the horrors all around them that they do not, and cannot, understand. Some of this has already been covered in the mother title, so why bother to do it again? Maybe because it’s an interesting story. Maybe because it reveals more about Spike’s character. It’s all hard to say, since we’re only two issues in. The main thrust is that I’m planning on buying issue #3, and so forth, until this is done.
What did you think of this book?
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