Two vampires, no waiting! Your Major Spoilers review of Angel & Spike #11 from BOOM! Studios awaits!
ANGEL & SPIKE #11
Writer: Bryan Edward Hill
Artist: Gleb Melnikov
Colorist: Roman Titov
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Editor: Jonathan Manning
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: June 24, 2020
Previously in Angel & Spike: With a rogue demon on the loose, Team Spike is running out of time to save the life of an innocent boy, but Wolfram & Hart claim to have the solution. With real demons in the equation, is a deal with the devil worth it?
A FACE FROM THE PAST
After a demon attack, Detective Kate Lockley has been initiated rather rudely into the ways of the supernatural, but Angel is torn about her. She reminds him of someone, or at least reminds Lilith the demon queen of someone, from his past, setting him off on the path of the protector once more. While that conversation is going on, Gunn and Fred manage to push Kate’s demon away long enough to save her life, but the doing leaves Fred worried that she’s evil and damned to an eternity in aitch-ee-double-hockey-sticks. Weirdly, it’s Spike who does the detective work to figure out what they’re facing, a creature called a Feeder. The good news is, it’s easy to dispatch, just lure it into a mortal form, then kill that form and the creature dies. The bad news is, Angel is determined not to kill again. By the end of the book, though, one of our regular cast is possessed by a demon and sadly doesn’t share that conviction.
A LITTLE CONFUSING
Strangely, my familiarity with ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’ made the adjustments to the continuity in that book easier to take than here, with characters I’m less familiar with. The story behind the thing that lives in Fred is maddeningly left vague here, and a lot of this issue is just character interaction, which makes things a little difficult to fully engage with. The art is kind of fascianting, bridging an unexpected gap between Chris Bachalo and Mike Mignola, but with some of the weaknesses of both, especially as regards subtler facial expressions. Melnikov is great at conveying surprise and rage, but quiet moments lack a little oomph for my tastes. There really aren’t many action moments here, but the final page cliffhanger is impressively kinetic and well-drawn, even if some of the transitional moments throughout the issue don’t quite land.
BOTTOM LINE: IT’S GOT POTENTIAL
All in all, though, Angel & Spike #11 feels very much like we walked into the middle of a pretty interesting conversation, one that I’m even interested in hearing more about but the issue doesn’t really fill in those gaps for me, earning 3 out of 5 stars overall. It’s not a bad comic, and I’ll probably check out the next issues of this title, but I’m hoping that there will be more context for the big picture in any of those hypothetical issues.
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ANGEL & SPIKE #11
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Writing6
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Art7
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Coloring6
Once upon a time, there was a young nerd from the Midwest, who loved Matter-Eater Lad and the McKenzie Brothers... If pop culture were a maze, Matthew would be the Minotaur at its center. Were it a mall, he'd be the Food Court. Were it a parking lot, he’d be the distant Cart Corral where the weird kids gather to smoke, but that’s not important right now... Matthew enjoys body surfing (so long as the bodies are fresh), writing in the third person, and dark-eyed women. Amongst his weaponry are such diverse elements as: Fear! Surprise! Ruthless efficiency! An almost fanatical devotion to pop culture! And a nice red uniform.