With the Hellmouth crossover event completed, Angel is back to his own solo series. Now, however, he’ll be sharing the title with his old frenemy, Spike.
Snappy, Spoiler-Lite Recap
- Gotta love seeing Kate Lockley getting involved in the series — I still never got her her departure after Season 2.
- If there’s ever an appropriate facial expression for seeing a corpse with no eyes smile at you, it’s that one.
- Mentoring a wayward homeless child is challenging enough without him getting chomped on by a demonic entity.
- We all knew Fred and Angel would convince Angel to be cool with Spike hanging out with them, but no way Angel should be so cool about this so quickly.
- Heh…now Lilith’s handing out business cards to go along with her exposition.
- Few things are more unsettling than two vampires sharing their suicide-by-sun fantasies.
- Lilith is also giving out phone plans, apparently.
- “Just a jacket.”
- Not sure anyone expected this meeting to start off with a dance.
The Verdict
Like I said before, I’ve really missed Kate Lockley. I don’t begrudge Elisabeth Röhm leaving for a gig on Law & Order, but I feel like there was a lot more territory to explore with her character, both as a detective coming to terms with the supernatural and her friendship (maybe more) with Angel.
In this instance, writer Bryan Hill writes her with pretty much the same voice that I remember, so obviously no complaints there. I also like the threat she ends up facing and how it comes about. Instead of a murder investigation, she’s trying to help a child, making her immediately more heroic/sympathetic to folks who are unfamiliar with Detective Lockley’s television counter part.
As far as the threat she comes in contact with, artist Gleb Melkinov shows why he’s such a great horror comic artist. The entity is terrifying without ever crossing over into ridiculous territory. It’s not easy to make a walking corpse with stitches where its eyes should be appear subtle, but Melkinov somehow pulls it off.
The only part of this issue I didn’t like was how easily Angel gives up on letting Spike hang around. I get that it had to happen for the story to move forward, but it would have felt a lot more believable if he’d refused to back down for a while. These two have centuries worth of acrimonious history. Calling a truce after two pages — even when it’s endorsed for good reasons by Fred and Gun — feels a bit too compressed.
That being said, having Spike and Angel in the same room does make for some great dialogue — one of the many reasons Angel fans should be excited for this new story arc and the new direction for this already superb title.
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