| Title | : | Spike Omnibus |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1600105394 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781600105395 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 488 |
| Publication | : | First published October 29, 2009 |
Spike Omnibus Reviews
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This disappointment is more than overwhelming right now. How did this go so wrong? The first 265 pages of this were total shit and a waste of time. Asylum was a really legit story that made up about 100 pages. And Shadow Puppets, while funny, was not what I was expecting.
***Spoiler free review. Unless you haven't watched the Buffy and Angel TV shows. In that case, there will be spoilers.***
I knew going into this that most of these stories about Spike take place between the time that Spike gets his soul back and probably the beginning of season 8. I knew that there wouldn't be any Buffy because Angel was so prevalent in the descriptions I read. I expected, because he's soul-having-Spike, that he would still be the Big Bad while having his wonderful conscience and wit. I expected him to save the girls, have deep and personal revelations, and become an even more spectacular Spike. Again I said, ENTER: DISAPPOINTMENT.
Old Times, Old Wounds, and Lost & Found are so forgettable that I literally have forgotten them already. What I do remember: trying desperately to get through story arcs that were only FIFTY PAGES. How did this even happen? Spike is such an interesting character. It cannot be THAT HARD to create a good fifty page story about the guy.
Spike vs. Dracula was absolutely terrible to me. Dracula was such a boring character to me allllll over again. "Ah, I am Count Dracula. Where are all of my brides because I am so sexy and all powerful." That is literally Dracula in a fucking nut shell. And he and Spike just chase each other over the course of a century, back and forth, because of stupid ass shit that literally means nothing. This lasts for over one hundred pages. Who thought this was a good idea?! (Spoiler: It was Peter David, who I will forever be staying away from apparently).
But then.... THERE IS A SAVING GRACE! Asylum was actually really wonderful. The story line read more like an Angel arc than Buffy, but it worked well when you think of how it fits with the other comics found in this omnibus. Again, I won't go into any spoilers, but I can safely say that Spike is tricked into admitting himself into an asylum for monsters, and he meets some crazy ass demons and vamps and monsters in the process. Awesome read.
And we end with Shadow Puppets, which wasn't AWFUL. But it was just another 100+ pages that I could have done without. A big solid for this installment was the fact that they included some awesome Asylum characters into this arc. Also, there were some insanely witty parts that I couldn't ignore. So this one was worth my time.
All in all I can safely say two things:
1. Skip the first four stories in this omnibus. Just read the good stuff. Please. Don't waste your time. And know that it literally pains me to rate a Buffyverse addition so lowly.
2. If you have not watched Angel, you won't know who a lot of these characters are. That's just a fair warning. You can make it through without a lot of intense knowledge on them though.
Again I say how sad I am about this omnibus. Luckily the last two stories salvaged SOMETHING for me. But this rating breaks my heart. I need the last Buffy omni in such a ferocious fucking way. -
I loved it! It was really great to be able to read all about Spike's adventures and it renewed my love for him as a character. He is much more of a rounded character than Angel ever will be! This is definitely going on my favorites shelf.
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Review (and thoughts about Buffy and Angel) coming up later. Whenever I figure out how to write about this stuff without sounding like a squeeing fangirl. Haven't had that feeling for a long time. Damn it.
Edited 13.8.2012 Right, let's try this. NOTE! If you haven't seen Buffy or Angel yet, you might want to skip the following chapters and move on after the asterisks. Then again, if you're not interested in the TV shows, you might not care.
I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel when they were first shown on TV. The former especially was the highlight of my week, campy after-midnight fun. Although I only watched a couple of episodes, don't know why. Maybe the channel at that time didn't show it from the beginning. Anyway, a few days ago I felt like watching the whole series again, plus the last season of Angel (reason will be specified later on). That might have been a bad idea, considering that instead of studying to my entrance exam for minoring in history, I barely ate and slept while I watched all seasons during a very short time period. Ok, I did go to work, but needless to say I couldn't focus there very well. I knew I'd be in trouble when the series didn't have any episodes left, but I just kept on going like a steam train.
Now, the character of Spike. He first appears in Sunnydale in the episode School Hard, where he tries to kill Buffy during a parent teacher meeting, but her mother hits him with an axe and he escapes. See, campy fun! Here we also learn that he has a girlfriend named Drusilla (eery nutcase), and together they're like undead Sid and Nancy. Well, maybe girlfriend is not the right word, but they are definitely the best example of affection between vampires in the Buffyverse. Turns out that I loved this kind of portrayal of vampire villains. Spike has the funniest lines in the entire series, and the fact that he's British makes him a tad more funnier. He's also an incredibly complex character.
What's weird, though (and kind of spooky) is that I don't seem to remember him very well from the time I watched Buffy for the first time. Granted, I only watched a couple of episodes, but I remembered the episodes where he was really well. In his place there was just black, like there had been no one! Though now that I watched every single episode and all seasons from start to finish, it hit me what I had missed. I don't normally go for his kind of guys, but I can see why Spike has a large following. It's like he has this strange magnetism that even came through my computer screen.
Then about halfway through season four I got spoiled about his fate. Damn it Whedon, why always the good ones? During season seven finale it didn't stop me from crying my eyes out, though. Fortunately I found out that he's resurrected at the beginning of season five of Angel. I was a bit disappointed that his character was reduced into a very small sidekick-y part, but at least he was alive and well! And he was awesome in the episode where he's kidnapped by a demented slayer. I wasn't that interested in Angel to begin with, so I decided to just watch the cross-over episode where Spike makes an appearance and the whole season five.
Now, let's go back a bit. When I said Spike iss one of the most complex characters of Buffy, I meant it wholeheartedly. There are many flashbacks of Spike when he was still a human, an aspiring poet named William who got heartbroken and later turned into a vampire by Drusilla. All these flashbacks give depth to the character. Although Spike got his nickname from torturing his victims with a railroad spike, you are reminded that there are still some of his human traits in him even as a demon. First off, he's a one woman man. Second, as a devoted companion he is motivated my love. He might make (a lot of) wrong decisions, but he does everything he can to maintain or get the love of the woman he wants (whereas Angelus only cares about lust). When Drusilla left him, he was a real wreck and returned to Sunnydale without his usual swagger. He even tried to get Willow to make a love spell to get her back.
As a kid I liked Angel, now he annoys me. I don't know how I'd have felt about Spike if I'd gotten a full picture of him, but most likely I'd have still fallen for the more broody type. Now Angel just seems like a broodypants to me, with the words of Spike. Angel and Buffy were kind of like Romeo and Juliet, a young and sweet high school couple that would never have worked in the real world. When Spike fell in love with Buffy, it caught me off guard. I wasn't sure what I felt about this turn of events, but it worked out great and made Spike even more complex. Everything Whedon did with them, I approved. Considering Spike's personality, having a real fucked up relationship with Buffy made complete sense.
There's a couple of things people tend to ignore. First, Buffy didn't love Spike. She was confused and numb, because after she died she was resurrected by her friends. They thought she had been in hell, but in fact she had been in heaven, where "There was no pain / no fear no doubt" (according to the lyrics of one of the songs at the end of the awesome musical episode). Just before Spike's and Buffy's kiss, she sings: "This isn't real / but I just need to feel". Says it all, doesn't it? No matter how much I and others wanted this to be a fairy tale, it was far from it. Buffy wanted to wake up her frezed emotions and become part of the world again. It was obvious that these two had raw animalistic attraction to each other, just look at the scene where Buffy wanders off to Spike's crypt and stays behind the closed door, while he's on the other side and can feel fer as well.
Then the rape scene. It was so uncomfortable that I doubt I want to see it ever again, but it was an important reminder that even though Spike loved Buffy passionately ("There's a traitor here beneath my breast / And it hurts me more than you've ever guessed. / If my heart could beat it would break my chest."), he was still a demon. In Buffy vampires are real monsters. The chip the government implanted into Spike's brain (...) made him more mellow, but his instincts didn't die even if his behaviour changed. In fact, after the attempt of rape he was horrified that he tried to do it, but he was also equally annoyed that he wasn't himself, that he stopped. This sparks him to go on his journey to "give what Buffy deserves". I'm not sure if he intended to get his soul back, or to get his chip removed and got tricked by the demon (I think by what he said he meant that Buffy deserved an ensouled Spike, just as she had had Angel, and with the soul he wanted to punish himself for what he had done), but he got his soul back and things changed.
Now he was comparable to Angel who also has his soul. Yet again people tend to forget that Angel's soul was forced on him as a curse, whereas Spike fought for his soul (even if he didn't mean it to happen). Buffy is horrified, but I think from here on she begins to feel emotionally connected to him (the comfort scene where she just laid there in his arms was beautiful, not to mention the scene where Buffy tells Spike that she believes in him). I don't know what would have happened if Spike hadn't died, but I think Buffy will always consider Angel as her friend and lover, and Spike as her protector and ally. Then again, I guess I'll see if I was right when I start reading the next seasons of Buffy in comic form. I hear Whedon has not completely forgotten Spike, they just had problems because some other company had rights to the character. Good, good! Can't wait what Whedon has in store for him!
Oh, and a few words about Angel vs. Spike. The way I see it, Angel as Angelus (his soulless alter ego) is a more conventional evil (BUAHHHAAAHHAA, I'm EVIL!!) and Spike is more layered. In Lies My Parents Told Me (I think) Spike says that Angel made him the monster he is. He's right, you know. Angelus had made Drusilla into a vampire, and when she did the same to William and brought him to him, Angelus was glad that he finally had some male company. They rampaged together and killed and killed and killed, and Angelus was the one who taught William to be a vampire. Eventually he became Spike. But not before Angelus had had his way with Drusilla, angering William into a point of no return.
It was also pretty annoying that Spike saved the world by dying, and no one even said thanks...
* * *
Finally, a few words about these Spike comics. I didn't particularly care about the one-shots, the artwork looked too Photoshopped, the stories weren't that special, and they had continuity problems. The artwork in Spike vs. Dracula varied (sometimes making Spike ridiculously unrecognisable), but the stories were entertaining and you learn why Spike had the two weird vampires with him in the submarine in Angel's episode Why We Fight (gotta love the comics' references to both series). Asylum and Shadow Puppets on the other hand were great. Franco Urru is a fantastic artist, I'd like to read more of his comics. These two were also the only ones where Spike's personality fully came through. The following quote is a great example.
"- Alright, you sodding son of a... No. No no no.
- Yes yes yes, sodding bloody brilliant wanker luv git bollocks. Pip pip, long live the queen, bangers and mash. Any and all spike-isms out of the way, cupcake? Good good.
- For one thing, admiring your decor. I mean, wow. It's Dungeons & Dragons meets freshman college dorm.
- It's from something called Ikea and it's cheap. A champion doesn't need much, just...
- a Klippan love seat with lumbar support. No, I can see that."
And another one:
"This group is a joke. No slayers, no Vahla Ha'nesh demons, not even a smart-ass with an eye patch. And they want a vampire with a soul to lead them."
I also spotted a comment in some random post about Spike vs. Angel, and I think this sums up my post pretty well:
"He was never either the guy who broods or the eeeevil guy, he could be funny and scary and annoying and sweet and murderous and loving and vulnerable and snarky and sexy and sappy and silly and smart and bad and good - all AT THE SAME time, within the same episode or even the same scene. He could be a punk rebel and a dorky Victorian poet and a dark demonic lover one moment and a bloke who’s into watching soaps the next one... He was a far more unconventional and unpredictable character than Angel." -
O Spike, I'd been lost without you. I devoured this appropriately thick book of your adventures during off hours at the motel on Wed. The whole Buffyverse would be nothing but a black hole without you, and to have MORE of you, canonical but beyond the TV show, made my heart pitter fucking patter. Esp. the long bit in the middle, Spike Vs. Dracula, b/c I have a soft spot for the Buffyverse's Vlad Tepes as well. And besides, it showed you in little clips from 1898 to 2003, always in high and hip contemporary style, whether you were living the "dolce unvita" in postwar Italy in 1959 with gorgeous shades and glossed back hair, or you in 1934 in a loud but awesome LA suit taking Dru to a live charityu performance of Bela Lugosi's Dracula. And your dialogue...oh, god your dialogue. Enough raving from me. Let's just say I love the shit out of you and be done with it.
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This is an omnibus that is about a character that is part of the Buffy universe. Spike is a vampire with a soul and all of these stories take place during the final season of Angel. The reader's enjoyment would be enhanced if they are familiar with the television series.
I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would. I always thought adding Spike to the final season of the show was fantastic and this collection just adds to it. I am a sucker when a story provides easter eggs and callbacks to previous stories and this collection exceeds at this. We get call backs to classic episodes like "Smile Time" and fans will rejoice in seeing Spike as a "wee little puppet man". The stories probably weren't the strongest but the connection to the final season more than made up for it. The only flaw in this collection was the artwork. It just wasn't good. There was one story where I didn't even realize it was the main character for the first several pages.
In one word this collection was just plain fun. It doesn't take itself too seriously and just goes with it. You can tell the writers had fun with it as they have many shout outs to the Whedonverse and to its fans. If you are a fan of this universe, I strongly recommend reading this collection. -
Its Spike...being. Well, Spike. Covering everything from spats with vengeance demons, Dracula, and evil puppets, and throughout every tale, Spike manages to deal with every fight and letdown with a good zinger and style that is certainly all his own.
Team Spike! -
Really enjoyed theses stories!! I was unsure of the continuity for some of them but they were good none the less. After reading Spike vs. Dracula, it makes sense what he says in that season five episode, I liked that they made that connection. I love how their issue was over something so silly but it was classic Spike! Spike: Asylum was one of the stories that I was really unsure about. The story line was alright but it was a lot more bloody that the Buffyverse usually is and a lot more crazy (which I guess makes sense since Spike was in an asylum!) I really enjoyed Shadowpuppets, I thought it was hilarious and witty. Plus they brought in characters from the last story while adding new characters which is always interesting. The last part of Shadowpuppets was probably my favourite issue in this book! It had puppet versions of Angel's gang and the way they interacted with each other had me cracking up! Plus all of the 'official canon' jokes were pretty funny too! Overall, a really good book if you want to expand your Buffyverse knowledge and have a little more Spike in your life (and really, who doesn't want that?)
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A good collection of Spike stories, though with varying levels of quality. Some, like the Japanese shadow puppet demons, was pitch perfect, like it was the show all over again. Others felt strained, or occasionally out of character. I was particularly looking forward to the Spike vs. Dracula comic, since it came directly out of a reference from the show, but the artwork was barely recognizable as Spike or any of the other characters, which was frustrating, and the story was only so-so. Still, some great stuff here too, and all generally very enjoyable.
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two last stories, "asylum", and "shadow puppets", are somehow the best in the series
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Ganske fine Spike-tegneserier, som er samlet i denne Omnibus. 4 af de 5 historier er "Spike i sæson 5 af Angel"-historier, og de er ganske fine. Specielt Spike: Asylum er en skøn historie om Spike på et sindssyge hospital for overnaturlige væsner.
Den sidste historie (som fylder lige under halvdelen af omnibusen) er Spike Vs Dracula, som fylder nogle huller i den timeline, vi har set af Spikes fortid - altsammen hvor man møder Dracula. Der er fint med referencer til resten af de gange, vi har set Spike, og det er rigtig sjovt.
Alt i alt en fin Omnibus, omend jeg savner mere af den onde, farlige Spike... -
I started this having read several of the Buffy omnibuses (omnibi?) and I enjoyed them, but when the action shifts to Spike the great part is that the writers have a lot more freedom to go crazy, and it works. These stories serve to both add to the mythology and develop the character even beyond where the TV shows leave off. Yet, while they are gonzo, they stay true to the characters and their various idiosyncrasies. I would even go so far as to say I enjoyed these more than the Buffy omnibuses.
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I love the character Spike so this was an entertaining collection. My favorite is probably the most serious of the bunch, Spike: Asylum. I love how unique and inventive it was with a whole unique set of characters, a different setting, and barely any reference to Spike's past as defined by the show. Spike vs Dracula is just fun. I expected to like Spike: Shadow Puppets more than I actually did. I think it was funnier on tv rather than in a graphic novel.
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This was a good collection of spike stories for any die hard fan. The only one I was thrilled with was "Spike vs.Dracula". The story felt forced to me, almost as if it was just a fun history story with Spike added in. I really liked the art in "Lost and Found" and "Old Wounds" the best and the story in "Asylum" the best. Happy I was able to read these!
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I really enjoyed the different stories found in the omnibus. Spike is a favorite of mine from the Buffy universe. Whether facing down Dracula or demon puppets, the Spike Omnibus has something for any Spike fan.
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Enjoyed these witty, beautiful stories about a complicated character.
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Just as great as I expected. It’s nice to dive back into this franchise.
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I think all of these stories have their merits in one way or another - not a bad story in the lot. Enjoy!
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God I love him
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Brilliant, though I might just really like Spike.
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I just couldn't keep going. Some of the art didn't even look like Spike and I was frequently thinking "Spike would never say that!"
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In the Spike Omnibus you will find the following comic series collected and put together for you in one place for your reading enjoyment.
Spike: Old Times
In this story Spike meets Halfrek in a local Bar and after catching up with her discovers that she is there on a vengeance job. Spike decides he’s going to do everything he can to help her target survive his 30th birthday, which no other male in his family has been able to do.
Spike: Old Wounds
Fred is abducted on her way into work one morning, and her abductor is a retired police detective who is using her to gain access into Wolf, Ram & Heart to see Angel. The detective can’t rest until he has solved the Black Dahlia murder and he has his suspicions that the murderer was Spike, since he was in the area the time it occurred. Spike insists he’s innocent and teams up with Fred to prove it.
Spike: Lost & Found
There is a Vampire on a killing spree but the unusual thing about it is the crimes are happening in broad daylight. Angel gets Spike to think back about the time he had the Gem of Amarra, and it turns out there was more than one Gem and Harmony had sold the second one on e-bay for some cash. The team has to work together to bring down the Vamp.
Spike vs. Dracula
This series tells the story of the long standing battle and hatred between Dracula and Spike, and how Dracula came to owe Spike eleven quid.
Some of the illustrations in this series where okay, but some were just dreadful. In some of them I had to really double check back on dialogue to figure out who the character was supposed to be as they looked nothing like Dru or Spike. Horrible!
Spike: Asylum
I really enjoyed this story.
Spike is enlisted to find the daughter of a rich couple who has just found out she’s half daemon and has gone and checked herself into a clinic for daemons looking for a cure. When her parents receive a phone call from their daughter telling them she’s okay while sending them subliminal messages that she needs help because she can’t leave, they decide they will stop at nothing to get their daughter back.
Spike checks himself into the clinic and finds he’s gotten in way over his head. Once you’re in you can’t get out. Now he’s on the inside, can’t seem to find the girl and he’s in deep trouble as his fellow inmates are not too happy he’s there with them.
Spike: Shadow Puppets
Well Angel had his turn as a puppet so it’s only fair that Spike get’s his. He does look so cute as a peroxide puppet in black leather, I think I want one.
Smile Time is back and they have moved to Japan. With the help of Lorne, Spike is on his way there to shut them down. Smile Time is ready for him though, and after battling Angel they have learnt from the experience and have some new tricks up their sleeve. They have also decided that it’s time they go global. -
This collection was so much better than I had expected. Spike is probably the best character in the Buffyverse (okay, maybe 2nd to Anya), and this look at extra side-trips into Spike's history as well as what Spike was doing in LA during the Angel years is a lot of fun. I really appreciate the little nods to events that happened in the Buffy and Angel tv shows, the acknowledgement of really bizarre plot devices, and references to other Whedon projects. I think that the last story, "Shadow Puppets", is my favorite - the return of Smile Time! - as it incorporates lots of characters from the show as well as the other stories in the collection. Excellent, excellent work, and a great addition to the collection of any Whedonite.
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This was a fantastic collection. I particularly liked the older stories at the beginning but they were all good. I even found, on a second reading, that I enjoyed the Shadow Puppets entry. Perhaps having a little more time with the character, chronologically, made it work better for me. Oddly, I thought that reading the Asylum story would help fill in some much needed gaps and help me understand these characters that I've met in other stories a bit better. I thought the story was great but I was surprised at how little information was provided about those characters and how, frankly, uninteresting they were in that original story. Any time you can give me Spike and company through the ages I'm happy and I thought the Dracula story was done really, really well.
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This was a wonderful collection of Spike-oriented graphic novels. It included some of the ones I'd been dying to read--such as Spike: Asylum and Spike vs. Dracula. But the others certainly did not disappoint. The dialogue was on-point, and the characters introduced in Aslyum that carried through to Shadow Puppets (with the addition of Tok, of course) were so wonderful that I really wish Whedon would do a live action series based off this group. Wonderful story-telling, reuniting some characters and answering questions that neither the Buffy or the Angel series got around to. I'd recommend this for any and all Spike fans!
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A fun collection of stories that center on the character of Spike, both his past (before Buffy) and his "present" (side adventures that take place during the TV show Angel). The writing is witty, clever, and stays true to Spike's voice and character, and the stories themselves are entertaining, while revealing more about how Spike evolved into the "man" he is today and how he views himself in relation to the other Angel characters. The artwork is expressive and beautifully done, though there was an issue or two where I felt it looked inconsistent in comparison to the rest of the particular story. Overall, fans of Spike will love this volume.
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I am an absolute Buffy fan. However, Spike is my favorite character of all time! This collection is a must for any Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Spike fan. I loved how he was portrayed in all the stories and many of them were very original. I also liked how there was a continuity to the order of the collection. You could tell that all this happened after the final season of Angel, and that they happened in order. I liked how characters that were introduced in earlier stories were used again later. I absolutely love Spike and this just might be my favorite Buffy omnibus.
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Who doesn't like Spike, right? The Omnibus is a great collection of Spike comics, all dedicated to revealing things which happened behind the scenes of what we've seen with Spike before in the Buffy and Angel television shows. Some of it is about his old life--first becoming a vampire, fighting with Dracula, etc. And some it is set when he wasn't "in town" helping Angel and that gang after getting his soul. This was really fun for me to read. It gave me everything I've grown to love about Spike while going a little more in-depth on emotional and personal levels of his experiences.
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I started this book in the summer but quickly realized I needed to see Spike’s time on Angel to understand many stories in this collection. So I eventually did watch Angel and love Spike’s time there, also loving many of the other characters. And I was finally able to come back to this book. I have to say the authors really get Spike. There are many laugh out loud moments that are spot on Spike. I loved every bit of this. Some of the artwork isn’t spot on Spike but ONLY some. All in all I highly recommend this anthology for any fan of Spike.
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Spike is hands down my favorite Buffy character and one of my favorite fictional characters of all time. If you're Team Spike this book is a must have. If you're considering getting Shadow Puppets or Asylum this book contains both. Spike vs. Dracula is my favorite story. (You find out why he owes Spike 11 quid.)
If you're a Spike fan or like the Buffy comics I also recommend Spike the Complete Series. Some great character growth from Spike and I find his and Willow's relationship to be adorable.
