Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

If the third omnibus edition of Buffy the Vampire Slayer saw the collection of tightly packed stories and incredible artwork come of age then the fourth edition sees arguably Dark Horse’s finest adaptations of a television series or film mature and become everything you could ever want from a collection of artists and script writers.

What makes the fourth omnibus so tantalisingly special is the way that the Editor Scott Allie and the team combined to make the first set of issues one long, season worth story. This concept for the creative saw them push back the boundaries of original and inspired art, a genius solution to show that the main character of Buffy Summers and her vampire hunting troop could do more than a single issue story could hope to achieve.

Whilst leaving room for smaller tales of darkness and teenage angst, such as the fantastic Cursed by Christopher Golden, which saw the focus of attention switch to Buffy’s brooding Vampire boyfriend with a soul Angel, the artful Dead Love by Andi Watson and the alien like incursion of Graduation Day which sees the Angel/Buffy pair apart but still able to defeat a demon through their mutual understanding of each other, the main cause for celebration is in the lengthy and absorbing tale Bad Blood by Andi Watson.

This colossal undertaking would be more akin to the likes of Watchmen or V for Vendetta and whilst the two aforementioned books are classics of the age, adorned, feted and distinguished as pieces of high art, Bad Blood has something these two behemoths don’t, a sense of continuing love that spread from television to the eternity of book form rather than the other way round, as if to say that television and film bowed to the inevitable pressure of the paper, ink and word.

Bad Blood also works due to the continuing brilliance of Yorkshire man Andi Watson, a man whose work and diligence seems to inspire all those who worked on the singular story around him. Even making your way respectfully through 200 pages it’s not hard to see how much the inking of Rick Ketcham and Joe Pimentel and the pencils of Joe Bennett and Cliff Richards seem to merge effortlessly with the words and idea set out by Mr. Watson. The third and final piece of the elaborate scripted jigsaw comes with the return of a character from the third Omnibus, the vampire Selke who had featured quite heavily in the story Cold Turkey. It is a character that rivals all that appeared on the television programme and perhaps even on a par with that of Spike and Drusilla.

There have been many great stories in the four omnibus that have been covered so far but Bad Blood makes the fourth omnibus avid reading and a must buy.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Omnibus Edition Four is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.

Ian D. Hall