moscow_watcher | Buffy issue #5 The Chain

Buffy issue #5 The Chain or "There Is No Truth. There's Just What You Believe".

I was procrastinating with this review because, frankly, after 5 or 6 reads I still don't know what to think of it. Is it а flashy piece of entertainment or a dark, twisted tale about the horrors of slayerhood?

Summary:

"Buffy Summers..." says an unsympathetic demon in a close-up on the inner cover...

"...is dead!" he finishes on the next (first) page where we find his name: he's Yamanh of Hoht. He's underground, surrounded by his minions and he is celebrating his victory.

"The funny part about all this?" dying Slayer thinks. "I never even met her".

The next pages are her flashbacks - fragmentary and disjointed.

Buffy-2 talks to a fairy who obviously lives underground too. Fairy asks the girl to leave. "I leave, Yamanh'll bring his whole army upstairs and that's what I was sent here to stop... Get to the surface, tell them he's massing and where. Tell them they have to hit him now". "I didn't lay my faerie eggs inside your inner ear canal to watch you die" fairy replies, then clarifies "It's not fatal. And I didn't do it... I love you, Buffy".

"Here's how it works" the voiceover starts. "You don't get a choice".

"It's so unfair. It's faschism is what it is" Buffy-2, or, rather, Future Anonimous Slayer says. She sits with her classlmates in front of the school and, as it turns out, she considers faschism their detention "because Holly "Trampo" Braeburn leaves her panties in the utility closet". Girls then discuss "Mike Billenger" - another extra who has a name. FAS mentions faschism again. And then Willow's spell strucks her.

She sees herself flying upside down in a line of other slayers. Obviously it's her slayer vision. Turns out for some slayers "it's a tickle" but for Buffy-2 "becoming a Slayer was like Mike Tyson in your face... the truth. The unbelievable truth".

"There is no truth", says a woman who looks like love child of Rona and Jasmine (which is kind of creepy because Jasmine wanted to create faschist utopia on AtS).

The next panel represents a TV ad with Andrew (and Vi?) recruiting newly turned slayers ("girls who has this alarming yet fun condition"). Buffy-2 meets them, starts training with other girls, experiences true sisterhood, sees chained demon, listens to Giles' lectures. Buffy-2's voiceovers often conflict with images: for example, she looks at chained demon and thinks about Giles' visit and him being well-known man.

Another underground sequence. Nasty-looking creature says "it's been so long since I ate anything sun-ripened" - and gets his arm cut off by Buffy-2's sword. "Tell Yamanh of my extraordinary mercy", Buffy-2 says. "Tell him Buffy Summers is coming for him".

Panel of Buffy-2 hit by Willow's spell. Panel of Giles talking about the Chain. Panels of slayers fighting vampires. Buffy-2 gets bitten on the neck - exactly where Buffy had been bitten.

Again we see a woman who looks like love child of Rona and Jasmine. She asks Buffy-2 "to become Buffy". "Have to pad the bra a little, but..." (What?!! Please, somebody, send this issue to SMG - she'll get a good laugh!!!)

Rona\Jasmine explains Buffy-2' mission: "It's deep cover and it's unbelievably dangerous. We know next-to-nothing about the under-community except they're strong and they might be headed up. Yamanh's the name down there... a decoy might keep him occupied, might do some internal damage", Rona\Jasmine says. "... you want the truth. As in..."

"Why me?" This caption appears on the panel where Buffy-2 plunges into a black hole, but it's a Rona\Jasmine's voiceover. She rhetorically asks if Buffy-2 was chosen because she's the strongest or because she's expendable. "There is no truth", Rona\Jasmine concludes. "There's just what you believe".

Buffy-2 is standing inside the cave, a torch in her hand. Then she's lying naked on the ground with fairies flying around her. A weird greenish creature, a hybrid of turtle and jellyfish says she has passed the test. Buffy-2 tries to persuade them to fight Yamanh's troops together. "You are throwing us to the wolves" turtle\jellyfish says. "The wolves are here", Buffy-2 says. "But you have each other. You have a will to survive". Fairies and turtle\jellyfish agree to help her.

"The Slayer. She will truly face the blackness?" one of them inquires.

"... Not turn and run back for the light?" fairy goes on, but her "voiceover" sounds on the next panel with Buffy-2 lying on the ground in the school yard.

And we find out that seconds after turning into a slayer she had saved her classmates from a truck that had somehow driven into a schoolyard at full speed. (I suppose the scene was inserted to nip in the bud the argument that it was Buffy-2's slayerhood that killed her; if she hadn't got slayer strength, she'd be killed by the truck 18 months earlier).

...And, obviously, fighting Yamanh is similar to fighting a truck. Buffy-2 is losing the battle. Around them demons, fairies, turtles, some black-winged creatures are fighting.

"There is always a name," Buffy-2 thinks. "Lincoln. Hitler. Gandhi. The name can inspire terror, awe... sometimes great things. But there's millions of people go into making a name. People facing things they couldn't imagine they would. In the moments that matter even our own names are just sounds people make to tell us apart. What we are isn't that. The real questions run deeper. Can I fight? Did I help? Did I do for my sister? My comrades, children, slimy slug-clan?"

Yamanh lifts dead slayer's body in the air as other slayers start a landing operation and attack demons from above.

"There is a chain between each and every one of us. And like the man said, you either feel its tug or you ignore it. I tried to feel it. I tried to face the darkness like a woman and I don't need any more than that. You don't have to remember me."

She lies - or soars - in white nothingness.

"But I do".

Analysis:

Starting from season 4, Joss was making one stylistical exercise a year. Hush was an attempt to recreate the mood of a silent movie. Spiral was a modern western. Once More With Feeling - a musical. Storyteller - an exploration on reality TV, Buffy-style. And now we have The Chain stylized as MTV clip.

After reading it several times I think that Joss has chosen this form very carefully. His story is incredibly compelling - but only when you're too disoriented to think about it rationally. I read it several times - and every time when I was reading from beginning to end I started crying during the final voiceover. This is true master-class. The reader is perfectly conditioned to feel sorrow for the dead slayer and anger against Yamanh.

But as soon as you start to recall the events in a linear way you get totally different picture. The Slayer organization or people who act on its behalf send a girl underground with an assignment to "keep occupied" a leader of demon community and "to do some internal damage". The wording is very careful, but if we drop euphemisms, she is sent as a saboteur. She arrives underground and... We don't know how much time she spends there. But we know that she passes an obscure test conducted by a weird creature; confronts a demon of some small variety and uses him to announce her arrival and her intention to fight Yamanh; she finds out there are many species who live underground - fairies, slimy slugs, black-winged creatures; she convinces them to start a war with the demon clan. Then she sends a fairie upstairs to announce that slayers must strike immediately. She leads all the other species in the battle against demons and, in the crucial moments other slayers arrive and, obviously, win the battle. Now the territory that belonged to demons become Slayers-controlled or Slayers-influenced zone.

Rings a bell?

The most interesting is the fact that Joss never explicitly demonstrates that Yamanh and his clan deserve to be exterminated. We don't see then committing atrocities to other species. The Council woman admits that they don't know anything about them "except they're strong and they might be headed up". Not "plan", not "are ready to" - but only "might". The other species sound hostile to Yamanh - but they're no fluffy puppies themselves. Slimy slag kills those who don't pass its test while Jossverse fairies are distant relatives of Alien Queen who also lays her eggs into human flesh.

The next-to-most interesting is the fact that I haven't seen a single review of issue 5 that asks if Slayers organization is right. There are some debates about sending a girl to a certain death, but nobody questions if it's OK to invade a territory, inhabited by other species and establish there your own rules. People who, without doubt, condemn Bush's intervention in Iraq, don't see anything wrong with it.

After all, they're just demons. They're not us, humans. They're our natural enemy, right?

Um... no. To quote Anya, "There's a lot of different kinds. Some are very, very evil. And some have been considered to be useful members of society." (BtVS 5.06 Family) Besides, since Selfless we know that demons have souls (thank you, mr. Goddard!). And in issue 3 Giles meets with a demon who also had been framed by The New Initiative, and they agree to exchange useful information.

So - there is an alternative to war within the comics frame. Yet Buffy-2's actions lead to a full-scale confrontation and slayer invasion.

We don't know what happened between Buffy-2's glimpses of memories. She could discover that Yamanh is a tyrant and oppressor who actually plans to destroy the world. Or she could find nothing compromising about his community and then provoke him to strike back at her because of her subversive activity (since one of her assignments was sabotage).

Then again, we don't know if the invasion is a good or bad thing for humanity. When Rona\Jasmine give Buffy-2's assignment she admits that the Slayer organization knows next-to-nothing about under-community. But Buffy-2's actions destabilize the balance of power in the underworld. And - who knows - maybe now fairies, no longer deterred by demons, will come upstairs and start laying their eggs into humans' ears.

We don't know if Giles has given Rona his blessing to invade the under-community or he doesn't know about her actions. All we know that from Buffy's POV there is a choice (only 500 slayers work for the Slayer organization) but Buffy-2, conditioned by Rona\Jasmine, thinks there is no choice.

So - is Buffy-2 a hero, a victim of the Slayers organization or a monster who has started the war?

Could she be all the three options? Tricky question.

Joss is giving us a lot of space for interpretation. Maybe even too much space.

One can easily see Buffy-2 as unadulterated hero who fights the forces of darkness. Demons bad, fairies good, Slayers organization is wise and just, the future belongs to good guys, i.e. the slayers.
One can pretty easily see Buffy-2 as hero-victim - a brave, bright girl who got killed because she was sent alone to fight against an army of bad guys.
But it's much more difficult to see and accept her as hero-victim-monster. Can people who invade foreign country and kill it's citizens be perceived as heroes? Americans who invaded Vietnam, Russians who invaded Afganistan - can we call them heroes? I think, yes, they were heroes - and, at the same time, they were victims and monsters. Because, to quote Joss, "hero is someone who gets other people killed" (says the woman with Jasmine's face in Serenity). And war heroes usually are people with with the biggest body count.

And, at the same time, they are the stuff of legends. The inspiration for storytellers.

I don't know if this issue has been explored in comics, but American genre literature has great stories about hero-monster dichotomy,I'm a Legend by Richard Matheson being the best example. If The Chain is the continuation of this tradition, Buffy-2 may fight the wrong cause but for the right reasons and still be a hero. A tragic hero.

I can't keep from drawing a parallel with Tatzu - a titular hero of a song by brilliant Russian singer Nastya Poleva.(in Russian; download here) Tatzu was 13 years old when he had been sent as a patrol on a small uninhabited island. The boy was trained to serve his emperor and he was proud of his duty. The next year war was over, emperor was dethroned, but Tatzu continued his patrol. He spent all his life on the island, ready to send a signal about enemy's approach.

For me, Tatzu is the ultimate existential hero. Could Buffy-2 be his sister?

I'm reading and rereading the arguments on this thread and I'm asking myself if I'm overcomplicating and Buffy-2 as hero-victim-monster exists only in my head. I'm rereading the scene where Buffy-2, instead of killing the demon lets him go to his leader to announce that "Buffy Summers is coming for him" and I can't decide if it's a case of flashy storytelling or a hint that Buffy-2' actual assignment was to provoke war.

From RL standpoint it's an incontestable provocation. Even if Yamanh wasn't planning the war, after Buffy-2's declaration he has to start preparations. He can't let the enemy catch him unawares. But should we suspend our disbelief and perceive the story like... well... a story? And accept that she orders the demon to tell Yamanh that Buffy Summers is coming for him, because it's just a requisite flashy phrase hero usually says to demonstrate his/her coolness. And reason that nasty-looking demons are bad guys just because they're, you know, demons? And Buffy-2 is an unadulterated hero because she's the protagonist?

How far our suspension of disbelief should go? So far, I can't decide if we should dismiss subversive nature of Buffy-2's assignment as a genre convention or assume that it's another subtle indication that slayers are really becoming a threat for humanity.

We'll find it out in - how many? - three? five years? - when season 8 will be over. In MTV age three years equals a century.

And I still can't figure out why Joss has chosen this unusual narrative form. One can argue that in the MTV era it's logical to experiment with a comic in MTV style. Or that Joss just finds pleasure in being the ultimate unreliable narrator.

But could it be a subtle exploration of propaganda mechanisms? A tattered poster on the variant cover is very telling - as well as the the mention of faschism. Look, says Joss, the power of passionate, inspired storytelling can convince anybody to believe in anything. You can make people believe that invasion is good. You only have to highlight favorable facts, omit everything else and use expressive, emotional narrative style. And be talented like Joss.

We're lucky Joss doesn't work for Bin Laden.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

empresspatti.livejournal.com

I love your always intelligent commentary.

And I still can't figure out why Joss has chosen this unusual narrative form.

I have the worst feeling he chose this narrative form because he didn't have much work anyplace else and has no chance of ever bringing the 'verse back to television or movie form. This is the only medium left to him.

Aaaurg! I miss the show....

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