Product Description: Joss Whedon's classic "Smile Time" episode of Angel became a cult favorite and led to a comic book sequel, Spike: Shadow Puppets. Now look back at that fan-favorite episode, adapted here into an all-new edition, complete with new scenes as adapted by the Angel: Masks teams of Scott Tipton and original IDW Angel artist David Messina. As a bonus, this collection also includes the original episode script by Whedon and Jeffery Bell, including spot illustrations by artist Jeff Johnson.
Disappointing.. ^ I ordered this because I thought reading the comic version of one of my favorite episodes of one of my favorite TV shows would be fun to read through. Unfortunately, this is a BAD buy and not what I expected, at all. In short, everything is glossed over, skipped, or shortcutted. Scenes that would be a minute or two on the show happen in one panel, most of the time. Often, they'll reuse the same panel of illustration for multiple panels of dialogue. Like, three boxes of drawings that are exactly the same for three seperate panels of dialogue. Recycled panels, in other words. There are all kinds of shortcuts like this throughout the comic. And that's not even with mentioning how cheap the artwork is.
I do get it, though. I'm guessing the budget for this was very small and a shortened, limited budget would be the very reason for why this is so cheap. I was expecting the same quality as seen in After The Fall, but we don't get that, at all, here.
The worst thing is you can't even see the awesome scene in "Not Fade Away" where Wesley dies by the hands of Cyrus Vail, the powerful sorcerer and Illyria comes in and comforts Wesley when he dies and we see the scene where Illyria-Fred turns into Illyria before blasting Vail's skull apart with a single punch. Well, that WHOLE thing is pretty much cut, including Illyria's transformation punch! The whole thing is just one panel, inbetween "Take your best shot" and the actual explosive punch!
So, to sum it up, this is a Don't Buy, and it's cheap quality, and not-as-great-as-After-The-Fall artwork, and shortcuts in scenes from the actual TV episode makes it a disappointment. It's a shame too, because Not Fade Away is one of my favorite episodes from "Angel."
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
