"Buffy the Vampire" Season 8 has dramatically changed the nature of the Buffy comics, no longer the vaguely despised merchandising stepchild or accessories to the larger story-- with Season Eight, with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" itself well off the air and no realistic prospects for any of the proposed spin offs actually coming to pass-- the comics have definitively become "The Series". Seriously.

If Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 Issue 1 left any doubts about it with a story that seemed diffuse and scatter shot in places, Season 8 Issue 2 unambiguously brings it home, establishing definitively Season 8 as the successor to the television series. If Issue One, sometimes seemed more like one of Andrew's wilder pastiches of the franchise with an army of slayers, a Scottish castle, a Nick Fury posing one-eyed Xander, a mysterious mystical symbol, a giant Dawn and a military hunt for Buffy; Issue Two ties everything together into the beginnings of a classical Buffy story.

Part of the advantage of a comic book arc is the essential compactness of it. Unlike a season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" which needs to churn out its twenty something episodes, regardless of the needs of the story and within each episode needed to fill 40 something minutes of time (depending on whether you were on UPN or the WB), Buffy's eight season is much simpler. Quite simply it's all story. Not that there aren't plenty of character moments like Xander trying to have a heart to heart talk with a giant Dawn having a bath in a lake, but the compact format insures that none of them drag and that they all have a point. When you think of how the same tired old Anya routines dragged themselves out on the series "Sex is fun," "I like money", "I fear bunnies"-- none of that can be an issue because unless you're Daniel Cloves it's really hard to make a comic book, especially an action oriented, one drag.

A big part of the style Joss Whedon brought to Buffy was the rapid topical transitions and comic books are an even more ideal format for that kind of storytelling than even the television show was and Issue Two makes full use of it, sometimes to comical and sometimes to disturbing effect, transitioning from Buffy's nightmare to the battle going on all around, from one conversation to another, letting the story build and flow into one ominous and familiar flow.

There's plenty of moments in Issue Two that really remind you that is Joss Whedon and that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is back. Sometimes it's the little things like Xander bursting to the rescue into Buffy's room, wearing his Nick Fury eyepatch and yellow pajamas with Tweety Bird on them. Or Xander interrogating Amy and sharing a riposte that brings back all your memories of the classic series with Joss Whedon nailing down the show's trademark witty dialogue all over again. For anyone who worried, as I did, that Amy was being transformed into a ridiculous Hannibalesque villain-- Issue 2 demonstrates that she's an enemy well in the show's tradition.

And then it's also the big things like the solution of what it will take to wake Buffy up from her sleep again-- an answer that puts a twist on an old fairy tale that is at once witty, unnerving and suggests it will open up the gateway to a whole other storyline. It's also in Buffy's nightmare which is no ordinary collection of horrors but chock full of symbolical and metaphorical imagery mixed with prophecy in the best tradition of Joss Whedon's incredible work on the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Season 4 finale, "Restless".

Throughout the television series, dreams have served to convey important messages to Buffy, whether it's Faith's clue tipped in her dream of how to bring down Mayor Wilkins "humanity, it never goes away" to Buffy's visions of the First Slayer and her earlier dreams of Angel and of course "Restless" itself-- seems to be coming together again.As the "First Slayer" told Buffy that "Death is your gift", the dream Xander telling Buffy that she is the dark while Buffy protests that she's afraid of the dark also seems to foreshadow the direction of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 in the best tradition of the Buffyverse.

While Dawn's gigantism seemed initially ridiculous in Issue 1, Issue 2 brings it home by connecting it to Dawn's need for Buffy's attention and all the times Buffy had left her behind, in the classic style of the series. And the gigantism itself is one of those neat ideas that were utterly unworkable in the television series for budget reasons, but that Joss Whedon probably really wished he could do and now thanks to the magic of comic book artwork-- which doesn't depend on an effects budget (except sometimes at Marvel) he can. The scene of an entire wall crawling with the undead is still another fantastic image, forbiddingly expensive to do on television, but entirely workable on the page.

Unlike Issue One, Issue Two does a better job of working all the players in, beginning with Giles meditatively having tea and coping with a world where he is one Watcher to an army of Slayers, to Dawn's angst and Xander attempting to cope with a job too big for him, revelations about General Voll and the mysterious symbol first seen in the previous issue that seems to have a greater aim that requires Buffy out of the way (an aim that has nothing to do with American military security), a brief moment with Andrew still being the Star Wars geek he always was and finally the glorious arrival of Willow.

As it stands now after two issues, Buffy Season 8 is a stripped down hell on wheels version of Buffy that isn't a tribute to the series or a tie in, but takes the baton and goes with it all the way. I had not thought it was possible, but Joss Whedon still has it and Buffy really is back.