Joss Whedon's Fray - The Story of a Girl in a Future World

"Well I'm fighting. Whatever it is. Alone if I have to...but I'm fighting." Fray

Before Joss Whedon ventured into the future with his FOX TV series "Firefly", there was Fray. The world of Fray is the world of the Buffyverse accelerated into the future. A familiar future of dystopias where people live on the bottom of the city, in the shadows, making ends meet while flying cars and towering buildings stand tall above it. It is a world with a pulp Sci-Fi look that features ray guns, flying hot rods, mutants and genetically enhanced bruisers and whatever sort of creature an aquahog might be.

In the limited eight issue run of "Fray" penciled by Karl Moline and inked by Andy Owens, we meet Melaka Fray, a girl living on the edge of a future that may have flying cars and ray guns, but also has its share of grinding poverty and misery for those who live on the outskirts of the future down below in the bottoms.

Melaka Fray or Mel, is the latest in a line of slayers going all the way back to Buffy, who was likely the last slayer, and the first slayer, the aborigine girl first formed by magic into a slayer, a weapon to drive back the demonic corruption of the vampires that had infected the race of mankind. The line of slayers may continue, but the line of watches has broken down. The remaining watchers of the Watchers Council have become maddened lunatics, who might have the right information, but lack the sanity to use it. For example, Mel's watcher accurately predicts that she will cleanse them with fire, but rather than guiding and training her, he sets himself on fire instead.

In place of a real watcher, Mel's watcher is Urkonn, a great horned demon, a gruffer and more massive equivalent of Angel's Skip the Demon and like Skip, he is working for the demonic side. While Earth has been cut off from the demon dimensions and the vampires banished by the last slayer, back in the 21st century (this likely does not refer to Buffy's final battle that destroyed Sunnydale, but it possibly could), slowly the demonic presence has been creeping back. Vampires have reemerged, now called Lurks, and the Police Department, called "Laws" in slang, have taken to ignoring them. (There is a subtle undercurrent of suggestion that this may be a deliberate policy from above.) Urkonn serves as a demonic Donald Sutherland, unsure of her powers and gravely determined to see things through. To some extent he is a friend, but he is also an enemy and one that Mel must confront.

Sent by the remaining demons on earth, who are in far too weakened a state to face down the strong demons of other dimensions, Urkonn is to train and prepare Mel, to face the threat that slayers always have to face. Besides fighting of the ordinary vampire attacks on humans and herself and rescuing their victims, Melaka Fray must deal with the plot by the gathered vampires to open a gateway into a demonic realm and flood the earth with a demon invasion. This is the same threat Buffy herself faced throughout the series, in the first season when the Master had attempted to open the Hellmouth, in the second season when it was Angel who attempted to open a gateway into hell using the statue of the demon Acathla, whose jaws opened a portal into hell. In the fifth season it was Glory, who was preparing to use the Key, in the form of Buffy's artificial sister Dawn, to smear the dimensions opening other worlds into earth and resulting in an armageddon. In the seventh season, once again the Hellmouth threatened to be reopened by the First Evil and when it finally was, much of Sunnydale was destroyed from the impact.

While Melaka Fray faces a task similar to Buffy's, her work is complicated by the fact that she is not altogether a full slayer. Instead portions of her powers, particularly her prophetic dreams, were embedded in her twin brother, Harth, who used them to become reborn as a vampire and then as leader of all the vampires, where he pursues a plan to open the gateway and bring earth down into hell.

Like Buffy Season 2, that had Buffy facing down Angel, Mel is facing an enemy who knows her all too well and with whom she is emotionally entangled. The premise of a brother and sister fighting on different sides of the vampire and human divide, had already been done by Joss Whedon on "Angel" that had Gunn's sister turned into a vampire forcing him to kill her. "Fray" reverses the gender and adds the element of Mel's powers blending into Harth's. Harth himself, or "The One Who Will Lead" holds a resemblance to the child leader of the vampires in Buffy Seasons 1 and 2.

"They come looking for death. And death is psyched to see them." Fray

The comic format as before permits a vision of greater scope that would not have been possible within the confines of a television series. Scenes of the vampire's atrocities include massive heaps of corpses the size of football fields. The demon that serves as the gateway of a hellmouth is rendered at the size of a Japanese monster who terrorizes an entire city block. One of the demons who gives Urkonn orders is an insectile creature, crawling across the other demon.

Stylistically the future of "Fray", resembles somewhat that of "Batman Beyond", with stylized pulp gadgets and bright colors and a multitude of tattoos. As well as being an animated series, "Batman Beyond" also had a run in comic book form. Concerns about Fray being drawn in the way that Buffy had been originally drawn in the comics are not an issue. Mel has the realistic body of a teenage girl and while she isn't depicted dressed in sweaters all the time, she is rendered realistically within her world.

All in all, Mel is a believable and excellent follow up to the others Slayers of the Buffyverse and her story decidedly deserves its own title.

"I'm just one girl. No big hero. No protector of justice. I'm not even a one hundred percent bona fide slayer." Fray