On Mar 20, 2:07 pm, Stephen Tempest <step...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> I've got a theory. (Actually, I've got a couple, but the other one
> involves bunnies). Vampires' hair (and fingernails) always resets
> itself to the length it was when they died - if they cut it shorter,
> it quickly grows back to the default length. However, if they treat
> the hair with chemicals - such as hairgel or bleach - it stays at the
> shorter length and doesn't regrow.
>
> (The alternative is that Angelus was wearing a really bad wig in his
> 19th century heyday...)
I'm glad other people are picking up on the rather obvious fact that
the long-lived vampires' hair/other dead skin length has varied quite
a bit throughout BTVS and ATS. It's the first thing that I thought
about when that line came up, although I don't know if it was the most
pressing thing on my mind after reading the comic or anything...
> And how symbolic is it that Lorne's words here duplicate Angel's last
> words in 'Not Fade Away'? "Let's get to work." Back then those words
> heralded destruction and breaking apart; here they may herald the
> reconstruction. Especially since Lorne, the non-fighter and the one
> most disaffected by Angel's actions before, is the one to say them.
To get technical, Angel's line was "let's *go* to work." It's also
common enough phrase that one can expect to see it pop up from time to
time anyway. Neither of those facts contradict the idea that the
parallelism could very well be intentional, but I'm just saying.
(There's a rather hilarious moment in an episode of _Curb Your
Enthusiasm_ in which a character whose brother died on Sept. 11, 2001
gets angry and offended whenever anyone uses the phrase "let's roll"
in a trivial situation.)
> So did Gunn blow up the builing
> so that Angel would lose the fight? Doesn't exactly fit with what we
> hear from him later. For that matter, does he know Angel is mortal? I
> can't see how he would...
I don't know if this is rhetorical speculation or what, but we're back
at the point where Gunn's motivations aren't at all clear to me.
Presumably there's plenty more story to tell there. Pretty much all
of his comments in this issue take things to a different place than
previously (to me) suggested. But this has just been the first half
for him.
> Spider's posse swap their bikinis for tight black leather bodysuits...
> not sure how 'appropriate' these are but at least they're more
> martial-looking. And Spike appears to still feel like their prisoner,
> wanting to escape from them... especially if the alternative is having
> to fight Angel. Certainly he isn't the one giving the orders here. And
> is that Lorne tele****ting in at the end of this scene?
But he manages to join the fight on the side he wants and get a
promise of undefined help for Illyria. Not doing too badly for
himself.
> So Gunn still feels responsible for saving helpless civilians from
> demons, even though he's one himself? Interesting.
The ones he doesn't eat, anyway. Although I forget whether the
slavegirls or whatever from issue #1 were human.
> More amusing asides in the big fight scene, especially the riff on
> "knife to a gunfight" and Angel attepting to try the same trick on the
> dinosaur as he did with the dragon.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU --? ARE YOU HIGH?"
I like the deflating of his attempt at a big speech. But in response
to the "here I am... again" thing, it reminded me of how constant
things can be in Angel's life sometimes. And maybe I'm just being
spoiled, but I was musing over whether the comic has told us anything
particularly new about him or his world.
> Lindsay gets a namecheck! Yay! Though that probably means we won't be
> seeing him for real... unless Brian put him in 'Everyone's Dead' as a
> zombie? And more sinister speculation - what exatly is the "desired
> reaction" that Angel is supposed to be having, and that Wesley is
> trying to bring him around to? Even if we assume Wesley has his own
> agenda, that doesn't sound good...
Eve too; unclear whether she'd be a zombie as well or if she
eventually worked up the will to leave that building. I also doubt
that either of them will actually appear, though; it's more of a
throwaway gag for the fans. After the initial disorientation, Wesley
seems pretty unfazed by what they throw at him, like he knows what
he's doing with the "making himself indispensible to both sides"
thing. To what purpose, well, who the hell knows anymore?
> And everyone gets together to fight. Aww. (Cheats.) Although points to
> Lorne for some inspired rules-lawyering... and this was all Gunn's
> plan? Hmm. The attack on Kr'ph makes sense now - Gunn killed the
> civilians in vampire stylee and left the primeval Sanskrit runes so
> that Angel would suspect Spike and Illyria and go and talk to them,
> leading to them teaming up instead, which was apparently Gunn's plan
> all along.
Maybe.
> Loved the way Spike assumes Wesley's return is due to an amulet, and
> the sarky remark about nobody ever staying dead...
Me too.
> And Illyria's reaction on seeing Wesley walking and talking again
> is... to turn into Fred? Um.
Um is right. Nice big battle, and then an ending that's less a
cliffhanger and more of a "huh."
Well, that was pretty fun. I'd already basically decided that I'm no
longer going to collect these comics, so this was a good note to end
on. Thanks for being our discussion leader.
-AOQ
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