The scenario may be familiar, but, then, you could also say that about most of the original Buffy/Angel TV scripts, too. What made both series fly at their best were the contemporary character twists that the writers and actors gave to the old horror standards. With Friends, however, the primary intent is to recall the characters without doing anything too freaky that'll get the fans screaming. At one level, the expectation for an adaptation like this can seriously curtail the writer.

Despite this limitation, Mariotte has fun doing his own version of the bantering pissing contests between the series' alpha vamps, Angel and Spike - and makes good dialog use of the flamboyant Lorne, too. But in the end, his story proves too slight and under-realized to have any staying power. When a doppelganger Angel makes a surprising sacrifice near the story's finish, the moment has been so insufficiently supported that the reader can't help wondering if the trade edition isn't missing a page from the original comic. Friends could clearly benefit from tighter editing: when a Cordelia doppelganger appears to dispatch a disposable crew of city drug dealers, we see her seemingly send the gang floating into the sky; later, Gunn tells us that he thought she "melted em," and no one bothers to correct his misimpression. Perhaps an earlier draft of script had these baddies doing a Wicked Witch of the West?

Messina's art is less inconsistent this time out: not forced to imagine a movie lot Romania, he appears less inclined toward stagy compositions. His versions of the Old Friends cast recall each figure quite effectively (something couldn't be said, for instance, of his Cordelia Chase poster in the first GN). If the story isn't up to all the figures who've been invited to it, the results will prove entertaining enough to most devotees of the series, though those who've already advanced to the Whedon-plotted "sixth season" may wonder if there's a teeny continuity issue re: Mssr. Charles Gunn.

But before we get to that, there are two more interim Angel collections to consider: Spotlight and Auld Lang Syne...