An anthology featuring vampire slayers throughout history, Tales of the Slayers contains the work of a variety of writers and illustrators. The disadvantage of this comic is that each story is short and self-contained, so there's no room to develop either characters or plots. Instead, each contribution has to rely on a twist or hook, and those are done with varying degrees of success: "Presumption" has a dreary beginning, but turns out to be one of the most interesting stories. "Sonneblume", on the other hand, starts off with a strong premise (the slayer as a girl in Nazi Germany), but quickly becomes predictable.
Buffy creator Joss Whedon himself contributes two stories, one of which features Fray, a slayer of the future who appeared in her own self-titled graphic novel. Nevertheless, Tales of the Slayers has only a couple of stories with a (very tenuous) connection to Buffy.
Article comments
1 - NancyGail
Any stories about Angel?
2 - Paul De Angelis
No. In fact, the only "major" connection is "Nikki Goes Down", which features the second slayer killed by Spike (though Spike makes no appearance).
3 - Eric Berlin
I'm always a little wary of the expanding worlds of fictional franchises that most likely only have the glancing eye of the original creator. Better to stick with the original goods, I say.
Is the second slayer killed by Spike the black chick that got it on the New York 70s era subway car? What a great scene and a great episode of Buffy. Brilliant direction with Spike telling his history while switching back-and-forth to the tense energy between himself and Buffy.
Thanks for this review, Paul, though I would have been curious to learn more about the different stories.
4 - Greg White
I really find slayers interesting.For 12 centuries the watchers council subjected any slayer who turned 18 to a rite of passage test known as the Cruciamentum Vol.4 of Tales of the slayers feature 8 previous slayers who underwent this test.They all passed.Buffy passed this test in ''Helpless'' episode 12 of season 3.