ANGEL's Season Five Gets Comics Treatment
Puppet Angel and the Death of Wesley make the four-color conversion.
IDW Publishing had moderate success with its "unofficial" comics continuations of Joss Whedon's television series Angel; followed by greater fortune with books centered on the other vampire with a soul, Spike; and finally blockbuster-level returns on the "official" sequel to Angel entitled After The Fall. Now the comic company is dipping back into the TV canon with the help of three veteran Angel adaptors who are bringing to comics the acclaimed Season Five episode "Smile Time" and the stunning series finale "Not Fade Away."
Scripted by Ben Edlund (The Tick), "Smile Time" pits Angel (David Boreanaz) and Company against a group of demons who've taken over a popular children's puppet television show. The fan-favorite element of the story is Angel's magical transformation into a puppet, a sort of Guy Smiley with fangs.
For his version of this "fun, light-hearted story," writer Scott Tipton (Angel: Auld Lang Syne) felt there was "room to add some stuff in there, so there are a couple of new scenes". He told CBR News's EMMETT FUREY that he's enjoying watching the usually-realistic David Messina, likely the most experienced Angel artist, "do something more cartoony."
In adapting "Not Fade Away," Tipton kept things, including the artwork of Stephen Mooney, more faithful "because it's the last time we see so many of the characters."
The episode by Jeffrey Bell and Whedon presents the epic "final" battle between the good guys and the Circle of the Black Thorn. Although these chief agents of the demonic Senior Partners are vanquished, the noble Wesley Wyndam-Pryce (Alexis Denisof) loses his own life, leaving Angel, Spike (James Marsters), Illyria (Amy Acker) and a mortally-wounded Charles Gunn (J. August Richards) to face the insurmountable army from Hell.
Mooney, who'd just completed a fill-in stint on After The Fall, wanted to go crazy with the backgrounds of his panels and illustrate what's happening around the main events, but Tipton restricted the artistic license to switching "camera" angles and focusing in on signature moments such as the aforementioned death of Wesley. The fidelity of their adaptation extended to the episode's structure, especially the frequent cutaways, which found the creators changing scenes almost every page.
"It's very coherent, it's not a mish-mash of stuff," said Mooney. "But it's definitely bam, bam, bam, which makes it satisfying I think, it'll feel like there's a lot in there."
Strict adherence to the original script would seem to suggest the comics are intended for unitiated readers, but Tipton in fact is foregoing his usual practice of bringing newbies up-to-speed, because "Not Fade Away" is preceded by more than 100 TV episodes that couldn't easily be encapsulated. "What I did was, I added a 'Previously on Angel' page at least, to get things set up from where they were in that season."
IDW's Smile Time #1 of 3 is available for Christmas stockings today (December 24th) while issue one of the three-part Not Fade Away arrives with the Easter Bunny in April.