Angel and Faith Season Ten #2 Review

Brand new day.

Angel and Faith both adjust to their new status quo as London keeps getting stranger and stranger while the Slayer gig isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

There is a consistency in the artwork now between Buffy and Angel, though we have reached the point where the titles may be diverging. It’s a good time to flesh out more of what Kennedy is doing with the Slayer company and how Faith fits in.

Elsewhere in London, Angel meets old and new characters, and is still unsure exactly which side they stay on. He’s alone and without any back-up after a long time and it’s making him vulnerable.

SPOILERS FOLLOW…………………

As Faith leaves for a new life, she remembers the second farewell Giles gave her.

While Giles says that Faith is now independent and can create her own path, it still carries an undercurrent on uncertainty. Faith is clearly suffering from being separated from Giles and I’m not sure if there isn’t a meltdown in the future.

In London or ‘Magic Town’, Angel meets a changed Nadira. With her mystic mumblings and hearing voices, she isn’t exactly a stable ally and Angel acknowledges that like Drussila before her, he is responsible for her change and yet still doesn’t know how to fix this.

At Deepscan, Faith faces her toughest foe yet – paperwork. The clerk is overbearing and Faith can’t take it. As she blows steam off in the firing room (with the clerk drawn on her shooting target), she is assigned as the body guard for a rock star.

Not exactly the dream, is it?

Angel isn’t having an easier time, as he manages to get some info on the Pixies from the bartender but is beat down by the leader, Corky’s muscle – a giant boar humanoid. Unable to restrict himself, he reverts to his vampire form and breaks the boarman’s fingers. Finding that Corky has fled, he is greeted by Inspector Brandt.

At the end of the concert, an enraged father enters the dressing room searching for his daughter with a gun reserved for the rock star Billy Rage. Trying to contain the situation, Faith feels her day just got a whole lot better as an attack on Rage transforms him into a bird mutant.

Elsewhere, Brandt tries to get Angel on his side as he narrates how helpless the regular police is now that the ‘freaks’ have taken over the town.

SPOILERS END……………..

Gischler is going to great lengths to get the message across that Angel and Faith are both in unchartered territories right now. A little world building is still going on, but that’s expected in the second issue.

The artwork is as usual good, but nothing extraordinary.

So, I give it 7.5 out of 10.

+Nice character moments

+Some great visuals

+World building

-A real conflict has still not emerged

-Angel seems to be caught in the old ‘I’m responsible for what may be the big bad this season’ again