Reviewing
part 1 of this four-part mini-series, I commented
that nothing much seemed to be happening. That's pretty much the case
with part two as well, although at least Cordy, Gunn and Wesley are brought
into the plot a little more.
With
the "half-serpent, half-supermodel" mysteriously vanishing,
Angel spends most of the book fighting the two foes depicted on the cover.
Meanwhile,
Cordy and Wes rush to the scene in Gunn's truck. Well, more like crawl
to the scene in Gunn's truck, thanks to the LA traffic.
Admittedly,
we do learn a little more in this installment. Angel's opponents have
been sent to fight him by a pony-tailed guy, who didn't expect them to
win. Obviously he's the mini-series' Big Bad, but that's about all we
know about him at the moment. The only other development is that the symbol
on the knight who attacks Angel is Chinese for "perfect".
This
can be seen as setting things up for the second half of the story, but
the writers should be balancing that need with telling a story that keeps
the reader's interest.
To
be honest, after a fairly low-key opener, I'd expected more this time
around, especially with Joss Whedon on board. As a comics fan, and someone
who understands what makes ANGEL work, he should
be capable of giving us an ANGEL story that takes
full advantage of the medium.
That's
not really happening. The action scenes could do with extra panels to
give us the full flow of the fights; the story is fairly non-existent
and there's little of the snappy dialogue we've come to expect from Joss.
Two
issues in, and LONG NIGHT'S JOURNEY is decidedly
average so far. Given the talent involved, I expected it to be a lot better. back to the top
