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With other supporting characters from the BUFFY franchise getting their own spin-off adventures, it was only going to be a matter of time before someone got round to a solo outing for Giles. The death of an old friend causes Buffy's ex-Watcher to return to England for his funeral, where he finds that the Watchers' Council haven't been too successful at keeping some of their secrets under lock and key. It's a pity that they weren't a little more careful, because then we wouldn't have been served up another rather average story. There's been a tendency in BUFFY to present the Watchers' Council as more concerned with protocol and regulations than with fighting the forces of darkness. GILES takes this approach, with only a handful of characters, including Giles himself and Michaela Tomasi (from THE GATEKEEPER TRILOGY) emerging unscathed. We all know that Quentin Travers is a git, but if he was this concerned with doing things "right", it's a wonder how he hasn't been killed yet. Speaking of Michaela, why do comic books always have to flag up continuity references? If you haven't read THE GATEKEEPER TRILOGY and THE BLOOD OF CARTHAGE, then you'd either miss the references altogether or merely think they referred to unseen adventures. Novels don't have footnotes whenever there's a continuity reference and TV series don't either (at least not yet) have pop-up boxes to remind us, so why the need in this medium? Oh well... The story itself is nothing special, with only the change of setting providing something that we haven't seen in the spin-offs. In place of the usual Sunnydale teen dabbling in the black arts we get someone from the Watchers' Council, and Michaela's place could just as easily have been taken by Willow. I'm still not keen on Eric Powell's art either. The infected characters look suitably gross, but Giles doesn't really resemble Tony Head, and why on Earth does he make half of the English characters look like gurning idiots? Within the confines of an ensemble television series, the character of Giles works well. There's even some limited potential for solo adventures, particularly if you're picking up on those things that will interest fans rather than a more general audience. Unfortunately, GILES doesn't really serve up anything new, so you're left wondering if the whole enterprise wasn't a little pointless. BACK TO THE TOP |
GILES |
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