I read that NYTimes article and was sorta "meh" about the whole thing- but if Buffy's gonna tangle with Fray then color me interested. I gotta catch up on these comics.

Other than the Vaughn run, I've not been terribly impressed with Buffy's Season 8. And the art is atrocious.

I want a poster of that cover. Fray!

(Yes, completely uninterested in the other thing. Joss already screwed things up when he has Willow get together with Kennedy, who she had no chemistry with what-so-ever. Yawn.)

Sigh. It's always sad when supposedly smarter geeks are just frat boys at heart, looking to see girls kiss. You'll notice in hundreds of years, neither Angel nor Spike ever sought out some same-sex action.

Wow. So now even imaginary girls are going bi to get more attention? If this trend continues, I guess I don't have to worry about my son having a better life than I did.

@Macloserboy: The great thing about beauty is that it transcends things like intelligence and political correctness.

I bet that someone in the future uses magic (or something approximating magic) to summon the great slayer Buffy Summers.

@PVIII:
I agree, the art is atrocious. You would think that Joss Whedon and Dark Horse would have choosen to find a spectacular artist for this series, but no. With very few exceptions Dark Horse tends to get very mediocre artists. Not even Mike Mignola is doing any more art. It's shame.

And hey, thanks io9 for putting spoilers in the headline. I haven't gotten my copy yet and I've successfully avoided the other stories, but I didn't know I'd have to stop looking at your RSS feed, too. Nice job.

@moff: What in the world are you talking about?

@cabridges: If you do a Google News search, most of the headlines out there, from bigger outlets than io9, mention the bi stuff. It seems iffy to me as to whether it qualifies as a spoiler or not, but given that Whedon et al. are talking about it on the record with the Times, they don't seem to think of it as one.

@Macloserboy: How two girls kissing is such a marvelous thing that it can unite both smart geeks and frat boys in one common cause, and how all considerations of whether it's sexist that Joss Whedon has the ladies getting into it but not the guys are superseded by the pure splendiferousness of it all. That is all.

@TX1: It's funny, but I actually like all the artists on the Mignola titles (save the Lobster Johnson book). I'm really like the 1947 (?) art, Duncan Fegredo, as well as the B.P.R.D. artist. I liked whoever did the art on FRAY as well... The thing that bugs me with Jeantry (sp?) on the B8, is that he's obviously going for some sort of attempt at realism, yet each picture of Buffy looks different (the same for all the other characters too), and for the most part, they're unrecognizable. I guess all the budget went to Whedon...

@moff: Yes sir, as you say, sexism and objectification are truly awesome.

@moff: Oh. Heh.

@Macloserboy: Spike and Angel never sought a same-sex experience? Check out Angel episode "Power Play", wherein Spike offhandedly mentions that something happened once. However, it never happened on-screen, unlike the lesbian relationships within the series.

@taxbaby: Well, only sometimes.

@ Moff - Showing hot girls kissing because it turns on guys, but not showing hot guys kissing because guys don't like seeing it *is* political correctness. It's catering to the comfort level of one group over another.

@Moff - but I'd have to do the Google search to see them. And the Times headline was "Experimenting in Bed When Not After Vampires," which doesn't give away anything. It's not that I don't expect sites like io9 to run spoiler stories, and I don't think this is quite Harry-Potter-ending territory, but usually they put the spoilers in the story or after the jump and not in the headline.

@JoshJasper: Yes, yes, I understand political correctness. My tongue-in-cheek point was that the wonderfulness of hot girl-on-girl action transcends such mundane concerns.

@cabridges: And my point there was just that io9 wasn't alone in not handling Buffy's bicuriosity as spoiler territory -- although, yes, the Times head was appreciably more vague (though that may have had more to do with the verbosity of their headline style than an effort to conceal anything). I just think whether or not this qualifies is debatable -- but either way, it sucks that it was spoiled for you.

(has no opinion on Buffy semi-sorta-bi-ness. Will just read comic and look the the purty pictures)

The Buffy comics are to the Buffy series as the Bogart postage stamp was to Casablanca.

Taking a character who functioned as a metaphor for homosexuality and actually making her gay (or bi, whatever) takes an awful lot of... remind me what the opposite of "imagination" is?

The Buffster was a metaphor for homosexuality?
Well! I learn new bullshit every day!

The central premise of Buffy was someone who's different living in an environment that punishes difference. Now, obviously, this isn't a 1:1 metaphor for homosexuality, but that's certainly one of the direct, real-world examples of the kind of "outsiderness" slayerdom was a stand-in for. Homosexuality, specifically, is a metaphor the writers played up in the finale of season 2.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Buffy was nothing but an extended metaphor for being gay. There were a lot of other themes that ran throughout, but it was certainly an element of the early series. Changing subtext into text is usually a sign that either the writer isn't that smart, or they believe the audience isn't that smart. Either way, not a good sign.

Buffy was such a good show. Why don't they make a movie out of that property, huh?

@Todd:
"punished difference"?

I think it just showed that life is a fuckin' bitch.

Maybe Buffy's not going to the future, maybe Fray is going into the past?

Just a thought.

@cabridges: Sorry about that. I think you have a point there. We really try to keep spoilers out of the headlines and first paragraphs. But I guess none of us thought of this as a spoiler. I should have caught this earlier. My bad. We'll be more careful in future.

@moff: I thought they did...originally. I recall it had Pee-Wee Herman in it...yeah lets go back to those days ;)

@Todd: Any instance of an outsider is pinned as being a metaphor for homosexuality. That doesn't mean there's no teeth to the idea, it just means that it's almost a given.

As such, I doubt that Whedon is even thinking in such terms.

@Slatz_Grobnik: Well, as Todd says, there are times when Whedon does nod to it. I think he's thinking of the time Buffy 'comes out' to her mother, when I believe her mother asks her if she's tried 'not being the slayer' - but I could be just injecting X-Men parallels there, I don't know. Still, I think the homosexuality resonance (it's too vague, to my mind, to be a metaphor) is in the background most of the time.
The real savaging that homosexuality-metaphors received on the show was when witchcraft moved from being a metaphor for lesbianism to being a metaphor for drugs, and then just to a literal drug that got you high and that you had withdrawal from. Lame.