NYCC 2015: Dark Horse Announces “Buffy: The High School Years”
Next year, Dark Horse Comics will be expanding their already-expanded Buffyverse series of comics with a new entry, a string of graphic novel volumes called “Buffy: The High School Years.” This new series will reveal what happened during the time when Buffy first moved to Sunnydale, discovered the horrors of the Hellmouth, and first made friends with her future sidekicks Willow and Xander—-wait, wait, waaaaaait. This sounds awfully familiar. Haven’t we already seen this?
The show originally took place during this period, true. But the point of “Buffy: The High School Years” is to take things back to a time before they got too dark and complicated, before Buffy graduated and was thrown into the real world, even before Cordelia was in on anything. And the books will be written by the talented Faith Erin Hicks, whom I got to meet once (for about a minute, but I did meet her. She’s my Xander-shaped friend).
The new series will be set during the time of Season One, but the adventures will be new. Does the sight of Buffy’s dog-bone phone also mean it’s going to take place in 1997? No one knows yet. Answers to things like that will have to wait until the first volume of the graphic novel series comes out, a very very long time from now, on June 15, 2016. Let’s hand the mike over to Dark Horse for more.
As revealed during the Dark Horse: CLASSIFIED! panel at New York Comic Con 2015, Dark Horse will deliver a new original graphic novel series titled Buffy: The High School Years, executive produced by Joss Whedon. The first volume will be written by Eisner Award-winning author Faith Erin Hicks (The Adventures of Superhero Girl) with artist Yishan Li. Together they’re bringing the angst, the action, and the cool to Buffy the Vampire Slayer!
“I’m thrilled to be writing a Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic; the TV show was a formative story for me. I loved it so much that the very first comic I ever created was a Buffy the Vampire Slayer homage. It’s beyond exciting to get a chance to write the real thing!” remarked Hicks.
Set during Season 1 of the television series, Buffy: The High School Years—Freaks & Geeks delivers classic Slayer action! Moving to a new school and making new friends will create enough anxiety for any teenage girl. But when you’re Buffy Summers, a vampire slayer—the Chosen One (with all that entails)—building a new life can be overwhelming.
A group of nerdy vampires, shunned by their cooler brethren, decide to climb the vampire social ladder by taking out the Slayer. They play on Buffy’s insecurities, wearing her down until she is full-on distracted by the mental warfare. But in addition to her Watcher, Giles, this Slayer has a couple of new friends, Willow and Xander, to cheer her on… except, of course, when they’re not getting along.
Buffy: The High School Years—Freaks & Geeks is in stores June 15, 2016.