The Good: More or less necessary for fans, one supposes, Moments of art and execution.
The Bad: Much of the artwork, Utterly obvious following the first chapter, Short and therefore proportionally expensive.
The Basics: First Night makes explicit what After The Fall alluded to in a poor expansion of the Angel mythos.
I like Angel. I'm opening with that because as I get into this, I don't want readers to think I was inherently against After The Fall - First Night, which picks up the saga of Angel (reviewed here!). When the series finale of Angel aired, many of us still had hopes that it could be picked up for a sixth season somewhere else. It was not. So, Joss Whedon and his team set out to write the sixth season of Angel in comic book form. The first "episode" of Angel after the finale was anthologized in the graphic novel Angel: After The Fall (reviewed here!). As that was the first chapter following the scenes that finished the television show, it seems natural that there would be subsequent chapters. Unfortunately, and rather ridiculously, Angel: After The Fall - First Night is actually a prequel to After The Fall and yet the second hardcover Angel anthology.
First Night (as I'm referring to it from now on for ease of typing) is a collection of several vignettes that explicitly fills in the blanks of what happened after "Not Fade Away," the Angel series finale. The thing is, in the notes that followed After The Fall, Joss Whedon and Brian Lynch wrote about their debate of where they wanted to pick the story up and it was decided that they would not start five minutes after the finale, they would leap forward three months, which was pretty standard for the stories they told on television. First Night, then, goes back and tells the stories explicitly of what happened five minutes after the series finale of Angel. And, largely, it's a waste.
Following a recap by the Groosulag, various players in the new Angel universe tell the story of what happened the night Angel took on the Powers That Be. The fish is suddenly transported from swimming in the ocean to hell. Connor is struck by suddenly remembering his entire magically-repressed past and he is rescued by Kate, who is now something of a bounty hunter for good. When Los Angeles gets suddenly sucked into hell, Kate rescues Connor and she goes off on a shooting spree.
The stories are essentially the same throughout: Wesley, now dead, is woken up by a vision of Fred, whom he quickly realizes is actually some form of demon. This is his liaison from Wolfram & Hart and he is sent back as a ghost to act as an intermediary between Angel and the Powers That Be. Gunn, wounded in the fight, is dragged off and vamped, waking up in the new-hell Los Angeles. Spike, celebrating surviving the end of the world (yet again) feels compelled to rescue a wounded woman, thus ending up back in action on the side of good, fighting demons in hell. And Gwen, eager to touch her boyfriend now that her electric charges have been neutralized suddenly loses her newfound control over her electromagnetic abilities when Los Angeles is sucked into hell and she inadvertently fries the guy she's with.
And Lorne presents a limerick about being sucked into hell and carving out the sunny niche of Silver Lake.
The thing is, I wish there were more to this book than that. Everything I just wrote, that's the book. That's the entire book. This is a short book, feels very comicy and includes no real character development. Everything we knew from After The Fall is simply reshown here. Whereas in After The Fall, the writers were smart and skilled enough to leave the intervening time up to the imagination of the reader and the clever allusions to that missing time, First Night makes it explicit. And there is, quite simply, not enough there.
First Night is a terrific failure of imagination; there are no surprising twists or turns because everything that is shown in First Night has already been seen in After The Fall. So, for example, Lorne mentioned exactly what happened to him in After The Fall; he was distraught by killing Lindsay, ran off and when Los Angeles was sucked into hell, he and some of the good demons formed a sacred barrier to keep evil out of Crystal Lake. Lorne had to explain that in order for his presence in After The Fall to make sense. In First Night, Lorne simply repeats that same tale in a series of rhyming couplets. This is utterly unnecessary and does not add anything to the larger mythos.
In fact, just the opposite. First Night treats the readers like they are complete idiots by restating known information. And poorly. So, for example, when Lorne tells his couplets, the artwork looks like something out of the Sunday comics page as opposed to thoughtful, well-drawn comic artwork. His entire section is cartoonish. The interstitials featuring the fish and one of Gunn's goons is similarly poorly drawn, making it virtually impossible to tell who the goon is or much of what is going on.
So, with a strike on the artwork and the story, it comes down to character. The only character of interest is Kate. Unseen in the television show since the second season, Kate is an interesting character who was just dropped after she learned Angel's true nature. First Night resurrects her character and does it well. And the artwork in that section is not bad.
The rest of the characters provide ridiculously simple expository sections that either do not add anything to the mythos or still leave the important questions unanswered. So, for instance, in the Whedonverse, to become a vampire, one has to be sucked dry by a vampire, then drink that sire's blood. How did Gunn ever fall for that?! Not explained in this book.
The back portion of the book, then are script notes and dropped stories from First Night and none of that information enhances the book in any meaningful way. The result is an Angel experience that can safely be avoided, even by the hard-core fans.
For other graphic novels featuring Angel, please visit my reviews of:
Smile Time
Not Fade Away
Spike: Lost And Found
3/10
For other book reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!
© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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