The Good: Two fun stories, One decent one
The Bad: Light on character development, All of these stories are available elsewhere.
The Basics: While I enjoy Angel and Spike, Angel: Smile Time is a poor anthology of works available elsewhere in better mediums or collections.
I am finding myself disappointed in Angel all of a sudden. The other day, I was enthusiastically reviewing the Spike Puppet doll I had purchased for my wfe and I discovered that a graphic novel had been compiled of Angel: Smile Time. So, I dutifully went out to my bookstore, tracked it down and picked it up. Now, I am wishing I had not. It is not so much that Angel: Smile Time is bad as it is uninspired and a recycling of other Angel and Spike comics that are easily available elsewhere. As the name suggests, Angel: Smile Time is a collection of stories that pertain to the puppet Angel from the episode "Smile Time."
For those unfamiliar with it, in the fifth season of Angel (reviewed here!), there was a fan-favorite episode (or the point where some fans felt the show jumped the shark) called "Smile Time." In that episode, Angel was transformed into a puppet version of himself and it is there for all fans to watch on DVD. With Angel: Smile Time, I find myself disappointed in the comic books because this is an utterly pointless trade anthology which includes a comicbook version of "Smile Time," an interstitial story "Mystery Date" (from the "Angel: Masks" anthology) and Spike: Shadow Puppets. Shadow Puppets was released as its own trade paperback anthology earlier this year and is part of the Spike: Omnibus which was just released.
For those unfamiliar with Angel, “Smile Time” was an imaginative episode in the fifth season and Angel: Smile Time is a faithful adaptation of the episode of Angel. The only reason I can think that anyone would want this would be because they are reading the comic book series, but somehow missed the episodes. This is a bit of a foolish paradox as those most likely to be reading the comics are those who watched the show loyally!
In "Smile Time," Angel and his crew at Wolfram & Hart, begin to investigate the zombification of children in Los Angeles. They trace the children turning insensate to the studios which produce Smile Time, a television show with puppets who, as it turns out, are demons sent to get the souls of children. When Angel attempts to investigate this on his own, he is turned into a puppet! He and his crew work to stop the demons at Smile Time before they reach a larger audience and steal even more souls!
In the short, "Mystery Date," Angel - still in puppet form - and Nina go on the date they were planning on at the end of "Smile Time." Unfortunately, while Nina is preparing, the Puppet Angel is replaced by a shapeshifting g'rek'll demon who takes his form and plans to kill Nina. The puppet Angel must rise to his occasion and thwart the villain before his love interest is slain!
In Shadow Puppets, happy on his own after years of fighting alongside other champions, Spike is doing free-lance work as his own investigator in Los Angeles. As a demon begins hunting him down for an unspecified debt, Spike is brought a case by Lorne. It appears that Smile Time has rebooted in Japan and Marco and his team of demon puppets have begun to raise an army to enslave and brain drain children worldwide from their Japanese headquarters. So, armed with weapons and assistance from Beck, Tok, and Betta George, Spike and Lorne begin to negotiate Japan to find out how and what Smile Time is up to there.
As Tok and Spike verbally spar and raid the Smile Time studios, Marco and the Smile Time villains have a different plan. They need Spike out of the way and when their puppet ninja army fails, they do to Spike, Lorne and Betta George what they did to Angel . . . and the three heroes find themselves as wee little puppets who are all that stand between peace and harmony and a slew of dead children!
Angel: Smile Time is a very faithful recreation of the episode, with nothing added in and only minutia taken out. The inclusion of "Mystery Date" is nice, but it still does not illustrate what happened when puppet Angel was made back into a vampire. Shadow Puppets was reviewed here very thoroughly as a standalone and I'll not repeat more about that. This hardcover anthology is a tough sell, though, because so much of it is spent with already-available story.
While the story is the same as the televised episodes, the look is obviously different (being that this is a comic, as opposed to photographs or a video). The artwork is decent-enough to let readers know who the characters are, but it is not extraordinary. For example, there are panels where Nina looks hardly like the actress who plays her and where Wesley looks virtually unrecognizable.
That said, the comic book adaptation has a decent sense of movement to it. The artwork – the pencils and the inks – look good when Puppet Angel fights, even when he leaps upon Spike. This is, however, a plot-intensive story with little in the way of character development, though the way Angel's friends rally around him continues to illustrate how close Angel is with the mortals around him. "Mystery Date" is also very low on character, with the date being another plot twist where Angel must fight yet another demon who is out to harm one he cares about. It gets repetitive, even for fans!
In the trade hardcover anthology, Smile Time includes cover art from the original comic book releases that this collects as well, but no other "bonus" features. Because fans have easy access to the actual episode and the comic does not add anything to that story, this is a very difficult sell for the die-hard fans. Being able to read the episode in comic form is nothing special and all this truly does is put all of the Puppet-in-Angel stories together in one place (at least until they finally fill in the last gap - puppet Angel becoming actual Angel again). Still, it's not enough to make me recommend this to anyone, even fellow fans of Angel. If you're into the show, watch it and enjoy the episode with all the live-action it had and pick up one of the other, more complete Angel or Spike anthologies which include these stories. This just comes across as an attempt on the part of IDW and the Buffyverse masters to exploit fans for a few extra fan dollars.
This is truly disappointing and utterly pointless.
For other Joss Whedon Universe graphic novels, please visit my reviews of:
Angel: Not Fade Away
Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Twilight
Serenity: Better Days And Other Stories
3.5/10
For other book reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!
© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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