Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight is a comic book series published by Dark Horse Comics. The series serves as a canonical continuation of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and follows the events of that show's final televised season. It is produced by Joss Whedon, who wrote the first arc, "The Long Way Home". The first issue was released on March 14, 2007.

The series was originally supposed to consist of about 25 issues, but series editor Scott Allie has confirmed they are already "up to about 50, could go a little higher". The comic series was initially called “Season Eight”, but from issue #6 onward the subtitle "Joss Whedon's Season Eight" was added. At present, some plans for spin-off miniseries are in discussion where side-stories too far outside of Season Eight's narrative would be played out. The success of the series has prompted IDW Publishing and Joss Whedon to announce a concurring continuation of the Angel television series, entitled Angel: After the Fall.

Fox Home Entertainment is producing motion comics based on the first 19 issues of Season Eight. The first motion comic was released on Amazon Video on Demand and iTunes on July 19, 2010, with new motion comics being released every Monday. The DVD of the motion comic series will be released January 4, 2011 and will include limited edition Jo Chen packaging and a collectible reprint of Dark Horse Comic's first book in the series.

Things From Another World has a page devoted to preview images of Buffy Season 8 comics.

Joss Whedon has announced that there will be a Season Nine, but it will be considerably shorter than Season Eight after it was discovered how many years it took for all the books to be released.

Premise
The story takes place "at least a year and a half" after the events of "Chosen", placing it at its earliest in the latter half of 2004 and after the events of "Not Fade Away" in Angel. (In issue #23, Andrew makes references to Heath Ledger's death, indicating it takes place after 2008, though in the same issue Buffy refers to having known Xander for only eight years, rather than at least 11).

Buffy and Xander now lead command-central, which is situated at a citadel in Scotland. At their disposal are a wide array of psychics, seers, witches, and Slayers, along with a vast amount of technology. There are 1,800 Slayers worldwide according to Buffy, almost 500 of whom are working with the Scoobies, separated into 10 squads. Squads include Andrew's in Southern Italy, Giles' in England, Vi's in New York City, Robin's in Cleveland, Ohio and another led by Rona in another U.S. state. For Buffy's protection and because her name is feared worldwide, two decoys are put in place: one partying in Rome with The Immortal and one on a mission in demonic underground caverns.

In the wake of Sunnydale's destruction, elements within the United States government view them as an army akin to terrorist cells and characterize Buffy as a "charismatic, uncompromising and completely destructive" leader. General Voll, a member of a mystically aware Initiative-like government project, describes fear of their resources, power and ideology. The government has teamed with Sunnydale survivor/powerful witch Amy Madison and Season 6 villain Warren Mears, both of whom seek revenge in a Big Bad role, which is new for Amy. Simultaneously, an evil British socialite Slayer called Lady Genevieve Savidge plots to usurp Buffy's place in the Slayer hierarchy, and a shrewd cabal of Japanese vampires scheme to reverse the global activation of Potential Slayers in "Chosen". The appearances of these villains so far appear connected to "Twilight", the enigmatic Big Bad of the season, a masked person who plans to destroy all of the Slayers and bring an end to the era of magic.

A subplot involves the repercussions of Dawn's college relationship with a boy named Kenny (described as a "thricewise"), whom she cheated on, losing her virginity to his roommate Nick. Consequently, Dawn has been “cursed” with mystical transformations: first into a giant and later a centaur; her friends are unable to reverse them. Among the core group, Buffy is for a time romantically drawn to a female Slayer named Satsu, and Xander to Slayer Renée; Willow's relationship with the core group is more estranged, while she protectively withholds Kennedy from her friends. Giles and Buffy, at odds, have momentarily fallen from speaking terms with one another. Giles now works with Faith, in trying to prevent more Slayers from going rogue. Along with these new obstacles, Harmony exposes vampires to the world at large, causing pop cultural love for vampires and animosity towards Slayers.

Collected editions
The issues are available collected together into the following trade paperbacks:


 * Volume 1: "The Long Way Home" I-IV and "The Chain".
 * Volume 2: "No Future For You" I-IV and "Anywhere But Here".
 * Volume 3: "A Beautiful Sunset" and "Wolves At The Gate" I-V.
 * Volume 4: "Time Of Your Life" I-IV and "After These Messages . . . We'll Be Right Back"".
 * Volume 5: Harmonic Divergence", "Swell", "Predators And Prey", "Safe" and "Living Doll".
 * Volume 6: "Retreat" I-V
 * Volume 7: "Turbulence", "Twilight" I-IV and "Willow - Goddesses And Monsters"

Writers

 * 1-5 Joss Whedon
 * 6-9 Brian K. Vaughan
 * 10-11 Joss Whedon
 * 12-15 Drew Goddard
 * 16-19 Joss Whedon
 * 20 Jeph Loeb
 * 21-25 A combination of Jane Espenson, Doug Petrie, Drew Greenberg, Steve DeKnight, and Jim Krueger
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales of the Vampires Becky Cloonan
 * 26-30 Jane Espenson
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow Joss Whedon
 * 31 Joss Whedon
 * 32-35 Brad Meltzer
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Riley Jane Espenson
 * 36-40 Joss Whedon