BUFFY SLAYS 'EM AGAIN

What the actors have been missing in Dark Horse Comics' Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 is
the first four issues of a planned 40-issue run. The story, drawn by
artist Georges Jeanty, pits the titular heroine against an army of
zombies and a military of a more traditional kind. Issue No. 5 goes on
sale Aug. 1.

Whedon turned Buffy's sister Dawn Summers into a 50-foot giant,
which would have blown an entire season's worth of special effects
budget in real, and reel, life.

"It gives us enormous freedom,
particularly because our show was never terribly expensive," said
Whedon. "There was just a limit on where our imaginations could go."

Gellar
and company might not be rushing out to get the next issue, but plenty
of others are, said Mark Friedman, owner of Cosmic Comics in midtown
Manhattan.

"We're selling out every month," Friedman says. "My usual customers
are buying them, but we're also getting lots of new people, (mainly)
women."

"I realized that there were lots of fun things I could
do," Whedon says, "and with the exhaustion of seven seasons now passed,
I see there was no reason we didn't have an eighth other than the
physical grind of it."