Comics wank, must be... a day ending in y

[next_to_normal]

So, angearia, who has once again been a VERY BAD GIRL over at Whedonesque, linked to this thread about the Dark Horse "announcement" that they are maybe acquiring the rights to the Angel series or something. As usual, there is wild speculation about it, all of which is pretty ridiculous, given that we have zero details about what it means or even what actually is happening. All I can really do is roll my eyes at the fact that Dark Horse STILL has not done anything about the unmitigated incompetence that is their PR department.

However, the comments on that thread brought up something I thought was interesting. God only knows what it has to do with licensing, but there was discussion about whether or not Season 8 should have included some backstory about Connor and the other Angel characters.

Some people said that such a conversation has no place in S8, since most of the Buffy characters don't even know who Angel's people are anymore, and there wasn't really an opportune time for Angel to explain to Buffy exactly how he acquired a son, nor would it be in his best interest to do so, if he wants Buffy to trust him. Not to mention the fact that there likely would be a licensing issue preventing them from mentioning any Angel character who did not originate on Buffy, so there's a good possibility they couldn't mention Connor even if they wanted to.

Others argued that, without that information, it is impossible to understand Angel's character, since in Angel we were led to believe that Connor was the most important person in the world to Angel, and it's hard to believe that he would willingly destroy a world that has his friends and especially his son still in it.

I agree with both of those things.

Setting aside the fact that S8 isn't over, and we could yet get such an explanation, I think this illustrates exactly why Angel as Twilight was a bad storytelling decision. Much like Willow's appearance in Angel S4 and Angel's appearance in Buffy S7, there really isn't space to fill in everything that's been happening to the character in the other series. But that doesn't negate the fact that these characters do have entire lives going on elsewhere, and those things affect them. A good writer doesn't just ignore character development because it doesn't fit into the story he wants to tell.

IMO, if they can't figure out how to portray a crossover character in a way that is both in character and does not require elaborate backstory explanations that bog down the story, then they shouldn't use that character. Period. Come up with a different story that's more workable.

Incidentally, I think the crossovers worked a lot better early on, before too many changes put the two series on increasingly divergent paths. It was easier to provide exposition when the characters mostly knew each other and not much had happened since they'd last seen each other. Once both series brought in new characters and major plot developments, the necessary exposition becomes far too unwieldy, so the choice is either abandon the idea of crossovers or ignore important developments because you can't explain them properly - or stick to characters (like Faith) whose backstory doesn't require a lot of explanation.

Comments

[rahirah]

Honestly, I think that S8 would have been infinitely better if we'd known who Twilight was early on. The suspense would have been in characters like Giles trying to find out if there was any way to prevent the prophecy, and Buffy torn between her own mission with the Slayers and the desire for the paradise Twangel promised. While on the other side we could have had Angel convinced he was doing the right thing, and trying to minimize losses as he played all these factions against one another. That could have been awesome.

Perhaps licensing concerns would have prevented that, but I find it hard to imagine that if Joss had let the IDW people in on it from the beginning, they wouldn't have wanted to play ball in order to get the Joss stamp of approval.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

But that would have taken planning and stuff! (Which doesn't seem to be the strong suit of anyone involved.)

[next_to_normal]

Well, it certainly couldn't have been any worse. :) I do think a big problem was that they built up Twilight as the Big Bad, which makes it really hard to reverse it in the span of three issues and convince people Angel was actually trying to do the right thing.