The final chapter to “Daddy Issues” gives us a close look at Faith during a break down. Will she safely come out of it? Will Angel fall with her? Drusilla holds the cards. Well, given that this is the final issue of the current arc, will are bound to get some resolution one way or another. Yeah, we still have an Angel and Faith in the game at the end. What is interesting to consider is what Drusilla and her Lorophage Demons have wrought. Is there a message here? You betcha.
It’s a pretty obvious message we’re playing with but it’s also, for the most part, an artful effort. What Drusilla is selling is something akin to Prozac albeit in quite an exotic and extreme form. She is selling a way for someone to erase the bad feelings from whatever trauma they’ve experienced but lose part of their soul in the process. It’s quiet a hot button topic to tackle but fair game for Whedon and his writers, in this case Christos Gage. Just consider the recent stepping up to the plate on the issue of abortion in the pages of “Buffy The Vampire Slayer.” The message here: Anti-depressants do have their place but they’ve become too heavily relied upon and exploited by the drug industry. Any way you look at it, it’s a bit preachy. It does give an ironic quality to Rebekah Isaac’s variant cover, don’t you think? Thank goodness for such awesome art because that gives such a lift to a heavy story. I won’t say it’s a totally heavy-handed story, but it’s pretty heavy.
And then there’s Angel’s rad nipple piercing! If you weren’t sure of what you were looking at in the last issue, Issue 9 gives us clarity on this. It is indeed an ancient Egyptian relic that allows Angel to capture remnants of Giles’s soul as they become available. In the Whedon universe, this nipple gizmo is known as a phlebotinum, a close relation to a MacGuffin, basically a plot device that you are far better off accepting and moving right along with. But I can’t help but think of The Flight of the Conchord’s song, “Bowie’s in Space” and the line, “receiving transmission from David Bowie’s nipple antennae.” It sure isn’t an easy thing to draw and make sure it reads well but Rebekah Isascs is up to the task. She can draw anything!
Issue 9 comes out April 25. Visit Dark Horse Comics.
