BUFFY: PALE REFLECTIONS

By Jason Henderson     December 13, 2000

Ah, the evil twin. What a wonderful science fiction clichéand where would genre TV be without it? What other convention of fantasy and science fiction shows allows the actors or actresses playing the heroes to mug shamelessly as slightly different versions of themselves. Ever since Bill Shatner sweated and giggled as the evil Kirk, producers have sensed that these stories are prime candidates for fan-favorite status. Most shows today rush to do their evil twin episode. Witness Roswell taking the 'Mirror Mirror' (from the original Star Trek) route and giving us a whole cast of evil doppelgangers in its second season.

And yet, somehow, not so with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The Dark Horse trade paperback Pale Reflections, which collects one story arc from the comic series, cleverly uses the plot of the evil twin in Buffy, making me wonder why the show hasn't done so yet. Doppelgangers have appeared several times on the show for characters other than BuffyXander and Willow have each dealt with dangerous copies of themselvesbut Buffy has remained un-twinned. I'd theorize this oversight was Joss Whedon's avoidance of cliché, but that's not even likely. Buffy is a show that loves to tweak cliché, so they probably just haven't gotten around to this one.

In the case of Pale Reflections, in fact, it's a couple of evil Buffy twins. Selke, the twisted fashion-model vampire villainous of the series, has a new plot to replace Buffy with a look-alike. Writer Andi Watson, however, comes up with some interesting twists on the possibilities. We expect some of them, such as the notion that the look-alike Buffy won't know how to behave around her gang of friends. The Buffy clone is rude to Willow and impatient with Giles, and the gang becomes especially suspicious because Buffy seems overly concerned with her looks. (This last detail is a minor misstep for Watson, because we know that Buffy was a complete clotheshorse and cheerleader before becoming the Slayer, and in the high school years was still quite the fashion plate.)

But Watson makes the clone neurotically concerned with her looks, for good reason: her perfect Sarah Michelle Gellar skin is a thin veneer stretched over a bulbous, scaly demon skin, and we watch as the clone goes insane trying to protect her vulnerable flesh. I found these moments actually moving, just as I was moved by villain Selke's regard for the clone Buffy as her daughteralbeit one she might need to kill. Watson has some fun showing us the intimacy between evils.

But the best moments come below Sunnydale, in the sewers, where Buffy meets yet another clone of herself, a cast-off, hideous version rejected by Selke. The troll-like Buffy clone is a sad and fascinating character with huge, bulging eyes and a helmet-shaped head. I read this section and kept wondering what an interesting development she'd be for the TV showthe show has had its evil Frankenstein monster, and could stand to have a good and sad one.

My favorite reason to read these Dark Horse adaptations of Buffy is that they all take place in the high school years of the show, when the series had its freshest moments of satire. Somehow the tiny, enclosed world of high school is a much more prefect microcosm for the world at large, allowing satires that were accessible to viewers of any age. This is why we say everything in our adult liveseverythingis 'a lot like high school, only [whatever.]' Nobody ever says anything is 'a lot like college.' Buffy is in college now, and it's harder to make her a universal.

But for whatever reasons involving Dark Horse's license to adapt the series, the comic is stuck in roughly the second season of the show, when Cordelia is part of Buffy's group and not Angel's, before Buffy fired Giles, before the story of the show got so complicated that simple satires became impossible. Here's a confessionI've never read a new Buffy comic, because I prefer to read them this way. The publisher takes every story arcusually about four issuesand re-publishes them as trade paperbacks, allowing you to take in the whole story at a sitting. I wish every publisher did this with every title I enjoy readingI'd much rather pick up a yearly phone book of Justice League than deal with 22 pages every month. If you agree with me, you should have a look at the Dark Horse TPBs, and thereby encourage other houses to follow their lead.

Trade Paperback from Dark Horse Comics. Written by Andi Watson. Art by Cliff Richards and Joe Pimentel.