Welcome to Buffyness and Nightlurkers Presents: Angel: After the Fall, Issue #1 – “After the Fall (Part 1)”! And so I begin the canonical Season 6 of Angel. Far out man.

Since I haven’t yet binged through Angel in my Fantasy/Sci-Fi Diaries, and I won’t for another 45 years, I have to go by memory from literally 15 years ago when I watched Season 5. I don’t remember any of it! Angel and Spike were playing grab-ass in the Hyperion Hotel. There’s a 99.5% chance I’ll be reading through these comics without a single idea of what’s going on!

So let’s get cracking, bitches.

Angel: After the Fall, Issue #1 [November, 2007]
Written by: Bryan Lynch / Joss Whedon
“After the Fall (Part 1)”

“It all started with a girl.” Doesn’t it always? Scourge of the Earth. Scourge of the seas. Girls. “I joined a corporation that was, quite literally, evil incarnate. I thought I could channel their resources into something positive.”

Well, good going Angel. Trying to channel Evil into something positive. Aren’t you 10,000 years old, sir? Why haven’t you learned a thing? “I didn’t change them. They changed me. Then they killed her. That opened my eyes. I took a stand.”

I don’t know what he’s talking about. I haven’t watched Angel in 15 years! He’s trying to avenge someone’s death, whoever she may be. Angel is fighting a very large dragon who is, as I write this, breathing hella fire at him and a bunch of winged demon creatures. Angel stabs one of these creatures with a “SNURT”, which is now my favorite comic book onomatopoeia thus far. This dragon is also an employee of Wolfram & Hart. We’ll get to that in a minute.

A young woman emerges from a store. The group she is with is looting. She insists that she’s not looting. She’s looting. “Everything’s fine,” Angel says. “Resume your looting.”

They don’t resume their looting. Angel gives the woman a slip of paper and tells her to take a car and go to that address. No stopping home to pick up belongings. No needless trips to Denny’s. “Do you know what’s going on?” she asks. He lies and tells her no.

“Everyone wants to know what they could have possibly done wrong to be in this situation,” Angel thinks as we, the audience, are still STUMPED as to what exactly is happening. When the woman asks who they should say sent them, the dragon flies away saying “You shouldn’t.”

Wolfram & Hart had sent an army. “There were losses on both sides. And then Wolfram & Hart sent Los Angeles to Hell.”

How very dramatic! Give the guy a drama award. For Best Drama. “The more powerful creatures conquered and divided the town. Hunting any human that wasn’t going along with their game plan. And Wolfram & Hart, always a fan of irony, in addition to torture, dropped me where it all began.”

WESLEY WYNDAM-PRYCE, AT YOUR SERVICE, M’LADY.

Angel heads back into the empty law firm. He’s the only guy taking calls right now. Calls and walk-ins! There’s a walk-in right now, in fact. Burge, Lord of Downtown L.A. (pfffft).

And his Large Adult Son, who slams Angel’s face against a wall. Burge asks him how work has been lately. Been busting heads? Killing a lot of demons and monsters and evangelical Christian-types? “LET ME FLAY THE VAMPIRE AND WEAR HIS SKIN AS A SPAWNING CLOAK,” screeches Burge’s Large Adult Son. Apparently, Angel fucked up some of Burge’s henchmen or something. It’s unclear. Burge’s son lifts Angel by the neck, but stop when Wesley enters the office looking INTIMIDATING and BELLIGERENT.

Angel defends himself! Burge’s men were trying to kill people, he was only retaliating in kind! “Now, Angel, I’m sure they weren’t trying to kill the humans,” Wes coos. “They were trying to enslave them.”

Boo! Hiss! Rawr! Burge wants Wes to “keep his vampire on a leash”, and Wes assures the monsters that the actions of Angel McDoogle the Vampire do not represent the actions of Wolfram & Hart and its subsidiary companies. Amen.

The decision is final: go away and don’t kill Angel, please. Burge’s son is like “CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT WE’RE HEARING, FATHER?!” and Burge is like “Cork it, son. If Angel kills one more, then maaaaayyybbeee we’ll come back and get him. But, for now, there’s a TV dinner with my name on it back home.”

Burge’s son still wants blood, so he throws Angel aside and attempts to rip his arm through Wes’ abdomen. The arm goes right through him as if he were a ghost! Boooooo!! There must be some explanation for this that I don’t remember, but it doesn’t get re-explained, Maybe he’s a hologram? Maybe he’s in the 14th dimension? Don’t know, don’t care, let’s keep on moving…

Angel the Bad Boy. No wonder all the ladies SWOON.

Wes asks how the latest rounds were. They were fine. Did they all go to the same place. Yes. OK, cool.

These two are boring! What else is going on?

That one woman and her posse have driven to the secret Santa Monica address on Angel’s piece of paper. They don’t trust this, as they put it, “kinda handsome” young man to not send them to another trap.

…they open the door to the building…

…and there’s a whole dang group of people and demon-types hanging out in there, staring at the newest entrants…

“See? Our chances were better on the outside. These demons can assume human form.” I believe this guy talking is named Denny, and he already sucks. The inhabitants of the secret residence begin to assess these newcomers. Sniffing and the like. Sensing racing hearts. Animal instincts of fear and pants-pooping.

Licking.

TASTES LIKE CHICKEN…NUGGETS…

The licked woman starts freaking out. I don’t know her name yet. The licking woman is a werewolf, and since the sun AND the full moon is out at the same time… well, it’s a confusing mix. She didn’t mean it. She swears. Sorta.

Then that piece of shit Connor shows up. You remember Connor, right? Vincent Kartheiser? Fuckin’ Pete Campbell. He assures these sniffing and licking ANIMALS that Angel sent them. He can tell because of reasons.

Connor calls these mofos his family. I’m not impressed.

Ugh, back to Angel, who is now disgustingly shirtless, by the way. He sustained a pretty big wound on his chest, and although vampires are immortal unless they get a sunburn or they use a can opener too close to their neck, sustaining a pretty big wound on the chest is still not good stuff. Wes gave Angel some sort of giant magic spider that’s supposed to heal him, but he’s very skeptical. Apparently, healing supplies are low, so weird spiders are all they have. Wes is going to snoop around the building and see if Wolfram & Hart has anything cool they can use for their war-related endeavors.

Angel throws the spider to the wayside and Wes chides him for writhing and squirming under the malice of Burge and his Awful Son. Angel is like “look buddy, you kill one and 400 more will take his place”. “I wish I could’ve taken the lords down one-by-one as they popped up, but fighting wasn’t really an option. Moving wasn’t really an option. Your superiors saw to that.”

Wes is confused that Angel is sending innocent civilians over to Connor’s House of Orgies and Pancakes, but Angel tells him to stuff it.

“I’m working on a way out of here,” Angel says. “I just need the right firepower.”

“We’re not leaving, trust me,” Wes replies. “I would like more than anything to be released from my contract. I would literally give anything to move on.”

It’s at this point in the comic book that I regret all my efforts in catching up with Buffy comics since I don’t know what the fuck any of these people are talking about. I ain’t rewatching Season 5 of Angel! That shit’s for babies!

Wes advises Angel to start figuring shit out quickly around here before someone else – who might be devilishly dangerous, by the way – does. Angel harumphs and parumphs.

Speaking of not knowing what the fuck is going on, we turn to Westwood where some blue-glowing skeleton named Kr’ph (who claims to rule everything west of Beverly Hills) enslaves five almost-naked women and tries to get six men to fight each other in the newly converted battle arena (football stadium). The dudes, who used to have occupations like “cop” and “bouncer” and “taffy salesman”, don’t really wanna fight. Kr’ph gets a telepathic fish to force them to fight using brain powers, even though the fish doesn’t really want to do it. I’m not at all making this up.

See? What the godless fuck am I even reading here??

“Ha! They are scared because they know I am Kr’ph!” he says of the “warriors” and the lady slaves. Kr’ph’s magic fish sense a disturbance in the Force. Namely, there appear to be some dudes in robes “screaming because they’re angry” as they approach Kr’ph and his posse of demons that are also kinda just hanging around.

His fish gets shot in the face with a flying arrow. That sucks. The demons try to protect Kr’ph, but they’re all very bad at it. So they die too. Kr’ph begins bargaining for his life.

“You hear that, Gunn? Man wants to help us get what we want.”

“Oh, I know he can,” replies Gunn, the most boring character in all of Angel. “He’s just not going to be the biggest fan of how.”

Gunn reaches into Kr’ph the squishy glowing skeleton and pulls out his glowing, yellow heart. It looks like a golden egg. He triumphs after retrieving it! Gunn then hits on the almost-naked women, who seem receptive. Gross!

“I was told not to leave the building,” Angel thinks. “Not one step. I was also told that everything I was doing was wrong. A friend said it, face to transparent face. Thing is… everything’s different. And I don’t know who told him to say it. But… it doesn’t mean he was wrong.”

Burge’s son and a few of his hench-demons, I’m assuming, circle around a small group of hapless people. “ANGEL KILLED SIX OF MY MEN! I KILL SIX OF HIS HUMANS!”

Like the Bruce Wayne of Los Angeles. Like the Bruce Wayne of being of a vampire. Like the Bruce Wayne of kinda sucking a little bit.

Angel throws a desk at them. The people run away while the demons are like “whut whut what happened huh”. Then Burge’s son gets IRATE, to say the least. His father TOLD Angel he couldn’t leave the building! Recompense! Recompense!

Angel throws a stake through Burge’s nameless son’s eye with a SQUITCH, which I think is a Quidditch reference! Now war has been declared! “You have no idea what you have done!” screams one of the demons. “I’ve declared war, you just said,” Angel responds.

The demons scamper away. While this may be exactly what Wolfram & Hart wants, fuck ‘em. Let them think they’re in charge, I always say. Well, Angel always says it. And by that I mean, he says it only once.

“Wolfram & Hart has taken away everything I had. Everyone I cared about. Everything I was. But that’s how I’m going to win.”

Meanwhile, some bald vampire bastard is feasting upon a gaggle of almost-naked women. I don’t think that these are the same almost-naked women. The end.

Final Thoughts

Jesus Christ, I jumped into the deep end here. No mercy on making sure you are up to speed on the WB Network sensation of Angel. Hopefully some more context starts filling in these canyon-sized gaps that I’m grappling with!

David Boreanaz’s dad was a professional weatherman. See you next time.