I'm three weeks behind on extolling the virtues of Joss Whedon and his comic book writing skills, but I just managed to read the three weeks ago released first issue of Buffy season nine issue # 1 last night.

It's been over four and a half years since Buffy season eight hit the comic stores, and yet it seems to me that almost every time I meet a person who claims to be a fan of the series, they still have not checked out the comic book. How could someone claim to love Joss Whedon and his work, and yet not want to read the comic book that he writes and executive produces? And when Joss isn't writing the book himself, the other writers include Buffy and Angel writing alum the likes of Drew Goddard, Jane Espenson, Steven S DeKnight, Drew Z Greenberg, and Doug Petrie. It's the closest that we are ever going to get to another Buffy-verse TV series I think, and if you claim to be a Buffy fan, you should be supporting this book. If you don't want to hit a comic book store, or read comics in their monthly format, they collect them up into bigger fatter comics that you can buy at any bookstore or get on Amazon.

Comic books continuing on the stories of characters from other mediums is nothing new. Dark Horse has been publishing the further adventures of various Star Wars characters for years. There are a ton of Star Trek comics, and in more recent years there have been cancelled TV series like Charmed and Farscape making there way to the comic book page under the supervision of the shows creators and writers. Stephen King has even allowed for comic book prequel tales from the epic Dark Tower series of books to be published under his supervision.

Buffy season nine picks up with our central lead vampire slaying heroine living in San Francisco with a couple of roommates, hanging out with Spike, and...well...I guess I shouldn't say much else since there are so many damn potential spoilers stuffed within a fourty issue series.

Oh, and also go read the Serenity comics. Those are awesome too.