-Dollhouse: Epitaphs-

Phil Noto's cover of the one-shot

One-shot, comics #1-5 incl. a special edition

Wanting to ease back into comics, I went for the one-shot and the shorter mini-series based on Whedon's Dollhouse, rather than opening with the monstrous volumes of the Buffyverse, or my fan illusions of Firefly and its 'verse. Comics based on popular shows or movies are difficult. You'll always have the prior knowledge of the created universe, the character's habits and core and so on, and it isn't always easy to accept other artists takes on those.

In Whedon's cases that's usually no problem, at least not since the release of Buffy Season Eight and then the later releases from any Whedonverse, as it's become a habit of himself and his own staff-writers from these shows to get heavily involved. In the case of these six releases (one one-shot and five comics in the mini-series), the writers are Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen and Andrew Chambliss, all staff-writers from the Dollhouse TV-show. It ain't hard to take their take on these characters then, as they're all involved in the creation to begin with.

For those familiar with the TV-show, and my opinion is you should all be or become, these comics takes place in a timeline closely related to the events in the show's episodes "Epitaph One" and "Epitaph Two: Return", which ended each of the two seasons of the show. They offer some answers to stuff we wondered about after watching the show, but mostly they offer a lot more insight into some of the show's characters.

Overall it's interesting enough to stand on its own legs, and I would most definitely buy more Dollhouse comics from these guys when they're ready to tell new stories. They have the characters down and they understand the humor. Still. They're not quite great, mostly thanks to the storyline they chose to open with. I would've hoped they opened in another direction to help gather the fans of the show behind its release.



★★★☆☆ Epitaphs one-shot & mini-series (#1-5)

I did love the cover art for each of the issues... Here Fiona Staples's #1 cover.