PERHAPS VAMPIRE IS A BIT STRONG BUT...

Dark Horse has just released Buffy The Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Volume 7, put together by hot-shot editor extraordinaire Sierra Hahn. It features a four-page comic strip that Chynna Clugston and I did for the now-defunct Dark Horse newspaper/promo circular.

The story starred Spike and Dawn, and it was called "Rock 'N' Roll All Night (And Sleep Every Day)." Get it? Coz he's a vampire!

The material has actually been online for a while, it was one of Dark Horse's early experiments with animated web comics. Read it here.

Too bad it couldn't be in the Vol. 6 Omnibus with our other story, but they are running these chronologically, I think, so that's just the way the timeline crumbles. The Spike story was actually done at not just the tail-end of the original run of Buffy comics, but the DH newspaper was ending, too. I think we went from the plan to run in four issues down to running in two or three, and I never even saw the last one--though I recall driving around town looking for it and getting a really snotty reply from one of the clerks at a Dark Horse-owned comic book store that they didn't carry it, like it was such an outlandish idea that the publisher's own comic book shop would carry their promotional materials.

Anyway, at the time, I was also pitching other ideas for the Buffy series. Chynna and I had wanted to do something with Faith, but were told she was off limits, reserved for another writer. I managed two pitches. One featured Willow on a solo jaunt in college, tangling with a Japanese fox spirit. The other was a sequel to the Spike comic strip, which if I am being honest, was written all along as a sneaky way to try to backdoor a full series. No such luck.

For the curious, here are both of those ideas. I haven't read them since 2002, myself..

* Willow: Kitsune
* Spike & Dawn: The Vampire Rock 'n' Roll Swindle

For posterity only.

Current Soundtrack: The Trash Can Sinatras, In Music (new album available here) + misc. live; Ash, "Return of the White Rabbit" (free download here); Foreign Born, "Early Warnings;" The Marvelettes, "You're the One/Paper Boy"

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All text (c) 2009 Jamie S. Rich