‘Buffy’ comics license moves to BOOM! Studios

After about two decades at Dark Horse Comics, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer license has moved to BOOM! Studios.

The move isn’t too surprising, Buffy creator Josh Whedon mentioned that Fox was taking back the Buffy license this past summer in an interview with CBR’s Kiel Phegley. BOOM! announced they had the Firefly license, also a Fox property, not long ago, and Fox has a minority stake in BOOM!.

This week’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 12: The Reckoning #4 is the end of the line for the Dark Horse stories, as well as the canonical “seasons” that continued the stories directly from the TV show. While others have done similar continuations since, picking up on the TV continuity and creating stories that “count,” the Dark Horse books really garnered a lot of attention and praise for their approach, which was fairly novel at the time. It helped that they were really well done, with Whedon directly involved and creators like Christos Gage, Brian K. Vaughan, Jo Chen, Andrew Chambliss and of course artist Georges Jeanty, the MVP of the operation, (and many, many more) on board to shepherd these new tales of Buffy, Angel, Spike, Willow and the gang. It’s the end of an era, and this final issue provides a fitting conclusion to the saga they’ve been telling.

No word yet from BOOM! on which creators will be involved or the direction they plan to take, but it appears that it’ll fall under Executive Editor Jeanine Schaefer.

“I remember watching the premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer over 20 years ago, and the feeling of empowerment that came with seeing a girl get to kick ass and have flaws at the same time, and to not apologize for who she was. It’s an honor to oversee that world for a new generation and to bring them that same feeling of knowing your greatest power comes from being true to who you are,” Schaefer said in a press release. “Buffy is about love at its core, love for your friends and yourself. The characters are allowed to be equal parts human and monster, and seeing them struggle to balance those parts of themselves, the same parts we all struggle with, is why it still resonates with audiences of all ages and backgrounds today.”