Previously on Angel: The schism between Fred and Spike reached a boiling point, despite a heroic gesture on Spike’s part to save Wesley. Despite the arrival of his interdimensional doppelganger in LA, Angel at the end of his rope takes a lucrative offer for a feature film in Romania to get away from it all.

Picking up shortly after the last issue, the gang is sorta settling into their new status quo. Fred and Wesley are back to slaying, but there seems to be a significant uptick in vampire activity. Angel is off doing his feature film about, wait for it… Dracula and Van Helsing. Meanwhile, Spike is mopey until an opportunity to – ironically enough – fill in for Angel pops up.

After a generally tense issue, Christopher Cantwell breaks that up a bit in this one with quite a bit of humor. Whether it’s Lorne and Andrew’s geeking out together, or a dig at Angel’s “Irish” accent, there is quite a bit of levity in this issue. Cantwell gives his characters just enough familiarity for the reader to easily associate these heroes with their previous iteration, but there is a certain metaness to the script, which kinda nails the assignment, in my opinion.

The team of Daniel Bayliss, Patricio Delpeche, and María Agustina Vallejo continues to work well together, with Delpeche and Vallejo’s colors complementing Bayliss’ artwork beautifully. There is a synergistic energy in how their work comes together. A thing I’ve appreciated about the look of this book is that on the one hand, it looks quite a bit like the Buffy Animated Series that we never got, but with quite a bit more graphic violence, I’d imagine. Becca Carey’s lettering is one of the high points in this issue! The squelchy sounds of gore and violence at the end really sold that over-the-top vibe for me.

Overall, with things generally going south, we’re ripe for a team-come-back-together moment. With only a couple more issues to go in this run, we’re hurtling towards the climax in pure Angel fashion.

Creative Team: Christopher Cantwell (writer), Daniel Bayliss (artist), Patricio Delpeche and María Agustina Vallejo (colorists), Becca Carey (letterer)
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
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