Happy Birthday, Buffy Summers!

Just out last week, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales is a hefty hardcover that collects a lot of different tales from the Buffyverse, not all of them focused on Buffy herself (though she does make a few appearances). The first section is Tales of the Slayers, with nine stories about different Slayers throughout history (and one about Fray, a Slayer from the future). We start with a short piece about the original slayer, written by Joss Whedon himself. There are stories from the Middle Ages, the French Revolution, World War II, and the Old West.

But also included are Tales of the Vampires: some of these tales have nothing to do with the Slayers at all, but focus on the vampires themselves and show them to be more than just mindless bloodsuckers. In Season 8, Harmony Kendall becomes a reality TV star and vampires are suddenly thrust into the public: everyone knows about them—and as expected, some people become obsessed with them. But it changes the whole dynamic—what happens when vampires are no longer hunted, but aren’t allowed to kill, either?

Whedon writes a couple of the stories himself but there’s a bunch of other great writers as well: Amber Benson, Jane Espenson, Same Loeb (Jeph’s son) and many others. The roster of artists is also long, from Tim Sale to Paul Lee to P. Craig Russell, and the differences in artwork give the volume a great variety of styles and moods. Tales collects stories that range from ten years ago to this past year, and it’s a great collection of stories for fans of the show or the comics. It’s kind of a coffee-table book by the size of it, so not something you can curl up and read in bed, but it’ll look really nice on your bookshelf. Of course, as with the TV show, it’s not for younger kids—probably high school and up.

You can preview a few pages of the book at the Dark Horse Comics website.

So if you’re looking for a way to celebrate Buffy’s birthday this week, pick up issue #40 at your local comics shop, and while you’re at it, take a look for Tales as well.

Disclosure: Dark Horse provided a copy of Tales for review purposes.

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