(Editor’s note:  Our resident Whedon-verse expert, Tucker Wells, is back with a review of the ground breaking, the controversial, the much discussed and long remembered Buffy comic.)

Just finished Buffy Season 9 #6.  Holy shit, we’ve got some stuff to discuss.  So, if you’re reading this post you should already know that last issue, Buffy discovered she was pregnant.  How and with whom we do not know.  There is a chance that the pregnancy may be a result of Buffy’s black-out from partying in issue 1.  There’s also the possibility that this is some sort of mystical pregnancy, which I feel could be kind of cool (and let’s face it, loads more believable than that Shmi Skywalker bullshit we were fed 13 years ago).

Anyway, in this issue Buffy consults with a few different people as to what she should do.  After all, being a superhero and having a baby are two full time jobs with copious amounts of overtime.  You get a sense that Buffy’s sort of at a loss by not having Willow, Xander, and certainly Giles there to help her in her decision.  After all, the thing that has kept this girl going, kept her alive, is the support of her friends.  In their absence she consults Robin Wood, former Sunnydale High principal and the only living child of a Slayer.  Robin and Buffy breakdown the circumstances and repercussions around his birth and his mother’s response in seven of the most well composed pages this season.

Meanwhile, Spike is wrestling with his own feelings regarding his marital status.  Spike realizes much preferred when his Facebook relationship status said “In a complicated relationship with Buffy.”  Before we can start humming that old tune, Buffy interjects and says she wants Spike’s help.  In typical Spike fashion he blindly agrees to do whatever Buffy says.  That’s when our superhero drops the bombshell that she wants to is going to have an abortion.

Holy shit!

Now before we go any further, I want you Bible thumping pro-life fucks to know that this comic reader is pro-choice.  I’m not going to turn this into an episode of Law and Order and start stating my case as to why, just know where the fuck I stand.

With that out there, I’ve been excited about the idea of Buffy having a baby since the idea began gestating in my imagination a few months ago.  Seeing as my girlfriend and I recently succeeded in making a little bundle of future nerd, I’m excited at sharing yet another one of life’s milestones with my favorite fictional character.  See, a lot of my enjoyment comes from the parallels between the lives of these characters and my own.  We graduated high school in the same year, started college; together we suffered immeasurable joy and painful loss, we both worked shitty minimum wage jobs, wallowed in self doubt, found something to fight for, championed over metaphorical evils, and even some real ones, and came out on intact, on top, and better in the end.  I grew up with these characters and that is one of the reasons I enjoy them so fucking much.  Hell, I count BTVS as the driving reason I went for a BA in screenwriting.  So, to bring it back around, sharing one of life’s milestones with a fictional character is like the cherry on top of life’s delicious ice cream sundae.  So now I find out my hero doesn’t want to be a mother; how do I respond?

Scott Allie summed it up best.  I’m not even going to paraphrase this shit because he hits the nail right on the head:

If the objection is that this couldn’t or shouldn’t happen to Buffy, it seems to me that that objection comes from the idea that there’s something wrong with women to whom this does happen, that it is something beneath Buffy herself, and the fact that Joss and Sierra [Hahn, editor] and Andrew and I disagree with that is the reason why we think this is a viable storyline for Buffy.

Bam.  There you have it.

I’ll be waiting anxiously for the next installment to see if Buffy follows through with her decision and take in the emotional and psychological fallout of this particular facet of the story one panel at a time.  Until then, keep up the stellar work Joss and crew.  See you in two weeks for Angel and Faith.