Apocryphail Phriday: Fray

I'm sort of cheating twice with this one. First, word of god says that today's subject is actually canon, and it has been referred to in the comic books that followed the TV Series and the series itself. Second... it's actually not that bad. In fact some things are really awesome. But then there are some things that just... yeesh.

Anyway, this is Joss Whedon's Fray.

It's like Buffy meets 5th Element meets Hellboy meets Shadowrun meets...

Fray was an 8-comic miniseries published by Dark Horse, and was the first Buffy: The Vampire Slayer comic actually written by Joss Whedon. In a crapsack future version of New York City, the supernatural and magic has been gone from the world for so long that everyone has forgotten about it. But in the shadows the Vampires are returning. And Melaka Fray, a petty thief, discovers that she is the heir to the legacy of the Slayers. Which mostly manifests as her having all the worst problems of Superman and Goku.

Welcome to the 23rd century, ladies and gentlemen!

It starts with some demons in a ruined hellscape saying there's a new Slayer, the first one in two-hundred years, and that her name is Melaka Fray. This spooky foreshadowing cuts straight to said Slayer-to-be falling backwards off a building while shooting a guy in the face.

She is literally upside down in two of those shots.
I guess in the future they have situational toupee paste.

All in all, a classic opener. Although there is immediately one problem that I alluded to in my updated cover, and which will plague Fray throughout her career: How the heck does that tank top stay on?

But okay, it's a comic, right? We're used to a little sexualizing from comic artists. No harm, right?

I'm working from the trade paperback, which means I get artist sketches and notes at the back. One of the notes from artist Karl Moline:

"Joss made reference to Matilda from the film The Professional and I immediately thought of this drawing."

And later:

"I was referencing proportions from Natalie Portman as Matilda."

Granted, it's a great movie, but her "too old for her age"
thing is supposed to be creepy and heartwrenching.
If you found it sexy, seek therapy.

So you took the psychologically damaged twelve-year-old girl from "The Professional" with an incredibly unhealthy crush on her hitman guardian, and you intentionally drew her in a tank top that leaves a good chunk of her body exposed, and has her boss leer while saying "And I wish, just once, that you would come to see me... in a ssskirt..."

Oh, did I mention her boss is a fish monster who swims in a tank beneath her? So essentially he's asking her to give him a panty shot? And there's also a shower scene? And this girl is based off of Matilda from The Professional.

What the hell were you thinking, Moline?

Okay, okay. To be fair, we're never given her age. She might be eighteen. Maybe. Just... really, Moline?

Thank goodness Fray is at least well-written, pervy comments from her creepy fish-boss aside. Turns out she's a skilled thief, with a bit of Shadowrunner thrown in, and creepy fish guy is her fence/fixer who sends her on missions. Lately he's been sending her to snatch stranger and stranger things, but Fray doesn't really care as long as she gets paid. She's really good at it too, mostly because she has a Slayer's natural athleticism and resilience.

This is only the last panel that shows the fall.
There were many others before this.

Actually, scratch that. She doesn't have a Slayer's natural athleticism and resilience. She has about two hundred times a Slayer's natural athleticism and resilience. This is never mentioned in the Comic. She is treated as if she is no more superpowered than Buffy Summers. But in the first issue she falls what looks like several hundred stories and hits the asphalt face-first, and is still able to beat up a steroid-treated genetically-modified bruiser shortly after.

That's not Buffy-level resilience we're talking about. That's Superman level. She's fully superhuman. This will be a problem I get into later.

She's not just a hard-hearted thief. We find out she's also terrified of "Lurks", which we find out later are vampires. We later learn this is because a vampire killed her kid brother, and beat her up badly when she was younger. She has a sister who's a cop, and they have a very hostile relationship, with her sister essentially abusing department resources in an attempt to catch Fray in the act and arrest her. She blames Fray for their brother's death, you see.

Ugh! She's already annoying! I hope she dies!
Oh, wait. She does? Oh. That's... that's tragic.

Then there's Loo, the fast-talking one-armed Boxey/Wesley/annoying kid who lives in Fray's tenement slum. Fray looks out for her, and beats up anyone who messes with her. Indeed, Fray has a reputation for starting fights, which cause most of the slum-dwellers who live near her to regard her as a loose cannon whose heart is in the right place, but who has a lot of growing up to do.

Then a guy shows up, claims to be a Watcher, says that she is the Slayer, and sets himself on fire. As you do. Turns out that 200 years being the only people in the world who still believe in magic and demons has driven the Watchers a bit round the bend. Luckily there's a demon named Urkonn who is less crazy, and wants to train her. Why? Because the vampires are getting uppity.

Luckily Frey is the slayer, and Urkonn tells her that he knows she has had dreams about killing vampires, and that she knows that is her destiny. The one problem with that is apparently Fray knows nothing of the sort. She's never had those dreams, she does not have those instincts. She has no idea what vampires are. She's just really strong and athletic. All she knows about vampires is that one of them killed her twin brother.

Urkonn considers this, and figures that since there has not been a Slayer in 200 years, the instincts might be broken. But he resolves to train her from scratch, because a new threat has arisen. See, the vampires have been without a legacy so long that even they have forgotten what they are, and most of their abilities. But now they have a new leader, and that new leader is teaching them.

How could we miss you? You've been foreshadowed
and flashbacked in every single issue!

If you guessed that the new leader is actually Fray's twin brother who was turned instead of killed, and that he got all the Slayer instinct stuff in his head while Fray got the super-strength, you win a prize! That prize is the knowledge that whenever a beloved family member is "killed" by vampires, they'll be showing up later as a vampire, and whenever twins are involved, of course they share all sorts of psychic stuff, and that there is nothing surprising or new about this tired old plot.

And here are my other two problems with this story. The plot is so... predictable. Oh, there are some neat twists, as we expect from Joss Whedon. Turns out the vampires have forgotten how to turn others, so when he was being killed Fray's twin brother actually bit a chunk off the vampire's cheek, forcing the vampire to sire him. That was a nice twist. The fact that Urkonn is supposed to kill Fray after she's beaten her brother, so that both the Vampires and the Slayer Line would be gone, leaving earth wide open for the demons is another nice twist. But otherwise, this is a by-the-book horror plot.

Problem two is that Fray has none of the brilliance or tactical genius of a Slayer. She's essentially just a thug. She solves problems the way Superman does in the worst-written Superman stories: By hitting them a lot of times, and being the best at hitting things. She's Goku in a physics-defying tanktop, nothing more. In the end, she does not save the day because she is smart or clever. She saves the day because her sister and the people of the tenement come to her aid, and after she is swallowed by a hell-beast she brute-forces her way up into its brain and kills it. In the end, she wins because her magic Slayer powers are super-strong, allowing her to tear her way through her brother's clever and intricate plan.

That can be somewhat entertaining to watch, but it's hardly a plot that sticks with you.

She doesn't stop stealing, by the way. They make a
point of mentioning that. Her older sister is still
a cop, and she's still a criminal. So... no resolution there.

Anyway, back to the plot. It turns out that the weird stuff Fray has been stealing have been the mystic items her brother needs to open a pit to hell. He's a twisted, vengeful guy with a weird sister complex thing going on, so he intentionally used Fray for those robberies. When she finds out the truth, she is devastated. Her crippling fear of vampires, and the realization that her brother is "alive", but evil, makes her despair and think about giving up. She tearfully tells her sister that their brother is sort of alive, but not really, and the two of them bond and make-up without any other repercussions from their long animosity.

The fact that her sister previously tried to have her arrested, and would have succeeded if a freak vampire attack had not killed off a lot of her squad, is mentioned, but quickly dismissed and has no real impact on anything.

Fray's brother revels in the fact that he has broken his sister, and she will no longer be a threat. Which would be true... except Loo is dead. And the death of the girl Fray had protected hardens her, and magically instantly helps her get over her formerly crippling fear of vampires. So she leads the slum-citizens and the police on a massive battle with the vampires, she kills a hell-beast, and she sends her brother and the tattered remnants of his force skittering back into the shadows.

Vampires exist, but it will take them years before they can hope to regain an army.

There's just one more loose end to tie up. Fray has learned something about Vampires, including that they cannot enter houses without being invited. So how did they get in to kill Loo? She correctly guesses that Urkonn, being a demon, had no problem murdering the child in order to motivate her. Urkonn admits it, and Fray kills him for it. The demons of hell are glad that the gates of hell were not opened prematurely, but are concerned that the Slayer still lives, which might cause them problems later on.

In the end, despite the sexualizing of Fray (which is just... creepy), and the stereotypical plot, this is still a
comic worth reading. It's not spectacular, but it's got the Joss Whedon dialog, which was always his strongest suit anyways. The characters are well-developed and you do care about them, so I cannot criticize too much.

Badass, and actually of age. So there's that.

And apparently Joss has declared this canon. Fray is given a vampire-and-demon-killing scythe (really an axe with a stake at one end) by Urkonn, who says it is an ancient Slayer weapon. In Buffy Season 7, Buffy gets her hands on it and uses it to do awesome things, which is interesting since Fray was published before Season 7 was produced. Apparently there have been some other plots leading toward Fray's future in the ongoing Buffy comics, but as I have not read those I cannot comment.

So do I recommend it? If you're a Buffy fan, sure. The snappy dialog goes a long way to making up for its flaws, and while the plot is stereotypical, it's certainly not bad.

Just... try not to be too disgusted by the sexualization of an underaged girl. Yeesh.

I find it impossible to hate any comic with dialog like this.