200 years after Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and immediately after Fray #4.

The Sitch

For me, the "Worst of It" was about two things - family and the nadir point.  Let's talk about family first, the good old Whedon-type family.  "The Worst of It" walks with Melaka through all the parts of her family.  The story starts with Loo, her family on the street.  It continues with Harth, the family she lost.  Erin, the family that she doesn't know.  And it ends with Urkonn, the strange new family she is forced into, a lineage of Slayers.

As the story opens, Loo is running in terror.  Her pursuer, another of the neighbor children, is pretending to be a lurk.  Loo's "terror" gives way to pretending to be Melaka and jumping on the boy's back after he trips on a rock.  Loo launches into an account of last issue’s fight between Melaka, Icarus and Urkonn, emphasizing her role even as the boy discredits her story.  The story erupts into a debate over what the lurks are and what caused them.  As the boy walks away, he tells Loo that one will come to eat her soon.  Realizing she's alone, Loo runs to Mel's place.

Mel isn't there, though.  She's face-to-face with what used to be her brother Harth.  Last issue Harth asked Mel if she missed him.  He finishes the thought by telling him that he missed her.  Leaping five stories to face her, Harth explains the rest of their final rooftop moment from years before.

Again, we flash back in time to Icarus' attack on Harth.  Realizing that he was dying as Icarus drained him, Harth instinctively and with perfect clarity knew what to do.  He bites into Icarus and becomes a vampire.  Icarus asks Harth, now vamped in their cave, how he knew what to do.  For the first time to the lurk's eyes, one of them returns to human form and tells them that he knows more than that - he knows what they are and what they will become.

How does Harth know all this? The dreams of the Slayer fell to him.  He saw the girl in hundreds of incarnations - a priestess, a peasant.  She was him and wasn't.  He loved her and killed her.  Fray realizes that her dreams were split to Harth, explaining Urkonn's surprise since no slayer has ever had a twin.

Published well before the examination of this theme in Buffy's final seasons, it is an amazing addition to the Buffy mythology.  Even as Buffy split her powers to other Slayers and eventually sealed the world off from all creatures of magick, now the latent split powers of a Slayer have been passed back to a vampire.  The powers of the slayer, born from the nether-world into the first Slayer, have been returned to Harth, the One Who Will Lead.

Harth reveals his plans - he will open a portal to a hell dimension and bring all manner of evil back into the world.  Fray's first apocalypse.  He tells her that everyone will die screaming and that there will be nothing she can do about it.

Mel, now crying, begs with Harth, telling him that he can't mean it, that the dreams are hers and that he is simply infected.  Harth's response?  He tells Mel that she shouldn't have gotten him killed and then explains how he used her to collect the artifacts through her grabs for Gunther.  The artifacts that will open the portal.  He then throws her through a wall, which comes crashing down on her.  As she falls underneath the wall into the sewer, Harth assures Icarus that he has given her just enough information to break her.

Battered, Melaka goes to the only person she can - her sister Erin.  She apologizes for everything and collapses into her arms.  She tells Erin everything - Harth is a vampire, she's the slayer and that everyone Fray loves will die screaming (which Erin cheekily notes that she is safe in that case).  Mel tells her that she's going.  Erin replies that she won't stop her and for what it was worth, she wasn't the one who gave her up.  It was her fish-boss Gunther.

And then, only there, trusting no one, battered, bruised, stripped of family, only then, does the worst of it come.

Fray returns with Urkonn to her apartment, only to find it torn apart.  Urkonn tells Mel that the lurks must have been angered to not find her there.  Mel replies "yeah, angered."  Under a table, Loo lies dead.

What follows is three simple panels. Mel’s head bowed.  Mel shoulders straighted.  Mel walking away.  Urkonn tries to reason what has happened - why the lurks did not feed.  Mel tells Urkonn that Harth said she couldn't protect anyone.  Mel realizes that she's not a real slayer, but it's time to fight.  It's time to let them know she's in it.  Two casualties from the family life has given have already been claimed because she hasn’t stood against the tide.

“Urkonn...let's make some war.”

End of Issue Five.

Thoughts

Earlier I mentioned that family was the first theme.  Now the second, the nadir point.  One of the reasons I studied literature in college came from my fascination with a literary theory written by a man named Joseph Campbell.  Campbell wrote a series of books centering on the hero archetype.  What makes the hero?  What does the hero's path look like?  Whedon’s shows have spent hours examining this question.

Campbell took heroes through literature and stacked them all up and said, "what's in common?"  He found that there is a cycle that heroes typically go through.  The Call to Adventure.  The Helper.  The Threshhold of Adventure that typically features a major battle, journey or loss.  A series of tests.  More helpers.

Seeing a pattern with Fray here?  Then comes the nadir - the lowest moment or the worst of it as it were - in which the hero is forged by fire, changing them from what was to was they are destined to be.  Here then is Fray's nadir.  Defeated, beaten and attacked, Fray has to decide to face up to her duties. 

And you know what?  She hasn’t done it at this point.  If you’ve ever struggled with what you know you can be in opposition to what you want to be, you know what it’s like.  Fray is the Slayer but she wants to be the thief streetrat.  This is her moment to leave that world behind and act like the Slayer, the hero.  Or is it?  We have three more issues to find out what her final decision is.

And wait till you see what else is yet to come in her journey to being a hero.

To say that I adore this issue is putting it lightly.  I'm a sucker for these moments - when Rocky has no heart and then Adrian tells him to go win.  That look in his eye when he realizes he can win this fight and picks up the mantle brings a tear to the eye.  That moment with Fray, that Rocky-like glint in her eye in the full-page spread on the last page of the issue, is excellent.  You're ready to go kick butt with her.

And the big twists in this one?  Harth getting the memories of the Slayer leading to his empowerment.  The symmetry with Buffy's banishing of magickal forces with Fray's split powers bring them back.  And Loo?  Thanks, Joss, for the knife in the ribs.  We appreciate it.

One last thing I just realized.  Fray's soliloquy at the end.  It was good, but I occurs to me that another overlooked power of the Slayer is to make long-winded speeches.  Superb, superb issue.

Cover Art

A dejected Fray slumped into the floor.  All the worlds in her life standing over here - Urkonn, Harth, Icarus and Erin, floating like fading apparitions above her life.  How many times have you felt like that?  The pressures of your life standing over you and you slumped on the floor.  The cover begs the question – will she stand or not?  Will she face all of these worlds?  Simple yet deeply meaningful…

Cover Artists            Moline · Owens · Stuart

What's My Line?

Then I guess you shouldn't have got me killed.

"Harth said everyone I love is going to die screaming."  "So, I guess I'm safe."

No, no, don't give me a hand.  I'm good.

He said it.

He said I couldn't protect anyone.

He was right.

I'm not even a real Slayer.  All I can do is fight.

So it's time I started fighting.

Time I let them know I'm in this.

Urkonn...let's make some war.

Rating: 5 of 5

Main Credits

Created and Written by Joss Whedon

Penciller - Karl Moline

Inker - Andy Owens

Colorist - Dave Stewart

Letterer - Michelle Madsden

Published November, 2001