"Post No. 507"

REVIEWING: Fray, written by: Josh Whedon, art by Karl Moline & Andy Owens, Dark Horse TPB reprinting the 8 issue limited series, 2003, 180+ pages or so, softcover, color, $19.95..

I know there's a LOT of fans of "Buffy the Vampire", and even I will admit that I enjoyed, and have even watched more than one time, the original movie. But when it came to the television series I simply was not a fan. So perhaps my opinion regarding this series by Buffy creator, Josh Whedon, leans a bit towards the negative. Because, "Fray", to put it simply, is just Buffy set in the future.

The origin of this Fray character is that she's a chosen slayer (of vampires, of course). She doesn't know this at first. In fact, Matilda Fray is a professional thief who in this story is confronted by a demon named "Urkonn" who tells her of her heritage. The reason she doesn't know this is because she was born of twins and her brother had the ancient memories while she had all of the fighting prowess and strength and agility.

Fray's tragedy was that in the past she and her brother were attacked by a master vampire whom she thought had killed her brother, but in fact, had turned him into a vampire. In a way...

Her brother realizing that the vampire was going to kill him, bite the vampire himself and fed off of his blood, thus saving his "undead" life and giving him the vampiric transmutation.

She doesn't know this though. Both Fray as well as her older sister (who's a member of the police force), both think her brother's dead until the time of this tale when they discover that he has become the new leader of the undead and is trying to usher in a new age of dark majicks.

The story relates the origin of "the slayers", in that in early days of Earth's history, magic ruled, but eventually the human life overtook it and the demons all went into another dimension, save for the vampires who were looked upon as "the cursed". So a few of the humans had learned magic enough to create a slayer that would reincarnate in any time era when the need arose to defeat an over-powering vampire menace. Buffy was just one in a long line of such, and Fray was the current slayer.

The artwork is passable enough by Moline and Owens. It even reminds me a little of Matt Wagner's from time-to-time, but the story itself was just sort of run of the mill "kill dem vampires stuff" that I've seen used way all too often.

I'd only give it a "C" trying to grade this, but I'm sure Buffy fans would give it an "A+".