Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

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Angel & Faith: Death and Consequences by Christos Gage and Rebekah Isaacs
(published 2013)

I went on a Buffy binge this week! I read a total of eleven volumes of graphic novels from the Buffy-verse — including Buffy season 9, Angel & Faith season 9, and a stand-alone Willow book. It might be weird to pick a quote from a graphic novel, but I can’t resist! It’s been so much fun to be back with the gang again. The comic series does an amazing job of staying true to the characters — their personalities, appearances, and speech patterns.

So, here’s a little snippet of a wonderful little Spike moment:

Baby slayers. I missed baby slayers. The angst, the attitude… bit like a soap opera with weapons.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Mini-review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Spike — A Dark Place by Victor Gischler, Paul Lee, Jo Chen et. al.
(Release date: June 18, 2013)

The world has been a darker, lonelier, and far less quippy place since the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer went off the air almost ten years ago, in May of 2003. (Bow your heads for a moment of silence, please. Thank you). But the devoted fans of the Buffy-verse had not heard the last of the Slayer and the Scoobies. In 2007, Dark Horse Comics began publication of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 — in comic book format! Legions of fans cheered! Currently up to season 9 and going strong, the comics are written under the imprimatur of Buffy creator and geek god Joss Whedon, and are considered “canon”, for those who care about such distinctions. The comic follows Buffy and the gang forward from the end of the TV series, and it’s a wonder to behold.

Coming in June 2013, Spike – A Dark Place is somewhat of a sidebar to the main storyline of season 9, picking up right after the events of On Your Own (season 9, volume 2), and focusing on everyone’s favorite bad-boy-vampire-with-a-soul (and amazing cheekbones), our dearly beloved Spike. Spike’s going through some stuff and has fallen into a deep depression, and even his trusty team of adoring spaceship-flying bugs (it’s a long story) can’t quite get him to snap out of it. Of course, bad guys pop in, as bad guys do, and Spike is caught up in the action once again.

I realize that none of the above (bugs! who fly spaceships!) will make sense to anyone who hasn’t kept up with seasons 8 and 9. Which raises the question: What are you waiting for? If you watched the TV show, then good gods — get thee to a comic book store at once! Of course, if you never watched Buffy at all… well, first of all, I’m not sure that we have anything left to say to one another (kidding!), and second of all — drop whatever else you’re doing and get yourself some Buffy DVDs! And don’t stop until you’ve watched all seven seasons of Buffy, five seasons of Angel, and you’re ready to read some amazing comics!

Okay, so this supposedly-a-book-review has devolved into a fan rant. Sorry ’bout that.

But check out the comics. The new Spike book features terrific artwork, especially Jo Chen’s magnificent covers, which represent Spike actor James Marsters in all his Buffy-era glory. The storyline is funny, action-packed, and quite faithful to the Spike character that we know and love. Once I picked up Spike – A Dark Place, I couldn’t put it down, and I’m eager for more, more, more — more Spike, more Buffy, more of the entire wonderful Buffy-verse! Please, Dark Horse, don’t ever stop! I’d happily continue reading the Buffy comics and spin-offs for years — decades — to come.