Buffy The Vampire Slayer

SPIKE: OLD TIMES

IDW has sent along a 5-page preview of the 48-page August one-shot, Spike: Old Times, by Peter David and artist Fernando Goni. We also spend a few minutes talking with David about his foray into the Buffy-verse...

Set in the current day - that is ‘current day’ a couple of years ago, Season 6 of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer in fact - the story includes flashbacks to the past that sets up the exploration of the relationship between vampire Spike and vengeance demon named Halfrek, who indirectly led to Spike becoming a vampire.

”Back in 1880, a young and somewhat vapid poet named William was hopelessly in love with a young socialite named Cecily,” explained David. “She was his ‘inspiration’ for poetry deemed so ghastly that it earned him the name ‘William the Bloody’ for his bloody awful poetry. One night at a party he confessed his love for her, and was rebuffed so thoroughly by Cecily - who told him that he was ‘beneath’ her - that he went running off sobbing into the night. And in his late night run, he encountered a vampire named Drusilla, and the rest is Buffy history.”

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Then Spike met someone in the present day that looked an awful lot like Cecily, though some Buffy fans had an alternative explanation for the resemblance. David, however, is putting an end to any alternative theories.

”In the season 6 episode of BtVS, ‘Older and Far Away,’ William the Bloody - now a feared vampire named Spike - encountered (at a birthday party, of all places) a vengeance demon named Halfrek. She did a double take when she saw him, and said, in a familiar tone of voice, ‘William?’ He looked at her suspiciously and said, ‘Wait a minute...’ But when questioned by others at the party, they both immediately claimed not to have met before. Now some claim this was simply a shout-out to the fact that the same actress, Kali Rocha, played both Halfrek and Cecily. But why go for such a mundane explanation? “

Why indeed...David is not only confirming Cecily and Halfrek and indeed one-and-the-same, he’s going so far as to reveal in this one-shot they always were. Cecily/Halfrek was a demon when she first met William all those years ago.

”In fact, she’s been a demon for a long time...and we’ll get some indication of how and why she became one,” revealed the writer.

Old Times deals with Spike’s feelings towards Cecily and how the two have changed over the years and their feelings toward one another.

”Let’s just say there’s a lot of unresolved feelings there, and this story is about resolving them.”

David - who of course has had plenty of experience working in other’s sandbox’s before - weighed the pros and cons of this type of assignment.

”The pro is, there’s such an ardent following. The con is, of course, that you’re using someone else’s toys and have to deal with a sometimes complicated approvals process. In this case, though, the Mutant Enemy folks have been no problem.”

David enjoyed it so much, in fact, he hopes this is just the beginning of his exploration into the “Buffyverse”.

” I’ve been in talks with IDW over a Spike limited series,” David said. “I pitched an idea they loved and, as soon as we have approvals from Mutant Enemy and the book slotted on the schedule, we’ll announce it.”