Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Predators and Prey (Season 8, Vol. 5)
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Predators and Prey (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 #5)

3.79 of 5 stars 3.79  ·  rating details  ·  1,693 ratings  ·  117 reviews
Buffy's world goes awry when former-classmate-turned-vampire Harmony Kendall lands her own reality TV show, "Harmony Bites," bolstering bloodsucking fiends in the mainstream. Humans line up to have their blood consumed, and Slayers, through a series of missteps, misfortunes, and anti-Slayer propaganda driven by the mysterious Twilight, are forced into hiding. In ...more
Paperback, 144 pages
Published September 16th 2009 by Dark Horse
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Joel
Joel rated it 2 of 5 stars
Recommends it for: meh.
You remember how, when he was young and hungry and battling budgetary constraints and studio execs at every turn, George Lucas made the original Star Wars trilogy?

Then you remember how 20 years later, he had enough money and CGI to have complete control and tell whatever story he wanted and he subsequently made the prequel trilogy?

I can't remember why I brought that up.
Tanabrus
Tanabrus rated it 3 of 5 stars
Shelves: comics
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Andrew Shuping
Unlike previous volumes where all of the issues went together this one is each issue is standalone and without an overall arcing theme. Harmon's back...and this time she's got her own reality TV show. And she, along with the Twilight, are working at setting up the slayers as villains. In the second story kitty vampire toy's are being shipped, but they have a dark side to them. They're demons coming to kill they slayers, but when the slayer's have stopped them things take a nasty turn in the ...more
jess
The fifth installment of Buffy: Season Eight. Dawn is a porcelain doll. Buffy has a face off with Simone, who rules an island of slayers (??). Harmony has a reality tv show (???). Giles & Faith are visiting a "slayer haven" in like, England or something. Buffy's les-faux experimentations are starting to catch up with her and cause a lil drama and heartbreak. Also, there's a giant spidery thing that Andrew may have invented, and some vamp kitty dolls that are hella dangerous AND cute. ...more
Catherine
"Predators and Prey" is extremely uneven giving us two outright terrible issues, one okay issue, one pretty good issue and one really good issue. It's all over the place. "Harmonic Divergence" was the decent one. There were things I did not like about it at all but I like the idea of Harmony being front and center for an issue, the idea behind the public hating the Slayers and how that strengthens with her reality show. The woman who dies at the end I saw coming but it was st...more
Aaron
Aaron rated it 5 of 5 stars
This is the first volume in the graphic novel series, which is constructed from the comic books, that isn't a single stories. It is actually a colleciton of short stories.

The first story brings back Harmony Kendall, a former high school classmate from high school for Buffy. During the series, she was turned into a vampire, but she has always been able to find an interesting balance between her former humanity and her need to feed on blood. In fact, she has usually been a source for h...more
Ashley
You can really tell Joss Whedon had nothing to do with any of the stories in this trade/episode. Where is the darkness? The first story, Harmonic Divergence is camp fluff I was willing to live with, but then it just ends with a terribly contrived pun and a smiling dog. It ends with a smiling dog, folks. All of the other stories end with a peppy frame that suggests that things are going to be okay. But we never get to see exactly how things will be okay. For me, that's just shitty character devel...more
Christina (A Reader of Fictions)
Harmony (remember her?) gets her own reality television show. Twilight, the evil organization trying to stop the slayers, creates some seriously creepy vampire cat toys and uses Harmony's show to turn people against slayers and pro-vampire. Buffy and Andrew take on an evil sect of slayers. Giles and Faith are doing their thing, trying to help slayer outcasts. Dawn is now a doll and in the hands of some creepy guy. Volume 5 is like the middle of a season where there might be an episode here and t...more
The Flooze (Michelle M.)
Predators and Prey focuses on the terrible image the Slayers now have in the public eye. It furthers the action in that it establishes added, non-paranormal threats to the group. However, I'm still not thrilled with the pacing of the story so far. Transitions are improved from the last volume, and the plot is more solid, which will encourage me to keep reading, but I'm not sure how much longer I'll last.

Harmony makes an appearance as a reality TV star. Silly, but it's a relatively f...more
Katya
This trade felt really rushed and disjointed. The arcs stand well enough on their own, but they don't come together into a cohesive, overall-plot-furthering story. The arc with Harmony coming out of the coffin and ending up spearheading the anti-Slayer movement makes sense as a logical reason for the general public to hate and fear the Slayers, but I don't know if it's because of the fact that we're seeing everything through Buffy's eyes, who's removed from civilization with her Slayer army or w...more
Punk
Graphic Novel. Meh. Harmony stars in her own vampire reality show; Latina gang member/slayer quits gang, dies anyway; Satsu and Kennedy talk about being lesbians and fight demonic stuffed animals; Andrew does some stuff while looking TOTALLY UNLIKE ANDREW SERIOUSLY JEANTY WATCH THE SHOW; Giles and Faith go somewhere -- and, dude, it's not like we have to pay Anthony Stewart Head anymore, why isn't he in more of these? -- with very serviceable pencils by Cliff Richards -- why isn't HE in more of ...more
The_Mad_Swede
This fifth volume of Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight comic collects # 21–25 of the title and short stories from MySpace Dark Horse Presents #18 and 19; and it is the first volume to only contain single issue stories. Well, single issue stories that continue to build on the overarching "season" theme and add important elements to it.

Most notably, perhaps, Whedon in this volume trusts most of the writing to some of his collaborators from the TV-series, and they...more
Caroline
In an interesting turn of events, Harmony (who, very occasionally throughout Buffy and Angel gets to a point where she isn't completely irritating) becomes the star of her own reality TV show, and with this the world as a whole begins to view vampires as the "good guys" and the Slayers as the villains.

Overall, I liked the concept of the world becoming more wise to the supernatural, but the concept doesn't work all that well since the individual issues are not at all cohesiv...more
Dwhren
Dwhren rated it 5 of 5 stars
I received e-book copies of these books through NetGalley. These books are are collections of comics that continue the story of Buffy the Vampire Slayer after the end of the television show in season 7. The books do an excellent job of keeping the tone of the show, and most of the drawings are really good likenesses of the characters translated from screen to page. In season 8 Buffy, the new slayers, and the scooby gang are fighting a big bad named Twilight. Apparently the name was totally coinc...more
Jenn Dattilo Watts
Jenn Dattilo Watts rated it 4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for: any Whedon fans
Shelves: graphic-novel
This gets a 4.5 rating. Wasn't thrilled with it at first - the whole Harmony lead in story just didn't do it for me. But each of the other four stories within volume 5 more than made up for it. The vampy cats were just uber creepy - you have to read it to really get the creepiness. And for any Veronica Mars fans (yep, that'd me be) I got a special warm fuzzy when the Scooby gang mentioned the VM DVD set....AWESOMESAUCE!

(Gets Spoilerish here if you've not read yet.)

...more
Don
Don rated it 2 of 5 stars
This is a generous two. This was a collection of stories written by people who have no idea how to pace comic books. The Faith/Giles issue is the only one that is paced well. And that adds nothing to the overall "Twilight" storyline. The Harmony and Dawn stories are painfully bad. Harmony's story should have been a two-parter and Dawn's wasn't nearly enough for a complete issue.

Satsu/Kennedy story was cute, but only because they fought little vampire dolls. And I can't even...more
Meghan
Meghan rated it 2 of 5 stars
Shelves: comics
Really having a hard time keeping all these threads together, even when I read the trades back-to-back. The Faith and Giles story was probably my favorite of the group, although it is a little exhausting when people bring up Jenny Calendar, at this point, Giles has had a lot of nicks in his heart and that's just one of many. I guess maybe it's significant later, I don't know.

I am really interested in the public's attitude towards the slayer problem, but I'm afraid that by giving us ...more
Emily Northcutt
I'm so glad that I was able to read this on my iPad through Netgalley. I may need to check out Dark Horse's app now! Unlike the other volumes of Season 8, this is more of a short story collection rather than a continuous arc. I like self-contained stories, but some of these were better than others. I enjoyed Harmony's misadventures as a reality show star (I wouldn't mind if vampires devoured the cast of Jersey Shore - in fact, I might actually watch THAT), but no so much the rogue slayers taking...more
Ryan Mishap
A collections of one-offs that also advances the storyline. Harmony jumpstarts a popular culture trend that celebrates vampires as misunderstood creatures cruelly hunted down by the terroristic Slayer cells. The satire on reality TV shows is great, and provides a novel way to ratchet up the tension, further isolating the Slayers from society. It is also a little disjointed and the storyline doesn't flow as well as in previous issues/collections. Also, the writers are relying more on self-re...more
Jesse
Jesse rated it 3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for: fans of Buffy
Shelves: graphic-novels
Good solid installment. It advances the current metaplot, while adding a few character driven plot wrinkles. Also, we see Giles and Faith again which is always good. Also, this installment acknowledges the absurd trend in vamp fiction today and spits on it as what it is, wankery delusional love for the bad guys. Hey look, I'm all for enjoying the bad guys, cause they are cool and get to do stuff that good guys rarely do. But um...vamps are warm and fuzzy, thats just your rose colored glasse...more
Sarah  Pi
Sarah Pi rated it 4 of 5 stars
Shelves: comics
This is only getting four stars in comparison to itself. I picked up the first year's worth of issues faithfully before deciding they weren't must-haves. I didn't bother to buy them as they were collected because they were sullying my Buffy memories a bit. I may or may not have read the issues collected in the fourth volume. I feel like I've missed something, but I'm happy that my library is buying them, so I'm not complaining.
All that said, this was pretty entertaining, especially the pa...more
Kemper
Kemper rated it 3 of 5 stars
Shelves: comics, horror, tv, vampires
Buffy's adventures after the ending of the TV series continue with this volume of mostly stand-alone stories. The best idea presented yet is that former-classmate-turned-vamp Harmony has scored a TV reality show and when an inexperienced slayer botches an attempt to dust her while the cameras roll, Harmony uses it to make the media and the public belive that the vamps are just a poor persecuted minority group while Buffy and the slayers are painted as a violent cult of bigots. Hilarity ensues....more
Ashly
Ashly rated it 4 of 5 stars
Debated between three and four stars. This is a series of one-shots, including the beginning of Harmony's reality show. Truth be told, my favorite part of this compilation was the short written in the style of an episode of "Harmony Bites." Love that a lot of the message in this collection was "You people think vampires are cool? What is WRONG with you?" As much as the folks working on B:TVS S8 claim that they aren't taking potshots at the popularity of certain other vam...more
Nikki Faith
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Slayermel
Slayermel rated it 4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for: any Buffy fan following Season 8
Predators and Prey is the fifth instalment of the season eight Buffy the Vampire Slayer series.

It all starts off with Harmony Kendall getting her own reality TV series on MTV called "Harmony Bites". Basically a camera crew follows Harmony around as she lives her life. (This would have actually made a very funny episode if the show was still running :0p )
Twilight is still trying to take down the slayers and has come up with a new plan to turn the Slayer Army into the ...more
Jonathan
I loved the Buffy tv show, it might be my favorite series of all time. What made the show so amazing though was NOT the vampires or supernatural plots, it was instead the growth and depth of the characters and their quirky relationships with each other in that context. The problem with Season 8 is that NONE of that translates to the comic book form. The comics focus mostly on huge epic monster battles and shallow or sensational "gotcha moments" with very little in the way of real or co...more
Book Sp(l)ot
Predators and Prey: Buffy Season 8 Volume 5 was probably the least realistic, strangest, and most out-there volume so far . . . and also the one I enjoyed most. Go figure. Without giving too much away, Harmony gets a The Hills-esque reality show, Slayers become hated, evil robotic toy vampires are discovered, a haven for Slayers may or may not be what it seems, Buffy and Andrew have to work together to find a group of rogue Slayers, and Buffy has to help Dawn (again).

See, kind of craz...more
David
This volume is a series of loosely-connected one-shots, which were entertaining enough but again, didn't really feel like the next link in an epic story chain, even if a few of the events were significant. (Dawn goes through her third transformation and then is finally back to normal.)

This volume did bring lots of old characters back, so it felt like a few episodes of "Where are they now?" Starting with our old friend Harmony, former second banana in the Sunnydale Mean Girl...more
Jennifer
While I'm a firm believer that nothing in the Buffyverse can be awful, I'll admit Predators and Prey was kind of a mess. The overall story arc slows down a lot in this volume to make way for many just plain ludicrous subplots. A reality TV show featuring Harmony? Evil stuffed animal vampire cats? Dawn becoming a living porcelain doll? All in all, volume 5 was kind of a disappointment.

The lone highlight of Predators and Prey was the Faith and Giles story. The stuffed vampire cats are ...more
Natalie (Mindful Musings)
In a Sentence: A great look at some of the minor characters, but the inclusion of the Harmony arc made BTVS Season 8 #5 a bit slower than normal.

My Thoughts

I have a bit of a split opinion on this installment in the series. I loved three out of the five issues ("Predators and Prey" and "Safe"), and thought one ("Swell") was mediocre. The other two issues though ("Harmonic Divergence" and "Living Doll") I found to be a bit ...more
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Joss Whedon (born Joseph Hill Whedon) is an Academy Award-nominated and Hugo Award winning American screenwriter, executive producer, director, occasional composer and actor, and founder of Mutant Enemy Productions. He graduated from Winchester College in England and he went on to receive a film degree from Wesleyan University in 1987.
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