Top Of The Pile: Buffy Season Eight - issue two

For an unprecedented second time, Joss Whedon's amazing writing rockets Buffy Season Eight to the "top of the pile". Although, obviously, lacking the freshness factor of the first issue, number two still features some of the most cracking dialogue in the comics today.

Don't you just wish people really spoke like this? A sparkling ping-pong of wordplay, back and forth ... instead of just grunting and mumbling! The writers of the dire Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter comic - which so desperately wants to be this cool - should take note: this is how to write banter!

Slightly concerned by the kilt-wearing Scottish zombies - who reminded me of the ghosts from Garth Marenghi's Dark Place (the Scotch Mist episode) - and the announcement in the letter's column that Faith will be coming to England in a future issue (England usually gets a very raw deal in comic books written and drawn by Americans).

But Buffy Season Eight's first story arc (The Long Way Home) continues apace and is the closest thing we fans will get to a new television series of The Scooby Gang's antics.