Faith Erin Hicks to Write Buffy the Vampire Slayer Graphic Novel

Dark Horse has announced that they will be expanding their Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic line with an original graphic novel series called Buffy: The High School Years. The first volume, Freaks & Geeks, will be written by Faith Erin Hicks (Friends With Boys, The Adventures of Superhero Girl) with art by Yishan Li.

(The background furniture in this piece looks like the same art style as my mom’s cookbooks from the 50s.)

As with the other Buffy comics, this will be “executive produced by [creator] Joss Whedon”, which means I guess he approves what goes out. The series will be set during the first season of the TV show, with this plot description:

A group of nerdy vampires, shunned by their cooler brethren, decide to climb the vampire social ladder by taking out the Slayer. They play on Buffy’s insecurities, wearing her down until she is full-on distracted by the mental warfare. But in addition to her Watcher, Giles, this Slayer has a couple of new friends, Willow and Xander, to cheer her on . . . except, of course, when they’re not getting along.

The book is due out June 15, 2016. Li has a really nice take on the characters, as shown by this art:

Hicks has blogged about how “Buffy is the reason I started making comics, and probably the reason I have this amazing career as a cartoonist, fifteen years later,” so she sounds understandably thrilled to be working on this project. I know a lot of fans prefer the high school setting, and its more immediate metaphors with monsters as teen conflicts, to seeing Buffy grow up, so there should be quite an audience for this.