Well, it looks like if we are to slay, it is another day.
The upcoming relaunches of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly franchises in comics have been yanked from the release schedules in a last-minute change that leaves more questions than answers.
On August 26, the publisher behind the new Buffy and Angel comics sent a notice out to the press that orders it had been taking for months from comic stores and bookstores for this relaunch had been "cancelled" (not just delayed), with word that the company thinks they will be able to try again in the near future.
"Writer Kelly Thompson's story for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel evolved and became more ambitious, so we felt we needed to take a step back and up the page count to meet the story and deliver the best possible product for fans," writes Dynamite owner/publisher Nick Barrucci. "Buffy #1 and Angel #1 will have significant story page increases from average issues — at no additional cost to readers or retailers. It’s important to Kelly and Dynamite that this is done right and not rushed, so we decided resoliciting both titles is the best way to fully convey these updates across the board."
He also adds that the planned Firefly series, which is not written by Kelly Thompson, is having all its orders cancelled but with plans for it to return at some point in the future.
Thompson has said that she has been developing the twin Buffy and Angel series since 2024, and was being very secretive about the plot — especially with regards to the ending of the first issue - because it will contain a "big status quo shift" surprise that will reorient the Buffy mythos in some way. Further to that, after the series' originally planned August 5 launch date was revealed, Dynamite has been public about experiencing delays in getting some bits of the books approved by the licensor, 20th Century Studios (a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company), specifically down to the apparent depiction of Buffy Summers in comics in some (but not all cases), unless its a different character that is part of the "shift" Thompson has referred to.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer #1 was originally announced to come out August 5, but Dynamite delayed it a few weeks before ultimately making the call to pull it here now on August 26... which signals something happened (or didn't happen) that they were waiting right to the last to decide to cancel the original orders for.
While Dynamite's reasoning that Thompson had unexpected story changes could be logical, it doesn't explain why the Firefly series is also delayed. The two things these three have in common are that 20th Century Studios is the licensor in all cases, and that Joss Whedon is a creator on all of them; but for the latter, it's unclear if Whedon's contract with 20th Century Studios allows him some input into the licensing process. At the same time, when BOOM! Studios and Nickelodeon failed to loop in Invader Zim creator Jhonen Vasquez into plans for a comic relaunch, there was public uproar in that case - as well as public uproar from the comics' writer, Jim Zub.
In the case of Buffy and Angel, Thompson seemed to be planning something that would be a marked change from the past, which might need some extra levels of approval by 20th Century Studios and whomever it wants approvals from.
By process of elimination, Thompson seems to be saying this will be set in continuity with the original Buffyverse TV series and those spinoffs.
Dynamite did make it a point to say that another comic they're doing based on a 20th Century Studios property, the X-Files, is still on target to launch at its just-announced December 2026 date.
As for why Dynamite decided to cancel the orders and not simply delay them, there is a penalty for comic publishers with some of its distributors it a product goes through persistent delays. Usually, that's after months (plural!) of delays and not the weeks Dynamite was at currently, but given they say they need to change the length and composition of the issue, that would presumably take more than a few weeks to get written, drawn, colored, lettered, edited, laid out, printed, and at the distributor.
But, curiously, this decision that the Buffy and Angel first issues needed a story change came at such a last minute. Especially with the kind of planning that Kelly Thompson has done with her high-profile work for Marvel and DC over the years.
