jane espenson

Welcome to The Issue, where we'll take a look at some of the strangest, most interesting and most distinctive single issue comic stories ever to grace the medium. You know the ones; silent issues, sideways issues, backwards issues; the comics that try to do something different with the form, and stand out from the series they belong to. Buffy Harmony Cover In the last installment, we talked about issue #12 of The Invisibles, a comic that takes a sympathetic look at one of the series' throwaway baddies. This time round, it's 'Harmonic Divergence', issue #21 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, written by Jane Espenson and drawn by Georges Jeanty. It's a comic that takes a very different approach to a similar idea and, as Hallowe'en is nearly upon us, throws in some spooky Draculas too.

A nominee for this year's Eisner Award for Best Anthology (and last year's winner), Dark Horse Presents has been one of ComicsAlliance's favorite titles since it was relaunched in 2011 to continue the classic and influential series' tradition of showcasing emerging talent alongside some of the best established writers, artists and cartoonists mainstream and underground comics has to offer. Each issue comes with quirky, undiluted excursions into the minds of uniquely talented creators, usually with immersive new serials or idiosyncratic short stories but also in the form of recurring, cult favorite characters and properties for which Dark Horse has served as caretaker for many years.

Created by former Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Battlestar Galactica writer Jane Espenson and actor Brad Bell, Husbands is a live-action internet sitcom that stars Bell and Sean Hemeon as gay celebrity couple Cheeks and Brady, a scandal-prone actor and a recently self-outed athlete who were married under particularly drunken circumstances, but who are determined to make it work or else risk hurting

Anyone who's watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer knows that only a young woman can become the chosen protector of mankind - after all, the first 34 episodes of the show feature a voiceover intro establishing this lore. If there's anything Dark Horse Comics has taught us with Buffy Season 9, however, it's that it can be a blast to read as old rules get broken...