MadCap's Comic Reviews - "Angel" #8: Time and Tide, Part Four

And here we are, the fourth part of "Time and Tide". So far, we've had a time traveling adventure where Angel and Fred have gone back in time to an old galleon in search of a mysterious bug creature, met with Angel's earlier self Angelus and former flame Darla, had a fight with said duo, and accidentally unleashed a ship of beetle-breeding zombies before burning it and attempting to escape...only to be surrounded by the undead monstrosities. And that, I think, is enough to get you up to speed and make the first sentence of this paragraph make any sort of sense.



Part Four begins with Angel and now un-Illyria'd Fred trying to fight off the zombies in the enclosed space of their little dingy. Things are looking bleak until Angel takes the fight into the water...and promptly disappears. Fred is freaked out, particularly in light of the oncoming dawn (badumtish) but Angel is fine and exposits a bit on the smelling abilities of vampires before using his Aquaman powers to push the boat towards a volcanic island.

Arriving at dusk, the zombies are still behind them...and they find even bigger problems as not only the beetles are swarming to try and get at Fred, as well as Angelus and Darla showing up to try and further twist the timeline into itty bitty pieces. Swarmed, Fred tries to consciously call up Illyria and succeeds, managing to burn all four of them when she cracks open the volcano and spews forth it's molten hot lava!

...only kidding. Well, about that last part. Illyria does incite the volcano's eruption, arguing that Fred thought it best to close the loop - perhaps speaking of an earlier encounter? - and killing off the zombies and bugs in one fell swoop. As the island immolates around them, Angel requests that Illyria get them out of there...all of them. Angelus and Darla are brought along for the ride as they go...somewhere.

The where will no doubt be answered in Issue Nine. As for this comic, it's not bad. The cartoony art style remains from the previous issues, as well as the real life style sketches on the covers to further confused the issue. The story is good, and definitely (as with the others I've covered this month) could be a two-part from the actual show had it continued on this long...and had the budget to do this sort of thing.

It does bring the horror with the horde of zombies, but that's been a threat established and dealt with as the only real harm is to Fred, with her being alive while Angel, Angelus, and Darla are not. The solution to the problem is a good one, however, and makes a great deal of sense in my mind with Illyria taking the most extreme action possible to eliminate the threat. I will fully admit I just got into the series for the cover of Issue Six, but it's been an enjoyable ride. I even admit that I'm even interested to see where the series goes from here, and will definitely be picking up the trade paperback for Season Eleven if and when it comes out to get the full story.

Angel is currently published by Dark Horse Comics.

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