Spike: Shadow Puppets

Spike: Shadow Puppets
File:SPIKE1 Messina (small).JPG Cover of #1 by David Messina.
Publication information
Publisher	IDW Publishing
Publication date	June 2007 - October 2007
No. of issues	4
Main character(s)	Spike Lorne
Creative team
Written by	Brian Lynch
Artist(s)	Franco Urru

Spike: Shadow Puppets is a limited series comic book based on the Angel television series. The Spike centric comic was released by IDW Publishing from June 2007 through October 2007. The four issues were collected together in a single trade paperback in December, 2007.

Trivia

• By coincidence James Marsters, who portrayed Spike onscreen, was involved in a film called Shadow Puppets.

• Other puppets that appear other than Spike and Lorne are an Angelus puppet,a "street" Gunn (from before joining Wolfram and Heart) and a "smart" Gunn puppet (from after joining Wolfram and Heart), a Drusilla puppet, a "classic" Wesley puppet, a "spoiler" Wesley puppet (looking as he did after his confrontation with Cyvus Vail), a new Wesley, a Cordelia puppet, a Conner puppet and a Fred/Illyria puppet (right side is Illyria, left side is Fred).

Continuity

• The continuity of this comic is unconfirmed. A scene on page 3 of issue #2 with Angel, Illyria, and Wesley at Wolfram & Hart, indicates it occurring during the final episodes of Angel Season Five, sometime after Shells, but before Not Fade Away. The fact that Wesley is still alive in Spike's brief fantasy in issue #2 seems to imply that the story takes place prior to Not Fade Away. However, the later appearance in issue #4 of "Spoiler Wesley", as well as the fact that Spike is supposed to have been working solo for a while at this point, would set it after Season Five entirely.

• Shadow Puppets best shares continuity with the previous Spike: Asylum series, of which writer Brian Lynch commented "...I'm just telling the best SPIKE story I can, timelines be damned."

• The original ambiguity of Shadow Puppets place in the continuity is directly referenced (through use of a pun) in issue #1, when the puppets attack Spike with the "Official Smile Time Cannon", Spike remarks "I hate... official cannon."

Canonical issues

Main article: Buffyverse canon

Buffy and Angel comics such as this one are not usually considered by fans as canonical. Some fans consider them stories from the imaginations of authors and artists, while other fans consider them as taking place in an alternative fictional reality. However unlike fan fiction, overviews summarising their story, written early in the writing process, were 'approved' by both Fox and Joss Whedon (or his office), and the books were therefore later published as officially Buffy merchandise.

Timing

• Stories that take place around the same time in the Buffyverse:

External links

• Johnston, Rich, "LYING IN THE GUTTERS VOLUME 2 COLUMN 92", ComicBookResources.com (February 20, 2007).
• "Teaser for the next Lynch/Urru SPIKE project!", IDWpublishing.com (January 22 2007).
• June solicitations on Comics Continuum