You know how I’ve been reading a lot of comics, and they are comics from the Marvel runs in the ’60s (and now ’70s) via computer files, on my computer? You may not know that I am additionally reading lots of comics of the physical variety, from the recent continuations of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel television series. This would not be a point of much relevance, except that my subscriptions[1] have been rather limited, which I have discovered lately after catching up on about a year’s worth of said comics and seeing all their advertisements for side stories that somehow did not appear on my doorstep.

The result of that failure is A Hole in the World, a short run chronicling a particularly heart-wrenching pair of episodes late in the series’ run in which an elder god named Illyria rises to prominence. And since I’ve seen the episodes in question, this was pretty much just a reminder of them rather than anything new. And what I was reminded of, primarily, is just how good that show really was. Pathos, humor, and consequences, all wrapped together in a delicious, plot-filled bow. Plus awesome snippets of dialogue, one of which I will quote despite that it probably won’t make much sense: “This goes all the way through to the other side. […] There’s a hole in the world. Feels like we ought to have known.”

[1] Because, and let’s be clear, if I had to go into a comic book store on a weekly or monthly basis for this to occur, there is a zero percent chance that I’d have been reading these. Though I suppose I could have gotten them in graphic novel collections, as this particular review demonstrates.