While the title characters’ respective supporting casts have their own adventures in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Buffy and Angel themselves continue to go deeper into the Hellmouth beneath Sunnydale High in Hellmouth #2 from Boom! Studios. Confused yet? You will be.

The book begins with a prologue suggesting that all of the typical bad behavior of people being mean to each other in Sunnydale is somehow caused by (or is causing?) the Hellmouth itself. Buffy and Angel battle demons as they descend further into the Hellmouth, including one that takes shapes from their lives. Eventually, they find Drusilla and realize that she’s not the Big Bad they thought she was. 

The story by Jordie Bellaire and Jeremy Lambert is pretty paint-by-numbers here. The “demon who looks like the hero’s loved ones” is a trope far older than the TV shows that inspired these comics, and Bellaire and Lambert fail to say anything new or interesting with it or subvert it in any way. They even lampshade its ubiquity by having Buffy see through the ruse pretty quickly and without much effort. Unfortunately, the rest of the issue isn’t much more than hollow banter between Buffy and Angel as they get from point A to point B. 

Eleonora Carlini’s art is serviceable, if not remarkable. The story is told clearly and cleanly, but without much in the way of innovation. The lettering by Ed Dukeshire is similarly professional. The real star of the issue is colorist Chris Peter, whose neons and pastels are an exciting and counterintuitive choice for what could otherwise have been murky darkness. 

The Hellmouth crossover has been a strange beast, producing series-best tie-in issues in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel titles while their supposed leads are away. Meanwhile, however, those leads are here, in the Hellmouth, not doing anything terribly exciting.

Grade: B