Kelly Thompson on hiding the upcoming Buffy/Angel twist for the new Dynamite Entertainment comic book series

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Kelly Thompson On Hiding The Upcoming Buffy/Angel Twist​

Kelly Thompson on hiding the upcoming Buffy/Angel twist for the new Dynamite Entertainment comic book series

Published Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:27:10 -0500 by Rich Johnston

Kelly Thompson is serving as the "master architect" for both new Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel comic book series from Dynamite Entertainment, announced last year, but still without an announced schedule. She revealed a launch strategy built around secrecy, which will begin with an event and a crossover from the very start. "It's been a hard book to talk about," she admitted. "I'll give you just a little bit here. The new way I've decided to try to talk about it, while hiding the mysterious interior, is telling people to think of the first issues like an event book. Almost like we're starting with an event book with something that draws the cast of Buffy and Angel together for like a very personal emotional thing, and then we sort of spin out from there."

This early integration means we are getting a significant Buffy/Angel crossover. On her Substack, Kelly Thompson previously wrote: "For the first arc, the Buffy and Angel books will be pretty integrated; after that first arc, they will become more their own things." But this seems to be a little more on the nose than that. And she emphasized that the story hinges on a major hidden twist she is fiercely protecting. I mean… would we tell anyone?

Talking to Near Mint, she said, "I think Dynamite is going to let me hide this plot point right up until the end. It looks promising. Fingers crossed. I guarantee you'll enjoy it more if you experience it organically. I hope that the twist will really get people excited and that we can get like a whole second run of people who hear about it, what's going on in the book, and maybe want to pick it up and see what's going on." Okay, okay, I think I'm getting the hint.

Kelly Thompson was candid about the difficulties of promoting a story built on secrecy in today's comic market. "I think it's a terrible way to try to market something. I don't know what to do, but there's just no way to talk about it without talking about it in concrete terms or to talk about it at length without spoiling this entire thing. It all hinges on it and I just can't."

To preserve the surprise, the team is exploring unconventional marketing tactics. "We're trying. We're doing like there's going to be some blind bags or redacted out covers. There will be some things like that going on". Well, Dynamite Entertainment does like a blindbag. As for the timing of the initial announcement back in July 2025. "I would also say, in my personal opinion, they announced it too early, but whatever. I get it. Everyone has different things they're trying to meet and masters they have to serve. Sometimes sh-t's got to get announced, but I do think we're like on the right track now. And hopefully it will work out. I don't know. I think there will be quite a bit of news this month. Um, I don't know if it'll be this week, but soon. I mean, I was like helping rewrite press releases."

Kelly Thompson has stressed that the new Buffy the Vampire Slayer series with David Nakayama is designed to honour the existing lore without requiring prior knowledge of the comics. "You don't need to have ever read any of the other previous Buffy comics to understand this book. And we've made it as new reader friendly as possible in case you aren't already a fan of the show (but it's pretty obvious that any pre-existing show fans will get the most bang for their buck)," she wrote on her Substack. It is explicitly "neither a rebooted 'origin story,' nor a reboot with the characters older."

She also stated that "Buffy Summers is, in my opinion, one of the greatest fictional heroines of all time. I'm not entirely sure I become a writer without Buffy. I am definitely not sure Tessa Battle (STORYKILLER) or Bonnie Braverman and Lola Lefever (THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE KING) exist without her. And I hope I can do her and her world justice for all the fans… I've been working on these books for a while now (you should see the series bible!)" No dates, but if it's soon, then we are coming up to Dynamite's July solicitation information dates… running a few today as it is!

Source: Bleeding Cool

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So they’re using the tv characters, like adult years, and not rebooting the series? I’m so down for that. I hated the rebooted comics.
 
fauxindigo
fauxindigo
The boom comics? Yeah … they haven’t compelled me like dark horses’
lot's of dead characters to be doing it based off the shows at the end
 
I would hope so. If I am doing it from day 1, I'm keeping them in high school forever.
 
AlphaFoxtrot said:
I would hope so. If I am doing it from day 1, I'm keeping them in high school forever.
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Which isn't that difficult, or at least for a long time. Only a tiny fraction of the school years was shown on the screen, and you could easily have a a hundred or more fleshed out stories in the missing periods.
 
AlphaFoxtrot
AlphaFoxtrot
Archie with Vampires, baby!
NotASlayer said:
Which isn't that difficult, or at least for a long time. Only a tiny fraction of the school years was shown on the screen, and you could easily have a a hundred or more fleshed out stories in the missing periods.
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The problem with the rebooted series was that they did too much to try to balance both series' characters as rebooted characters. Where many of the characters had their adult qualities/personalities in high school. And the teenagers were interacting a lot with the adult characters. It didn't mesh. I stopped reading by issue 9-10.

If they're continuing from the series end, or the original comics' end, then at least there's history that would make the character interactions make sense. I would personally love it if they kind of started at seasons 6/7 or and alternate 6/7 where we get the fleshed out adult Buffy Characters working with Angel Investigations in the first arc. I wish we had a true crossover like that in the television series.
 
Cohen said:
I wish we had a true crossover like that in the television series.
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There is always one main reason for that: Money.

Every time you have characters crossing over, I believe they get paid the same as they would have in their own series. Which is why crossovers, even of bigger franchises, only have at most 2-3 characters from one series appearing in the crossover episode for the other series. A full crossover episode - which sadly only appears in other media - pretty much doubles the salaries for that episode (though it seems companies are more willing to spend money on effects than people).
 
NotASlayer said:
There is always one main reason for that: Money.

Every time you have characters crossing over, I believe they get paid the same as they would have in their own series. Which is why crossovers, even of bigger franchises, only have at most 2-3 characters from one series appearing in the crossover episode for the other series. A full crossover episode - which sadly only appears in other media - pretty much doubles the salaries for that episode (though it seems companies are more willing to spend money on effects than people).
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I think we could have gotten one had the WB not devalued the show and the UPN move occurred. If they would have been on the same network, once Angel's full team was established ending season 2, we likely would have gotten that crossover. The production company, 20th Century Fox, was definitely open to this idea, but with the two networks by the end of Buffy's series, it wasn't feasible.
 
fauxindigo
fauxindigo
Didn’t WB go under? Wonder if they would’ve survived had they appreciated BtVS
Cohen said:
I think we could have gotten one had the WB not devalued the show and the UPN move occurred. If they would have been on the same network, once Angel's full team was established ending season 2, we likely would have gotten that crossover. The production company, 20th Century Fox, was definitely open to this idea, but with the two networks by the end of Buffy's series, it wasn't feasible.
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That's possible I guess, but even what I think may be bigger shows/verses rarely have bigger crossovers. TNG/DS9, Voyager/DS9 from a similar time period. Or, more recently, whatever you call the huge conglomerate universe that seems to have spun out of an old show called JAG in one way or another: all the NCIS series plus things like the Magnum, MacGyver and Hawaii Five-0 reboots, Scorpion, and I'm probably missing some. These crossovers had all the cast from one show and a bare minimum from the other.
 
It looks like this takes place towards the end of season 5 based on character designs.

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source:
 
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Is that Cordy between Angel and Tara? I'm assuming so (looks a bit wrong to be Faith).
 

Most of the Angel cast already fill rolls Buffy has already filled. I mean, it's why Pike would never appear, when you have Xander and Angel. Angel and Cordie have prior histories with all the characters, and their interactions would be of the most interest.
 
To expand further, all the Buffy Angel Crossovers were fairly limited in scope. There were no grand full cast Crossovers. Keeping the crossover limited to two characters who have reasons being in Sunnydale, good call.

Angel characterization is a mess, let them figure out what version of Angel they are doing first, before the grand crossovers start.
 
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