REVIEW: Angel Yearbook

ANGEL YEARBOOK
Story by: Various
Art by: Various
Colours by: Various
Cover by: David Messina
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Cover Price: $7.99
Book Summery: IDW’s final farewell to the Angelverse is full of the creators who have been telling stories about the vampire with a soul from the very beginning. Each tale will be a farewell from the writers and artists who have known him best. Featuring the final new stories from the Angelverse! 
 
This ‘Yearbook’ represents IDW’s swansong for the much loved property that has been at the Californian company since 2004. Now that the licence is gone over to Dark Horse comics and has been relaunched as Angel and Faith recently, IDW took the opportunity to bring together some of the best Angel creators from the time the book was at the company to tell their final tales of the characters as a sort of farewell.
With a number of short tales featuring the final hurrah for the characters at IDW on show we are treated to some creators letting loose with things a little different. For example, Peter David, Stephen Mooney & Jordie Bellaire on the story ‘OMG Unicorns!’ which tells a tale of Harmony through blog form. The use of unicorn emoticons at the end of each blog post was great along with several images in the story, a couple of which would be great pin ups if they were enlarged.
I was a big fan of Jeff Mariotte and David Messina on the book but their story here in ‘…Dust to Dust’ I found to be a little quick to come to a conclusion and seemed like too much story in too short a space. It was a story I would like to have seen a whole issue devoted to as the concept was great.
Scott Tipton’s ‘All The Time In The World’ was a great story of work and play never allowing the other to be separate without frustration. Artist Elena Casagrande co-plotted the story and provided very energetic art to a funny action orientated tale.
‘My Only Friend’was a two pager from Patrick Shand, Stephen Mooney and Jordie Bellaire. These two pages exuded Angel’s love for LA and showed why Mooney may have been the best Angel artist of them all these past seven years.
‘Fight For The Remote’ by David Roth, Stephen Mooney and Jordie Bellaire told a tale that showed that even in down time Angel and Spike can’t help but rub each other the wrong way.
 ‘This One Time’ was a full length issue by writer Brian Lynch and Franco Urru and  was well placed to be the final story that featured most of the characters in an all out dimensional warping action tale that even briefly featured the puppet Spike and Angel that when down so well in the show and their appearances from the comics.
‘A Blessing & The Curse’ written by Chris Ryall with art by David Messina and Franco Urru is IDW’s farewell with a walk down memory lane courtesy of a ‘broken fourth wall’ exposition by Ryall.
Angel’s run at IDW was bumpy at times to be sure, it even lost me for a while after I was thoroughly on board from the beginning but at the end it was hard to argue against the property being a success and one of the books that cemented IDW as a company that pushed Dark Horse and Image for a long time as the ‘number three’ company stateside. It was a fun ride but now the licence is gone to another company, IDW can hold its head up proud for what they have done these past seven years.