Spike: Asylum

Spike: Asylum
Publication information
Publisher IDW Publishing
Format 100 Pages, full color
Publication date September 2006–January 2007 (monthly)
Number of issues 5
Main character(s) Spike, Lorne
Creative team
Writer(s) Brian Lynch
Artist(s) Franco Urru
Letterer(s) Michael Heisler, Sulaco Studios, Neil Uyetake, Chris Mowry
Colorist(s) Matteo Gherardi, Elena Virzi, Fabio Mantovan, Donatella Melchionno

Spike: Asylum is a five-issue comic book limited series based on Angel television series.[1] It was released from September 2006 through January 2007. The five issues were collected together in a single trade paperback in May 2007.[2]

Plot

Ruby Monahan has gone missing and her family recruits Spike to track her down. It seems Ruby (a half-demon) has been checked into "Mosaic Wellness Center", a rehab facility designed to cure the demonic. Evidence shows Ruby is instead being tortured severely inside Mosaic so Spike agrees to infiltrate.

Whatever is going on, many of the clients do want to murder Spike, having a history with him, and are willing to hurt his newfound encounter-group friends to do so. And just where is Ruby anyway?

Writing and artwork

Cultural references

Continuity

Timing

In his blog, writer Brian Lynch has commented on when the comics takes place within Buffyverse continuity:

Spike is in Los Angeles, and he has a soul, and he's up and about and able to touch (and punch and kick and bite...and also hug...I'd assume. Three issues in and he does not hug anyone. Maybe for SPIKE: ASYLUM summer annual). But beyond that, I'm just telling the best SPIKE story I can, timelines be damned. Pick up the series and you tell us when you think it is. The first correct answer gets a hug. From Spike.

Canonical issues

Main article: Buffyverse canon

Angel comics are not usually considered by fans as canon. However unlike fanfic, 'overviews' summarising their story, written early in the writing process, were 'approved' by both Fox and Whedon (or his office), and the books were therefore later published as officially Angel merchandise.

Later, Betta George from Asylum appears in Lynch and Joss Whedon's canonical Angel: After the Fall. The Mosaic Wellness Center is seen briefly, and Spike refers to him and George as going "way back". Later references under Lynch's penas the series went on (such as in the After the Fall Epilogue in issue #23) would place the events of Spike: Asylum more definitively within the chronology of the series.

References

  1. Spike page at IDWpublishing.com. Archived August 14, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
  2. Brian Lynch and Franco Urru. Spike: Asylum. IDW Publishing. ISBN 1-60010-061-9
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