That's it, I'm calling it: Angel Season Six is better than Buffy Season Eight. Brian Lynch just baked my noodle but good. And maybe stop reading now if you don't want to be spoiled for After the Fall #3.

OK, maybe it's too soon to be making judgments like this - ATF has its nice contained dozen-issue spread, so it's already starting to advertise its beginning-middle-and-end-ness in a way that 50-issue Buffy couldn't possibly get at yet. But still. This fucking creepy-ass Lynch guy is some kind of damn genius, he is. Having Angel reveal he isn't a vampire any more at the end of the third issue is a gorgeous bit of long con, especially given the wagga wagga of Gunn being all vamped up in issue 1. Jesus, this issue was just so gorramned solid. Angel challenging all of the lords to a Capital Cities of Heaven-style bash-out for control of Hell-A? Right on.

It gets a bit icky when I try to figure out how much is the Joss and how much is the Lynch. I'm choosing to go whole-hog on Lynch for this one because salient details like vamps being in a constant state of half-sun half-moon torment is ingenius, yes, but ingenius in the Betta George sort of way, not the true-blue Whedon. I could be wrong. When all this is done I'm gonna want a whole lot more info on where it all came from. Damn I'm impressed.