Buffy the Vampire Slayer #19 continues from the previous issue in the strangest of ways. Rather than showing an interesting scene between Buffy and Robin, the story completely breezes over the only actual moment of drama we’ve seen the couple have. Instead of seeing this inciting incident, we just see the character spend half of the issue talking about it. The Buffy/Robin relationship remains uninteresting because we are merely told over and over how they feel, what their problems are, and why they like each other, but we don’t see any of it in action. Even with Buffy’s least popular love story on the show, her two-season relationship with Riley, we were in Buffy and Riley’s shoes. We understood what brought them together and their problems. The structure of the story made us empathize. That is not the case with Buffy and Robin’s relationship, which is a problem that extends through the entire series. We aren’t shown how characters feel and aren’t made to feel their emotions with them. Instead, we are told ad nauseum through plodding dialogue that blends Whedon-speak poorly with modern teen dialogue. It feels like exposition disguised poorly as drama. Xander, while his dialogue is wildly on the nose (“I’m a vampire… I am sort of the Big Bad this season, you know?”), his role is the most interesting. There’s an everlasting quality to the friendship of Willow and Xander that gives this comic, even though it’s a reboot, rich soil from which to grow character. It’ll be interesting, at least, to see Xander grappling with being a vampire. His inconsistency as far as how evil he is, who he really is, is reminiscent of Gunn’s role in IDW’s excellent Angel: After the Fall, but Xander as a vampire isn’t given enough yet to rise to that level.