The first time I read "The Chain," I was fairly disappointed by it. Once again I came into an issue hoping for it to approach a subject in a certain way, and Whedon went in a completely different direction. What is it that I wanted out of this issue? A gritty psychological look at the daily life of one of the slayer decoys. I was looking forward to getting insight into her mind, seeing character growth, and simply getting to know the girl. I wasn't looking for this kind of broad overview of a decoy's life. So I was left disappointed.
While I still would have preferred what I was hoping for, my opinion of the issue changed when I read it again. The second time around I wasn't reading it based on what I originally wanted; I read it for what it was. And what it is started a debate within me on how I feel about its message. My biggest initial complaint about it was that we didn't get to really know this girl... get inside her head for very long... see her day-to-day life. But... what struck me was that that's the entire point of the story. I feel very little sorrow for this girl because I don't know her well enough. The fact she knows that no one knows her and that no one will likely miss her, and that's she okay with it, is what's truly poignant about this story.
The fact that Whedon's able to make me feel awful for not feeling terribly awful about this girl's death is a situation I'm not often in. I by all means sympathize with the girl and am not at all happy she got killed, but it's kind of like how in procedurals like CSI there's the victim of the week who gets horribly slaughtered in an awful way. Are we happy they died? No, of course not. But at the same time, we know essentially nothing about that person, so our level of empathy is not very high when we see their family members endlessly sobbing on the screen afterward. It's not because we're jerks, it's simply that without an established emotional connection to someone, you're just not going lose sleep over it. If we did, we'd all be catatonic every night after watching the local news.
All of this brings me right back to "The Chain." This is a very sad story not because the girl dies, but because she's utterly right: "I tried to feel it. I tried to face the darkness like a woman and I don't need any more than that. You don't have to remember me. You don't even know who I am. But I do." The fact of the matter is, come later this season, I'm going to have largely forgotten about her. She's not the star. She's not the one we had the pleasure of getting to know intimately over seven years of her life. She's just a one-issue character that got offed. What's astonishing here is that Whedon is actually able to make me feel sad about it, because he addresses the entire problem of characters you don't get to know.
So, all in all, this story's a lot more potent than I initially gave it credit for. Even within its framework, though, I still have some issues with it. The first of which is the jokes. For some reason, the humor in this entire issue falls completely flat for me -- it's just not funny. In addition to that, the story itself is pretty generic: slayer gets called, slayer gets trained, slayer gets a special job, slayer motivates the common 'people' to fight, slayer dies. It's all just a very quick overview of her life. I also find myself wondering just why this demon is so badass. He looks like your standard variety big demon to me: strong, large, not good with words, and with no apparent magical abilities. Willow could do a zillion nasty things to this guy just by blinking. My point is that the plausibility and necessity for this girl to act like she's Buffy and be sent to do "internal damage" to these demons seems pretty pointless.
Where the issue shines, besides it's intriguing theme, is in some of the monologues. There's a few chunks of great dialogue mixed in here. The concept of "the chain" in of itself invoked some interesting spiritual parallels best described by this: "There is a chain between each and every one of us. And like the man said, you either feel its tug or you ignore it." The bond between slayers can be seen as a metaphor for many things: sisters, families, or, in the spiritual sense, the bond between each and every human being. Whether it's any of all of those things you either feel its tug, or you ignore it.
Problems aside, this is one of the best issues to date. Although the story could have been tighter around the edges, the humor could have been better, and the fairies could have not been shown at all, it's the thought-provoking dialogue that ends up winning the day. Very good issue.
