Vampire Supervillain Back in Buffy Comics

It kind of makes sense--the Master's killing of Buffy wasn't allowed to stand (her prophesied death was quickly reversed), so why should Buffy's destruction of the Master (complete with a sledgehammer taken to his skull) have any permanence either?

Both deaths happened in "Prophecy Girl," episode 112 of the original series, airing all the way back in June 1997, with Mark Metcalf (Animal House) as the gruff vampire overlord. And now, 13 years later, the megavamp is back, cheekily appearing in the last episode of Joss Whedon's canonical comic-book continuation of the series, to the amazement of fans. And no, it wasn't a fake-out--the Master is back for realsies, the result of the writers' wanting to go someplace epic for the culmination of the current series.

"You've got something you need to do plot-wise and there's only one character who can satisfy that," editor Scott Allie said of the villain's return, as reported by Digital Spy. "He'll be doing some big stuff for the next couple of issues."

Those issues would be Last Gleaming, the final arc of the Dark Horse Buffy's season 8. "The thing about these final five issues is that we're in the thick of the climax," Allie continued. "There's not going to be a lot of downtime."

Allie also admitted that he and Joss Whedon have "known that for a long time" that Angel would return to the Buffy comic storyline.

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