Boom! Studios’ Buffy/Angel crossover “Hellmouth” is a strange beast. It’s unclear, but it seems as though the Hellmouth miniseries is about Buffy and Angel’s adventures inside the titular Hellmouth, while both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel are focusing on their title characters’ respective supporting casts. It’s a unique structure, but so far, it seems to be giving both of the regular series a jolt, as this week’s issue of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, like last month’s Angel, one of the best of the series.

With Buffy away, this issue checks in on quite a bit of the supporting cast, but it focuses primarily on Willow, Xander, and Giles. Willow’s sacrifice of part of her soul to save Xander is taking its toll on her psychologically. This is depicted visually by the new black streak in her red hair, and she’s turning towards sorcery as a way to cope (echoing the TV show’s use of magic as a stand-in for drug abuse). Giles’ relationship with Jenny Calendar is on the rocks, and he’s starting to suffer from major stress--or is it something more sinister? Xander is the only one of the Scooby gang actually doing any vampire slaying, which only highlights the fact that he’s half-vampire himself.

Writer Jordie Bellaire does a great job of really getting into these three troubled characters’ heads, and finding ways to compare and contrast them and bounce them off of each other in a really compelling issue. The way she writes an unhinged Giles is really compelling, and her take on the conflicted Xander is really effective.

David López’s layouts are particularly effective, as well. He starts with a nine-panel grid to check in with various people in Buffy’s life (Joyce, Cordelia, and more) and then starts to expand the frame when the story really begins with Willow’s conflict with her girlfriend. In the stories of Willow and Giles, she keeps the panels rectangular and bordered in black, but lets the panels become more jagged and chaotic during the issue’s only real action scene, Xander’s fight with the vampire. Colorist Raúl Angulo helps create the claustrophobia that all three characters are fighting with his dark tones and heavy shadows. Letterer Ed Dukeshire keeps the story flowing.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #9 is a particularly strong episode in Boom! Studio’s hit-or-miss reboot of the Buffyverse. It’s telling, though, and a little troubling, that both of the Buffyverse titles seem to hit their stride when their main characters are absent.

Grade: A-