Three issues into the Hellmouth miniseries--itself a crossover between Boom! Studios’ rebooted Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel titles--and it’s still not entirely clear what is happening. Classic Buffy/Angel villain Drusilla had a plan, but it’s still not clear what that plan was. That plan has been derailed, but it’s still not clear how. Buffy and Angel are in danger, but it’s still not clear why.

This issue continues the journey of Buffy and Angel through the Hellmouth. They find Drusilla, who reveals to Buffy that Angel was there when she tried to turn Buffy’s friend Xander into a vampire. Buffy fights fake versions of her friends (which she already did the last issue). Angel meets a weird troll thing that tells him (off-panel) how he can become human. And that’s it, that’s all that happens, and nothing is made clear to the reader.

This may simply be a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. The issue is written by Jordie Bellaire and Jeremy Lambert. Bellaire is doing good work writing the Buffy series solo, so why she’s got a co-writer on the mini is unclear. Much of the issue’s action is either repetitive or superfluous, and there’s no real insight into the characters’ inner lives, either. It feels like a filler issue, full of action, and not much else.

Eleonora Carlini’s art is great. Carlini does a good job matching the “house style” of the main titles in the BtVS comics line, and her character design of the troll thing is particularly cool. The coloring by Chris Peter is all sickly greens and pinks, which is a nice change from the stereotype of reds and blacks dealing with the Hellmouth. The lettering by Ed Dukeshire is solid, as well.

The Hellmouth crossover has been an odd comics event, in that it’s led to some excellent elevated work in the main series, but the crossover itself seems to get weaker and weaker as it goes on. This miniseries has two issues left to turn it around; it’ll be interesting to see if it can manage it.

Grade: B