It's only fair to include them all. I've been reading a lot that in just a few pages from the last few pages of S8 and the new online one-shot that DH has somehow done a better job than all of IDW's collective works, and I just find that hard to believe, so I wanted to explore it further. I own all the Spike-titled comics, so I sat down today and read them. There's a wealth of storytelling at IDW, and it didn't seem that up until recently that DH was even interested in Spike. From some of Scott Allie's comments in the past few years, I don't think DH is interested in Spike now unless they can raise sales off of him.

I think that Mariah felt obligated to protect the writer even if she really knew that the fans were not happy with what was going on, so she needed to come up with a way to protect the writer while fixing the problem, which was the "Spike has a soul flu. Spike's been blacking out. It's not his fault" excuse, which I did not enjoy, but at least she was trying to explain that Spike doesn't act like Willingham wrote him (even if Willingham did feel he acted that way).

I loved the first ten pages of Spike: Old Times with the flashback. The colours were fluid and there was an obvious attempt to draw realistically without a total reliance on screencaptures. It felt more natural than the last ten pages. Spike: Lost and Found was the one that was almost entirely rotoscoped.