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For my own purposes, completely out of my own curiosity, I wanted to take a quick look at how Spike's been portrayed in comics, using only titles in which he is the titular character because we'd have to get waaaaay too much into how other characters are portrayed otherwise. Honestly, between all of S8 and the Armstrong-Willingham arcs, there would be too much to say. On the chopping block, we have...
In this corner, with the chess piece-shaped gloves, we have the originator of all the BtVS/Ats-related comics though they were never concerned with making canon and comics meshy things and still aren't... Dark Horse Comics!
Dark Horse
Spike & Dru: Paint the Town Red (32 pages)- April 1999.
Spike & Dru: Queen of Hearts (32 pages)- October 1999.
Spike & Dru: All's Fair (32 pages)- December 2000.
Spike: Rock 'N' Roll All Night (online "animated" comic thingy)- July 2002.
Spike: Magical Mystery Tour (8 pages)- August 2011.
And in this corner, we have the company that got the carcass of the Ats series after Dark Horse was done chewing on it but actually did something with it- IDW Publishing!
IDW Publishing.
Spike: Old Times (48 pages, one-shot)- August 2005
Spike: Old Wounds (48 pages, one-shot)- February 2006.
Spike vs. Dracula (mini-series, 5 issues, 100 pages total)- February 2006 - June 2006.
Spike: Lost and Found (48 pages, one-shot)- April 2006.
Spike: Asylum (mini-series, 5 issues, 100 pages total)- September 2006 - January 2007.
Spike: Shadow Puppets (mini-series, 4 issues, about 80 to 100 pages total)- June 2007 - October 2007.
Spike: After the Fall (mini-series, 4 issues, about 80 to 100 pages total)- June 2008 - October 2008.
Spike: the Devil You Know (mini-series, 4 issues, about 80 to 100 pages total)- June 2010 - September 2010.
Spike the Series (should have been ongoing, but was cut short due to licensing piracy, 8 issues, about 160 pages)- October 2010 - May 2011.
Let's have a clean bout! Fight! Fight!
Round 1: Dark Horse
Since Dark Horse got the keys to car first, let's take a look at what they did with the horse power...
Dark Horse has been making BtVS comics since September of 1998, starting with an ongoing series and then followed up by mini-series. The first Spike-related main title of theirs (because if I only did his solo titles that had actual pages and wasn't an online flipbook thingie, we wouldn't have one until TODAY, August 1st, 2011) was a little number called Spike & Dru: Paint the Town Red in April of 1999. This comic is infamous among James Marsters fans. Before the comic was published, Marsters told convention-goers and in interviews about how proud he was to work on it... until the comic actually came out. Despite having a writer's credit and doing his best to help, very little of Marsters's input went into the comic. I used to complain that the Dark Horse Spike comics didn't do enough to bring the story forward in time, but I always though that I was looking back from around 2001 at a comic that had been published years before that. For the right perspective, "Lovers Walk" aired on November 24th, 1998, and we would not see Spike on screen again until October '99 in "Harsh Light of Day." Technically, that means that all of the DH Spike comics are flashback comics.
Paint the Town Red published after "Lovers Walk" tells the story of what happened just prior to that episode. Spike and Drusilla get in a fight after Season Two's finale, Dru gets hurt, Spike tries to take care of her and is rebuffed. He's jealous of Angel being first in Dru's heart. Spike goes to the Mediterranean and takes over an island near Turkey where he is treated like a king. Drusilla shows up with a Necromancer she resurrected to teach Spike a lesson, but the Necromancer turns the tables on Drusilla, so our dynamic duo of vampires have team up to stop him. Drusilla sacrifices herself to save Spike, and Spike in turn saves her with his blood. They go to Brazil after making up and destroying the Necromancer... Only for Drusilla to later turn up with a Chaos demon and break Spike's heart all over again.
Queen of Hearts is set before School Hard while Spike and Drusilla are on their way to California. They stop in Missouri to take a ride on a gambling steamboat. Spike uses Drusilla's powers of premonition to place his bets and starts garnering the attention of the creepy steamboat captain. Drusilla almost gets eaten, Spike saves her, the riverboat gets set on fire, and everybody dies. The end.
All's Fair is about Spike and Drusilla at the 1933 World's Fair and involves Spike being chased around the ninja assassin brothers of Xin Rong, the Slayer he killed during the Boxer Rebellion. Also, it involves a Cthulu demon coming out of a sci-fi machine. Spike and Drusilla inadvertently save the world from being destroyed while saving their own asses.
And I'm going to include this even though I didn't list it up top to give Dark Horse a few more credits to its name, Spike & Dru: Who Made Who? is an 8 page long vignette that appeared in the main continuity BtVS comic Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Lover's Walk in February 2001, and it also appears in the Spike & Dru graphic novel with all the comics listed above. After Lovers Walk the episode, Spike and Drusilla are in Brazil, and Spike discovers Drusilla with a Chaos Demon, and I think someone got the Chaos Demon Drusilla was with prior to Lovers Walk confused with the Fungus Demon she left Spike for prior to Harsh Light of Day (to be fair again, we don't actually see what a Chaos Demon looks like until "Fool for Love" but Spike did say that they are covered in slime and antlers and this thing is just covered in fungus... though I guess the horns could be antlers... Nevermind). The story continues with Spike leaving, Lovers Walk happens, and then he finds Drusilla to torture her with hot pokers until she likes him again. I'm not sure what's more unsettling Spike taking a hot poker to the woman he loves or Drusilla wearing jeans and a midriff t-shirt... It all ends with Spike setting an angry mob after her after she reveals that she wanted nothing more than a playmate which is why she made him in the first place (Juliet Landau would be pissed to hear that). ETA: Another vignette is featured in the first issue of the Tales of the Vampires series- The Problem with Vampires details how Drusilla was injured in Prague and how Spike saved her from an Inquisitor and how they eventually decided to make to go to Sunnydale.
ETA: Spike: Rock 'N' Roll All Night: A vampire that looks like Eddie from the Rocky Horror Picture Show shows up in Sunnydale sometime around S5 to take revenge on Spike... for some reason. Spike fights him; bad jokes about music pop culture are made.
Cut through years in which Spike gets a chip, Spike realizes he's in love with Buffy, Spike gets a soul, Spike dies to save the world, Spike gets resurrected in L.A. as a ghost, Spike makes new friends, Spike stays with Angel to face Legion to save the world again. As an Angel character at the show's end, IDW then had the right to use Spike up until 2010/2011 when some interference by Joss Whedon lost them the rebid for those rights. Now, Dark Horse once again has the rights to the character fully, and what do they do? Online comic that fucks with all continuity even their own. *head-desk*
Spike: Magical Mystery Tour is a short that is supposed to tell what Spike has been doing on his spaceship since the end of Issue #39 when he gets hurled out into the sun, rescued by his bugs, and then chases after the Vagina Dentata monster into space. Spike has to bide his time as they travel back to earth. He returns before issue #40. However, it ignores everything that came before it and is really wonky. It's another "Spike as King/Captain" scenario, which gets used quite a lot, but to be fair is present on the show. He likes being in charge when given the chance, but can just as easily take orders though you will have to put up with a lot of snark while he does it.
Round Two: IDW Publishing
Whereas Dark Horse started off with the intent of an ongoing series with mini-series and one-shots, IDW began its license-holding of Ats with mini-series and one-shots and later developed an ongoing series. The first titles that IDW released are not really connected with one another; it's more like different artists trying different hands at different styles. Everyone was taking a turn in the sandbox. Their first mini-series that was released was Angel: the Curse, which was released in June 2005 as a continuation of what happened after "Not Fade Away." Their first foray into dealing full-on with Spike fans came with Peter David's Spike: Old Times.
Spike: Old Times was the third mini-series that IDW released after two Angel-centric ones. This story works in "Fool for Love" and "Older and Far Away" into the plot revealing that Halfrek and Cecily are the same person. Halfrek apparently took vengeance on William's behalf at the party in which she rejected his poetry and his love, but it was all an excuse to take revenge on a man who attacked her in days of yore and all his descendants. One of these descendants runs into Spike during Season Five of Ats, and Spike tries to protect him from Halfrek and succeeds in making her lift the curse, only for the man to comically die of his own doing. Spike later gets his own revenge on Halfrek by kissing her after she revealed she liked his poem about her, and he tells her that she's beneath him.
Spike: Old Wounds is about the Black Dahlia murder. An old LAPD detective arrives at Wolfram and Hart sometime around "the Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco" with a sketch of a suspect, which just happens to look like Spike. Angel is quick to be suspicious of Spike, questioning him interrogation style instead of being open with him. Spike asks for Fred's help in proving his innocence (for this crime at least). Fred finds out, of course, that Spike is telling the truth, and once everything is out in the open, Angel, Wesley, and Gunn feel guilty for not actually investigating the LAPD detective's claims and jumping to conclusions.
Spike vs. Dracula is a flashback series that ends with events taking place in Season Five of Ats. It tells the story of how Dracula came to owe Spike money, starting with events in 1898. It weaves Spike into certain events, like influencing Ed Wood, and continues Peter David's interjection of Bela Legosi into his Spike stories. Dracula apparently not only owes Spike 11 pounds, but also is the reason why Spike, Nostroyev, and the Prince of Lies were captured by Nazis. We get to see Spike in 1898, 1934, 1943, 1959, and lastly in 2003 when Spike finally gets his money back... only to not be able to pick it up because he is still in ghost form at that point.
Spike: Lost and Found is another connect-the-dots story set in Season Five. A vampire is able to attack people during the day, and, of course, Angel has to talk to Spike about it first though he assures Spike that he's not a suspect. It turns out that there are two Gems of Amarra and that Spike mistranslated the Ancient Sumerian text he used to find it (I guess he should have found Dawn or something). Turns out Harmony took the second Gem without realizing what it was and sold it on eBay. Spike and Angel stop the vampire, the day is saved, and Spike destroys the second Gem because perhaps neither he nor Angel deserve it.
Spike: Asylum was the turning point in IDW's Spike comics. Instead of working within an episodic model, the comics began to branch beyond the show itself into a new space where the connections to canon where left up to the reader (To quote Brian Lynch, "Timelines be damned"), and there began to be a continuity within the books to the ones that came before. In this series, Spike is approached to find a missing girl named Ruby who is believed to be in an asylum for demons and magical users. Spike enters the asylum under the guise of restraining himself from his vampiric urges, and even though the administration believes he is lying because his soul should be enough of a restraint, they admit him. He finds out later that the asylum is a trap, that the patients cannot escape from it, as well as that he had been tricked into going there. Ruby's parents had set him up because he had actually killed the girl and her friends when they had mistakenly let him in her house during a slumber party sometime prior to Season Four of BtVS. Spike rallies the members of his therapy group, convinces them to use their collective powers responsibly and not to suppress them, and leads them to victory during a patient uprising.
Spike: Shadow Puppets is a continuation of the events of Spike: Asylum. Spike's having some difficulties working as a hero on his own, but luckily a distraction comes in the form of a distress message from Japan. He travels to Japan with Lorne and meets up with two of his Asylum pals- Beck and Betta George and meets a demon assassin named Tok. Turns out Smile Time had a Japanese branch and are trying to succeed where the L.A. branch failed. Spike, Lorne, and George get turned into puppets, and adorableness ensues. Spike saves the day and along the way discovers that he really can be a leader, that he doesn't have to live in anyone's shadow, and that he can be happy being himself... even if that includes playing mahjongg with a bunch of old ladies in his spare time. Moral of the Story: Everybody needs somebody sometimes.
Spike: After the Fall is set between the events after "Not Fade Away" before the beginning of IDW's Angel: After the Fall (which would become its ongoing Angel series). We learn through the course of ATF and S:ATF that Spike was at first somewhat relieved at being sucked into Hell until he realized that there were still people that needed his protection. He believes that Fred and Illyria are stuck in the same body and wishes to help both of them, and along the way, he gathers together as many survivors as he can find and tries to house them in an abandoned amusement park because it has plenty of places to hide as well as nonperishable food... like Twinkies... Anyway, their cozy little hideaway is attacked by a group of female demons in leather catsuits who are under the control of a mega-demon named Non whose power is to suck the lifeforce out of other people leaving them hollowed out zombie husks. Spike gets captured and tortured for several weeks/months, and eventually, with "help" from Illyria and Connor, is able to break free and kill Non, but not without losing one of his new friends, Jeremy, along the way. After the big boss battle, Spike takes over the Playboy mansion and sets up shop under his cover as Lord of Beverly Hills, pretending to be retired from demon fighting, doing nothing all day but lounge around in his throne in silk pajamas, drinking blood from goblets while scantily-clad women run around to keep his true purpose off the radar- that the mansion is secretly holding a large population of rescued humans, and that he and Connor are still actively fighting demons and doing the hero thing.
Spike: the Devil You Know has a bit of a floating timeline but likely takes place after Angel: After the Fall and likely before or sometime during Willingham's arc of the ongoing Ats series. The series opens with Spike being drunk and a scoundrel is lured into a parking garage with the promise of sex only to be grifted for a talisman-esque coin he's found. The coin was needed by another Aurelian vampire named Tansy Fry who wants to start a business opening up mini-Hellmouths all over the country for profit. Step 1: Take coin. Step 2: Open Hellmouths. Step 3: ???? Step 4: Profit. Anyway, Spike tries to stop her with the unwanted aid of an Ice Demon named Eddie Hope, who is like the worst stereotype of every stoic "badass" in every fast car movie ever. Eddie is shown as a professional while Spike bumbles around like this is his first apocalypse rodeo. They all learn a valuable lesson, and Spike acts like an ass. The end.
Spike: the Series has an unfortunate history. IDW had intended to make this series ongoing for at least two years before the license was given back to Dark Horse. Brian Lynch had this series in pre-production for over a year writing its first arc. However, when the ax came down, Lynch had to shorten what was supposed to be only a twelve issue arc of a longer story down to eight issues and felt the need to shove in a whole bunch of references to DH's Season Eight BtVS comics, and the writing suffered because of it. In the story, which takes place after the Willingham arc or thereabouts, Spike and his Asylum pals, Beck and Betta George, head to Vegas to check out some odd happenings going on there. Wolfram and Hart have set up new digs as a casino and stage show attraction and are prepared to either bribe Spike to leave, take him into their fold, or kill him. Big Baddie John throws a wrench in the cogs and schtumps Drusilla. Willow shows up. Lots of soul talkery, and for a short time Spike gives his soul to Drusilla to protect it from John. Of course, he gets it back and proves once and for all that he does not need a soul to be a hero and that he was on his way to being one without it. Then, suddenly, bug spaceship.
Round Three: the Verdict.
Ultimately, it comes down to effective Spike usage because both companies had about six years times to include Spike in their stories. I think that the verdict must be made in how Spike's character was kept in-character and how he was developed, if at all. Most of Dark Horse's comics involving Spike as a lead were flashbacks, and this mostly has to do with the fact that while they were publishing the show was still ongoing. However, there is not a single comic they put out, even the one released TODAY, that did not have canonical errors. IDW devoted more time and effort into developing Spike's character beyond the show, and granted they had the luxury of the show being over, but they too played fast and loose with canon (though for the first couple of mini-series they weren't really concerned with it, I don't believe). IDW, while having flashbacks in their comics, spent more time pushing the story forward, letting the flashbacks be involved in a main plot either contemporaneously with an episode or sometime in the present/future.
To me, the DH Spike comics were a gimmick. They threw full three out there over the course of a few months in all over the half-decade that they had the rights to him, and they really had nothing to say about Spike that we didn't already know. He's possessive, he's jealous, he can be vindictive, he throws tantrums, but there was no attempt made to scratch below the surface of his motives. Even a love's bitch can't live on love alone. Now, you could say that because the show was still going on, DH was limited in what it could do, but where was a Spike comic after "Fool for Love?" Where was the comic after any of his major plot points? What about a funny comic about Spike being at Xander's during a holiday and showing some empathy? Spike wasn't important to them except solely as a gimmick. He wasn't even used effectively in the pre-S8 ongoing BtVS series except to get naked for gratuitous sex scenes with Buffy (kinda like the show right there)... and prior to issue #36 of BtVS S8 that's all he was used for again. He's a plot device or fan service, but he wasn't treated like a real character. Jane E.'s Magical Mystery Tour is fun and at least someone putting thought into Spike's characterization, but ultimately are 8 pages enough after all this time? Does that make up for a lack of development or consideration?
IDW is not without its faults, God help them, but amongst snarky!Spike and violent!Spike there was always a hint of vulnerable!Spike and insecure!Spike. They reinforced time and time again that Spike doesn't have to be compared to Angel, that they're not two sides of the same coin but rather two different coins of equal value to the 'verse. Of course, to do that, they often had to show some of Spike's insecurities or have someone else make a comparison, and that can get tiresome. They were able to show that Spike is not sixth banana to the A-listers, that he's a headliner. They showed his faults and his strengths. They showed his love and devotion, not just the dark twisty sexual side of love. They showed him making friends, friends that didn't "belong" to someone else first, the kind of friends who would give their lives for his because they love and care about him. Spike is not a squeaky clean pinnacle of goodness, but he's a goddamn hero, and, for the most part, IDW showed him respect. Most importantly, they said the one thing that most people don't want to admit- Spike was good without the soul, and he didn't need it to be a hero. The biggest problem IDW had was Spike's characterization within its ongoing Ats series, but hardly within books that focused on him. Armstrong ignored him, and Willingham butchered his character for God knows what reason, but the minis and the one-shots were always consistent that Spike is just Spike. Sarcastic and sweet and hilarious and inappropriate and at times foul-tempered and loving and fierce and dear, and I think those are things worth showing, things that should be cherished about him. Despite any flaws in characterization, IDW at least treated Spike as a character that was part of the action rather than a character that shows up in two panels so that Spike fans will fork over money for the book. And so...
Winner by technical knock out goes to: IDW Publishing because they gave Spike a chance to shine. Hell, they gave him a chance, and as a character he rose to the occasion again and again and again. I'll miss their stories, and I'll miss the way they handled Spike. I never want to see Willingham or Williams again, but everybody else deserves so much more credit than they get because they took the time to care.
Dark Horse can have a rematch when they provide something more substantial.
And because I can't stop myself... Bonus Round!
Up until now, I have tried not to mention the art as that has very little to do with plot and story, but I will note that both DH and IDW have had some art problems. DH just didn't give a shit, to be honest. They had decent artists at their disposal, but they let six to seven pencillers work on one one-shot to muddy up everything rather than have one artist work at a time. The artwork in their panels is rarely consistent, and the colouring is beyond garish and obstructive. Flash to 2011, and the quality of the work has not gotten any better in my estimate. IDW, however, is not without its faults in the art department. Because both companies believe that they have to get photo-realistic likenesses, they worried too much about it. DH's turn was to concentrate too much on the face and leave the rest of the proportions aside, but even more weird is IDW's overusage of screencaptures and promotional images to draw from in its early books. In its first book, Spike: Old Times over half of the panels have screencaptures as their basis. I have no problem with using references, but you can literally see the same promo shot used in several IDW books. They even began to, in my opinion, rotoscope photos rather than actual draw the panels. To its credit, IDW got Franco Urru to do the pencils for their Spike books, and things vastly improved, but there were still missteps along with the way with the non-Brian Lynch books. Chris Cross's style for Spike: the Devil You Know was just ghastly, but once again it's a desire for photo-realistic likeness that messed him up because he's a good artist, but his style did not fit with what he was trying to do. My biggest regret comic-wise is that Franco Urru was unable to do all of the Spike series, but I understand why he couldn't. I heart you, Mr. Urru!
Bonus Round: Part Two: Recurring themes in Spike's comic portrayal includes needing to be saved and then saving someone else (he's the reverse-Daphne), ninja assassins, and Spike being made King or Captain of something... Yeah, sounds about right.
ETA: Excuse any spelling errors. I am very tired. XD
ETA: Thanks to Double Duchess for reminding me of an online comic and another vignette that I missed! :D
In this corner, with the chess piece-shaped gloves, we have the originator of all the BtVS/Ats-related comics though they were never concerned with making canon and comics meshy things and still aren't... Dark Horse Comics!
Dark Horse
Spike & Dru: Paint the Town Red (32 pages)- April 1999.
Spike & Dru: Queen of Hearts (32 pages)- October 1999.
Spike & Dru: All's Fair (32 pages)- December 2000.
Spike: Rock 'N' Roll All Night (online "animated" comic thingy)- July 2002.
Spike: Magical Mystery Tour (8 pages)- August 2011.
And in this corner, we have the company that got the carcass of the Ats series after Dark Horse was done chewing on it but actually did something with it- IDW Publishing!
IDW Publishing.
Spike: Old Times (48 pages, one-shot)- August 2005
Spike: Old Wounds (48 pages, one-shot)- February 2006.
Spike vs. Dracula (mini-series, 5 issues, 100 pages total)- February 2006 - June 2006.
Spike: Lost and Found (48 pages, one-shot)- April 2006.
Spike: Asylum (mini-series, 5 issues, 100 pages total)- September 2006 - January 2007.
Spike: Shadow Puppets (mini-series, 4 issues, about 80 to 100 pages total)- June 2007 - October 2007.
Spike: After the Fall (mini-series, 4 issues, about 80 to 100 pages total)- June 2008 - October 2008.
Spike: the Devil You Know (mini-series, 4 issues, about 80 to 100 pages total)- June 2010 - September 2010.
Spike the Series (should have been ongoing, but was cut short due to licensing piracy, 8 issues, about 160 pages)- October 2010 - May 2011.
Let's have a clean bout! Fight! Fight!
Round 1: Dark Horse
Since Dark Horse got the keys to car first, let's take a look at what they did with the horse power...
Dark Horse has been making BtVS comics since September of 1998, starting with an ongoing series and then followed up by mini-series. The first Spike-related main title of theirs (because if I only did his solo titles that had actual pages and wasn't an online flipbook thingie, we wouldn't have one until TODAY, August 1st, 2011) was a little number called Spike & Dru: Paint the Town Red in April of 1999. This comic is infamous among James Marsters fans. Before the comic was published, Marsters told convention-goers and in interviews about how proud he was to work on it... until the comic actually came out. Despite having a writer's credit and doing his best to help, very little of Marsters's input went into the comic. I used to complain that the Dark Horse Spike comics didn't do enough to bring the story forward in time, but I always though that I was looking back from around 2001 at a comic that had been published years before that. For the right perspective, "Lovers Walk" aired on November 24th, 1998, and we would not see Spike on screen again until October '99 in "Harsh Light of Day." Technically, that means that all of the DH Spike comics are flashback comics.
Paint the Town Red published after "Lovers Walk" tells the story of what happened just prior to that episode. Spike and Drusilla get in a fight after Season Two's finale, Dru gets hurt, Spike tries to take care of her and is rebuffed. He's jealous of Angel being first in Dru's heart. Spike goes to the Mediterranean and takes over an island near Turkey where he is treated like a king. Drusilla shows up with a Necromancer she resurrected to teach Spike a lesson, but the Necromancer turns the tables on Drusilla, so our dynamic duo of vampires have team up to stop him. Drusilla sacrifices herself to save Spike, and Spike in turn saves her with his blood. They go to Brazil after making up and destroying the Necromancer... Only for Drusilla to later turn up with a Chaos demon and break Spike's heart all over again.
Queen of Hearts is set before School Hard while Spike and Drusilla are on their way to California. They stop in Missouri to take a ride on a gambling steamboat. Spike uses Drusilla's powers of premonition to place his bets and starts garnering the attention of the creepy steamboat captain. Drusilla almost gets eaten, Spike saves her, the riverboat gets set on fire, and everybody dies. The end.
All's Fair is about Spike and Drusilla at the 1933 World's Fair and involves Spike being chased around the ninja assassin brothers of Xin Rong, the Slayer he killed during the Boxer Rebellion. Also, it involves a Cthulu demon coming out of a sci-fi machine. Spike and Drusilla inadvertently save the world from being destroyed while saving their own asses.
And I'm going to include this even though I didn't list it up top to give Dark Horse a few more credits to its name, Spike & Dru: Who Made Who? is an 8 page long vignette that appeared in the main continuity BtVS comic Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Lover's Walk in February 2001, and it also appears in the Spike & Dru graphic novel with all the comics listed above. After Lovers Walk the episode, Spike and Drusilla are in Brazil, and Spike discovers Drusilla with a Chaos Demon, and I think someone got the Chaos Demon Drusilla was with prior to Lovers Walk confused with the Fungus Demon she left Spike for prior to Harsh Light of Day (to be fair again, we don't actually see what a Chaos Demon looks like until "Fool for Love" but Spike did say that they are covered in slime and antlers and this thing is just covered in fungus... though I guess the horns could be antlers... Nevermind). The story continues with Spike leaving, Lovers Walk happens, and then he finds Drusilla to torture her with hot pokers until she likes him again. I'm not sure what's more unsettling Spike taking a hot poker to the woman he loves or Drusilla wearing jeans and a midriff t-shirt... It all ends with Spike setting an angry mob after her after she reveals that she wanted nothing more than a playmate which is why she made him in the first place (Juliet Landau would be pissed to hear that). ETA: Another vignette is featured in the first issue of the Tales of the Vampires series- The Problem with Vampires details how Drusilla was injured in Prague and how Spike saved her from an Inquisitor and how they eventually decided to make to go to Sunnydale.
ETA: Spike: Rock 'N' Roll All Night: A vampire that looks like Eddie from the Rocky Horror Picture Show shows up in Sunnydale sometime around S5 to take revenge on Spike... for some reason. Spike fights him; bad jokes about music pop culture are made.
Cut through years in which Spike gets a chip, Spike realizes he's in love with Buffy, Spike gets a soul, Spike dies to save the world, Spike gets resurrected in L.A. as a ghost, Spike makes new friends, Spike stays with Angel to face Legion to save the world again. As an Angel character at the show's end, IDW then had the right to use Spike up until 2010/2011 when some interference by Joss Whedon lost them the rebid for those rights. Now, Dark Horse once again has the rights to the character fully, and what do they do? Online comic that fucks with all continuity even their own. *head-desk*
Spike: Magical Mystery Tour is a short that is supposed to tell what Spike has been doing on his spaceship since the end of Issue #39 when he gets hurled out into the sun, rescued by his bugs, and then chases after the Vagina Dentata monster into space. Spike has to bide his time as they travel back to earth. He returns before issue #40. However, it ignores everything that came before it and is really wonky. It's another "Spike as King/Captain" scenario, which gets used quite a lot, but to be fair is present on the show. He likes being in charge when given the chance, but can just as easily take orders though you will have to put up with a lot of snark while he does it.
Round Two: IDW Publishing
Whereas Dark Horse started off with the intent of an ongoing series with mini-series and one-shots, IDW began its license-holding of Ats with mini-series and one-shots and later developed an ongoing series. The first titles that IDW released are not really connected with one another; it's more like different artists trying different hands at different styles. Everyone was taking a turn in the sandbox. Their first mini-series that was released was Angel: the Curse, which was released in June 2005 as a continuation of what happened after "Not Fade Away." Their first foray into dealing full-on with Spike fans came with Peter David's Spike: Old Times.
Spike: Old Times was the third mini-series that IDW released after two Angel-centric ones. This story works in "Fool for Love" and "Older and Far Away" into the plot revealing that Halfrek and Cecily are the same person. Halfrek apparently took vengeance on William's behalf at the party in which she rejected his poetry and his love, but it was all an excuse to take revenge on a man who attacked her in days of yore and all his descendants. One of these descendants runs into Spike during Season Five of Ats, and Spike tries to protect him from Halfrek and succeeds in making her lift the curse, only for the man to comically die of his own doing. Spike later gets his own revenge on Halfrek by kissing her after she revealed she liked his poem about her, and he tells her that she's beneath him.
Spike: Old Wounds is about the Black Dahlia murder. An old LAPD detective arrives at Wolfram and Hart sometime around "the Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco" with a sketch of a suspect, which just happens to look like Spike. Angel is quick to be suspicious of Spike, questioning him interrogation style instead of being open with him. Spike asks for Fred's help in proving his innocence (for this crime at least). Fred finds out, of course, that Spike is telling the truth, and once everything is out in the open, Angel, Wesley, and Gunn feel guilty for not actually investigating the LAPD detective's claims and jumping to conclusions.
Spike vs. Dracula is a flashback series that ends with events taking place in Season Five of Ats. It tells the story of how Dracula came to owe Spike money, starting with events in 1898. It weaves Spike into certain events, like influencing Ed Wood, and continues Peter David's interjection of Bela Legosi into his Spike stories. Dracula apparently not only owes Spike 11 pounds, but also is the reason why Spike, Nostroyev, and the Prince of Lies were captured by Nazis. We get to see Spike in 1898, 1934, 1943, 1959, and lastly in 2003 when Spike finally gets his money back... only to not be able to pick it up because he is still in ghost form at that point.
Spike: Lost and Found is another connect-the-dots story set in Season Five. A vampire is able to attack people during the day, and, of course, Angel has to talk to Spike about it first though he assures Spike that he's not a suspect. It turns out that there are two Gems of Amarra and that Spike mistranslated the Ancient Sumerian text he used to find it (I guess he should have found Dawn or something). Turns out Harmony took the second Gem without realizing what it was and sold it on eBay. Spike and Angel stop the vampire, the day is saved, and Spike destroys the second Gem because perhaps neither he nor Angel deserve it.
Spike: Asylum was the turning point in IDW's Spike comics. Instead of working within an episodic model, the comics began to branch beyond the show itself into a new space where the connections to canon where left up to the reader (To quote Brian Lynch, "Timelines be damned"), and there began to be a continuity within the books to the ones that came before. In this series, Spike is approached to find a missing girl named Ruby who is believed to be in an asylum for demons and magical users. Spike enters the asylum under the guise of restraining himself from his vampiric urges, and even though the administration believes he is lying because his soul should be enough of a restraint, they admit him. He finds out later that the asylum is a trap, that the patients cannot escape from it, as well as that he had been tricked into going there. Ruby's parents had set him up because he had actually killed the girl and her friends when they had mistakenly let him in her house during a slumber party sometime prior to Season Four of BtVS. Spike rallies the members of his therapy group, convinces them to use their collective powers responsibly and not to suppress them, and leads them to victory during a patient uprising.
Spike: Shadow Puppets is a continuation of the events of Spike: Asylum. Spike's having some difficulties working as a hero on his own, but luckily a distraction comes in the form of a distress message from Japan. He travels to Japan with Lorne and meets up with two of his Asylum pals- Beck and Betta George and meets a demon assassin named Tok. Turns out Smile Time had a Japanese branch and are trying to succeed where the L.A. branch failed. Spike, Lorne, and George get turned into puppets, and adorableness ensues. Spike saves the day and along the way discovers that he really can be a leader, that he doesn't have to live in anyone's shadow, and that he can be happy being himself... even if that includes playing mahjongg with a bunch of old ladies in his spare time. Moral of the Story: Everybody needs somebody sometimes.
Spike: After the Fall is set between the events after "Not Fade Away" before the beginning of IDW's Angel: After the Fall (which would become its ongoing Angel series). We learn through the course of ATF and S:ATF that Spike was at first somewhat relieved at being sucked into Hell until he realized that there were still people that needed his protection. He believes that Fred and Illyria are stuck in the same body and wishes to help both of them, and along the way, he gathers together as many survivors as he can find and tries to house them in an abandoned amusement park because it has plenty of places to hide as well as nonperishable food... like Twinkies... Anyway, their cozy little hideaway is attacked by a group of female demons in leather catsuits who are under the control of a mega-demon named Non whose power is to suck the lifeforce out of other people leaving them hollowed out zombie husks. Spike gets captured and tortured for several weeks/months, and eventually, with "help" from Illyria and Connor, is able to break free and kill Non, but not without losing one of his new friends, Jeremy, along the way. After the big boss battle, Spike takes over the Playboy mansion and sets up shop under his cover as Lord of Beverly Hills, pretending to be retired from demon fighting, doing nothing all day but lounge around in his throne in silk pajamas, drinking blood from goblets while scantily-clad women run around to keep his true purpose off the radar- that the mansion is secretly holding a large population of rescued humans, and that he and Connor are still actively fighting demons and doing the hero thing.
Spike: the Devil You Know has a bit of a floating timeline but likely takes place after Angel: After the Fall and likely before or sometime during Willingham's arc of the ongoing Ats series. The series opens with Spike being drunk and a scoundrel is lured into a parking garage with the promise of sex only to be grifted for a talisman-esque coin he's found. The coin was needed by another Aurelian vampire named Tansy Fry who wants to start a business opening up mini-Hellmouths all over the country for profit. Step 1: Take coin. Step 2: Open Hellmouths. Step 3: ???? Step 4: Profit. Anyway, Spike tries to stop her with the unwanted aid of an Ice Demon named Eddie Hope, who is like the worst stereotype of every stoic "badass" in every fast car movie ever. Eddie is shown as a professional while Spike bumbles around like this is his first apocalypse rodeo. They all learn a valuable lesson, and Spike acts like an ass. The end.
Spike: the Series has an unfortunate history. IDW had intended to make this series ongoing for at least two years before the license was given back to Dark Horse. Brian Lynch had this series in pre-production for over a year writing its first arc. However, when the ax came down, Lynch had to shorten what was supposed to be only a twelve issue arc of a longer story down to eight issues and felt the need to shove in a whole bunch of references to DH's Season Eight BtVS comics, and the writing suffered because of it. In the story, which takes place after the Willingham arc or thereabouts, Spike and his Asylum pals, Beck and Betta George, head to Vegas to check out some odd happenings going on there. Wolfram and Hart have set up new digs as a casino and stage show attraction and are prepared to either bribe Spike to leave, take him into their fold, or kill him. Big Baddie John throws a wrench in the cogs and schtumps Drusilla. Willow shows up. Lots of soul talkery, and for a short time Spike gives his soul to Drusilla to protect it from John. Of course, he gets it back and proves once and for all that he does not need a soul to be a hero and that he was on his way to being one without it. Then, suddenly, bug spaceship.
Round Three: the Verdict.
Ultimately, it comes down to effective Spike usage because both companies had about six years times to include Spike in their stories. I think that the verdict must be made in how Spike's character was kept in-character and how he was developed, if at all. Most of Dark Horse's comics involving Spike as a lead were flashbacks, and this mostly has to do with the fact that while they were publishing the show was still ongoing. However, there is not a single comic they put out, even the one released TODAY, that did not have canonical errors. IDW devoted more time and effort into developing Spike's character beyond the show, and granted they had the luxury of the show being over, but they too played fast and loose with canon (though for the first couple of mini-series they weren't really concerned with it, I don't believe). IDW, while having flashbacks in their comics, spent more time pushing the story forward, letting the flashbacks be involved in a main plot either contemporaneously with an episode or sometime in the present/future.
To me, the DH Spike comics were a gimmick. They threw full three out there over the course of a few months in all over the half-decade that they had the rights to him, and they really had nothing to say about Spike that we didn't already know. He's possessive, he's jealous, he can be vindictive, he throws tantrums, but there was no attempt made to scratch below the surface of his motives. Even a love's bitch can't live on love alone. Now, you could say that because the show was still going on, DH was limited in what it could do, but where was a Spike comic after "Fool for Love?" Where was the comic after any of his major plot points? What about a funny comic about Spike being at Xander's during a holiday and showing some empathy? Spike wasn't important to them except solely as a gimmick. He wasn't even used effectively in the pre-S8 ongoing BtVS series except to get naked for gratuitous sex scenes with Buffy (kinda like the show right there)... and prior to issue #36 of BtVS S8 that's all he was used for again. He's a plot device or fan service, but he wasn't treated like a real character. Jane E.'s Magical Mystery Tour is fun and at least someone putting thought into Spike's characterization, but ultimately are 8 pages enough after all this time? Does that make up for a lack of development or consideration?
IDW is not without its faults, God help them, but amongst snarky!Spike and violent!Spike there was always a hint of vulnerable!Spike and insecure!Spike. They reinforced time and time again that Spike doesn't have to be compared to Angel, that they're not two sides of the same coin but rather two different coins of equal value to the 'verse. Of course, to do that, they often had to show some of Spike's insecurities or have someone else make a comparison, and that can get tiresome. They were able to show that Spike is not sixth banana to the A-listers, that he's a headliner. They showed his faults and his strengths. They showed his love and devotion, not just the dark twisty sexual side of love. They showed him making friends, friends that didn't "belong" to someone else first, the kind of friends who would give their lives for his because they love and care about him. Spike is not a squeaky clean pinnacle of goodness, but he's a goddamn hero, and, for the most part, IDW showed him respect. Most importantly, they said the one thing that most people don't want to admit- Spike was good without the soul, and he didn't need it to be a hero. The biggest problem IDW had was Spike's characterization within its ongoing Ats series, but hardly within books that focused on him. Armstrong ignored him, and Willingham butchered his character for God knows what reason, but the minis and the one-shots were always consistent that Spike is just Spike. Sarcastic and sweet and hilarious and inappropriate and at times foul-tempered and loving and fierce and dear, and I think those are things worth showing, things that should be cherished about him. Despite any flaws in characterization, IDW at least treated Spike as a character that was part of the action rather than a character that shows up in two panels so that Spike fans will fork over money for the book. And so...
Winner by technical knock out goes to: IDW Publishing because they gave Spike a chance to shine. Hell, they gave him a chance, and as a character he rose to the occasion again and again and again. I'll miss their stories, and I'll miss the way they handled Spike. I never want to see Willingham or Williams again, but everybody else deserves so much more credit than they get because they took the time to care.
Dark Horse can have a rematch when they provide something more substantial.
And because I can't stop myself... Bonus Round!
Up until now, I have tried not to mention the art as that has very little to do with plot and story, but I will note that both DH and IDW have had some art problems. DH just didn't give a shit, to be honest. They had decent artists at their disposal, but they let six to seven pencillers work on one one-shot to muddy up everything rather than have one artist work at a time. The artwork in their panels is rarely consistent, and the colouring is beyond garish and obstructive. Flash to 2011, and the quality of the work has not gotten any better in my estimate. IDW, however, is not without its faults in the art department. Because both companies believe that they have to get photo-realistic likenesses, they worried too much about it. DH's turn was to concentrate too much on the face and leave the rest of the proportions aside, but even more weird is IDW's overusage of screencaptures and promotional images to draw from in its early books. In its first book, Spike: Old Times over half of the panels have screencaptures as their basis. I have no problem with using references, but you can literally see the same promo shot used in several IDW books. They even began to, in my opinion, rotoscope photos rather than actual draw the panels. To its credit, IDW got Franco Urru to do the pencils for their Spike books, and things vastly improved, but there were still missteps along with the way with the non-Brian Lynch books. Chris Cross's style for Spike: the Devil You Know was just ghastly, but once again it's a desire for photo-realistic likeness that messed him up because he's a good artist, but his style did not fit with what he was trying to do. My biggest regret comic-wise is that Franco Urru was unable to do all of the Spike series, but I understand why he couldn't. I heart you, Mr. Urru!
Bonus Round: Part Two: Recurring themes in Spike's comic portrayal includes needing to be saved and then saving someone else (he's the reverse-Daphne), ninja assassins, and Spike being made King or Captain of something... Yeah, sounds about right.
ETA: Excuse any spelling errors. I am very tired. XD
ETA: Thanks to Double Duchess for reminding me of an online comic and another vignette that I missed! :D
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It does seem strange that the DH comics really focused their Spike & Drusilla comics all around the same time frame- from Prague then the journey to Sunnydale to Brazil and then back to Sunnydale (and the World's Fair one). There's a host of stories that could be told about those two outside of that early 1995 to 1999 timeline. It's like a cornucopia of opportunities for mayhem and creativity, the possibilities are literally endless and they really stifled themselves.