Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast reunite to fight real vampires in Buffy '97 comic

Buffy 25th Anniversary Special variant cover (Image credit: BOOM! Studios)

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer is known for its tongue-in-cheek wit and playfulness with the franchise's tropes, but all that is being magnified in a new Buffy '97 comic book one-shot.

That's right - Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy Summers), Alyson Hannigan (Willow Rosenberg), and more will star as themselves in a comic that imagines them having to fight off real vampires, using the skills they learned from appearing in the show.

BOOM! Studios is calling this mash-up 'That Buffy Show.'

Buffy '97 collection cover (Image credit: Jenny Frison (BOOM! Studios))

It's going to be interesting to know what these actors think about being included in this way - especially since some of them such as Amber Benson (Tara McClay) and James Marsters (Spike) have actually written some Buffy comics.

Buffy '97 will be written by Say Anything frontman-turned-comic-writer Bax Bemis, and drawn by Marianna Ignazzi, who has drawn recent issues of BOOM!'s main Buffy the Vampire Slayer series.

The release date for 'That Buffy Show' has not been announced, but we found out about it through a collection listed on Amazon by BOOM! Studios which will include the one-shot, as well as several short stories from March 30's Buffy 25th Anniversary Special, and even some "classic" Buffy comics originally published in the '90s by Dark Horse Comics.

The one-shot is part of what BOOM! Studios is formalizing as a Buffy Multiverse, which includes the original 1992 film, the late '90s TV series, and the continuities of the Dark Horse, IDW Publishing, and BOOM! Studios comic series including the upcoming Buffy the Last Vampire Slayer continuity.

Read more about the Buffy 25th Anniversary Special.

Chris Arrant covered comic book news for Newsarama from 2003 to 2022 (and as editor/senior editor from 2015 to 2022) and has also written for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Marvel Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, AdHouse Books, Cartoon Brew, Bleeding Cool, Comic Shop News, and CBR. He is the author of the book Modern: Masters Cliff Chiang, co-authored Art of Spider-Man Classic, and contributed to Dark Horse/Bedside Press' anthology Pros and (Comic) Cons. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. Chris is a member of the American Library Association's Graphic Novel & Comics Round Table. (He/him)