Angel #1

Overview

THIS IS IT! The official continuation of the Angel TV series!

When last we saw Angel and company, they were charging into battle against Wolfram and Hart's Senior Partners and facing down endless demons in a dark and rainy alleyway. Now, IDW Publishing is proud to present the story of Angel: After the Fall, as presented by Angel co-creator Joss Whedon, with a creative team hand-picked by Whedon himself, the Spike: Shadow Puppets team of Brian Lynch and Franco Urru.

Picking up where Season Five of the fan-favorite TV show ended, the first issue in this maxi-series looks at who lived after that climactic battle, who died, and what happened to all of Los Angeles in its wake. Acclaimed artist Tony Harris (Ex Machina) and Urru provide special covers for each issue of this momentous series. Issue 1 features a full 27 pages of story and art!

On a street in LA a girl and two men are looting a store when they're suddenly attacked by a demon. But before the demon can do any harm, Angel appears wielding a sword. He cuts down the attacking demon and starts working on its friends. The demons quickly recover, drop Angel to the ground and start tearing into his body. Things look bad but then out of nowhere a dragon appears and burns the demons to a crisp. Throughout his fight Angel had been recapping the events that brought him to the point he's at now, saying that he'd made some bad choices and ending up working for an evil organization. The dragon had also been part of that organization and two minutes into fighting it he had realized that it had been just as misled as he. Now they work together.

With the threat dealt with Angel turns his attention to the humans. He tells them to take the car his dragon had brought and head to address he hands them on a slip of paper. The people wonder what's been going on and though Angel knows why the world is as it is, he doesn't tell them. He just hops on his dragon and flies away. As the dragon flies over the city he goes over what he isn't telling anyone. Things are like they are because he and his friends took a stand and Wolfram and Hart sent an army. Both sides suffered losses and Wolfram and Hart sent LA to hell. Now demons ran the city. They had quickly conquered and divided it, and now they owned it, everything but the Wolfram and Hart offices where Angel and his dragon live.

The dragon reaches their home and Angel tells it to grab some cars for the night rounds. As he goes inside a demon grabs him and slams him into a wall. It's Burge, Lord of Downtown LA and his son. Burge has come because Angel's latest escapade took place in his territory. As Burge's son gets angrier (it was his men who had been killed) he prepares to do something rash when Wesley Wyndham-Price walks through the door. While Burge's son holds Angel, Wesley and Burge have a talk. Wesley says that Wolfram and Hart don't approve of Angel's actions and he will be punished, but not by Burge. Angel's fate isn't up to him and if Angel dies, bad things will happen to everyone else. Burge leaves but swears that if Angel leaves the building again that night or kills any more of his men, he'll be coming back for his head. Or his desk. Burge really likes the desk. Burge's son still wants to kill Angel but since he can't he decides to take a swing at Wesley. The demon is surprised to see that the man is intangible and quickly flies off. When the demons are all gone, Wesley asks Angel how his rounds went and learns that he saved about a dozen people and sent that all to the usual place.

In Santa Monica the last three people that Angel saved make their way to an old hotel that was apparently where Angel sent them. The two guys are wary of the place, not entirely trusting that Angel was a good guy, but the girl believes he was so they go inside. When they open the doors they see a room full of humanoid demons and people with weapons. The guys really want to leave but before they can lightning fills the air around them. A girl in red appears and tells them they're just trying to see if they're on the up-and-up. The lightning fades and then another girl appears from the darkness and starts smelling them and even licks the girl. She freaks out but Nina (the girl that did the licking) explains that she's a werewolf and since the sun and moon are out all the time in hell, it has an affect on her. From out of the darkness someone else appears and tells Nina and Gwen (responsible for the lightning) to calm down, the new arrivals were sent by Angel so they're good. Then he gives them his name. It's Connor.

Back and the offices of Wolfram and Hart, Angel is laying on a table with some kind of creature on his chest. Wesley says it's supposed to heal him but Angel is not happy about using it. Angel asks why Wesley wasn't around when he came back and was attacked by Burge and his son, and Wesley said he wanted to see Angel's next move which ended up being "squirm". Angel then explains why he couldn't really do anything about Burge. If he killed Burge and his son, every demon would be fighting to take over his position as Lord and numerous humans would die. Angel goes on to say that he wishes he had been able to take out the demons as they popped up, but he had been unable to move for the first few days (or weeks possibly) after LA had been sent to hell. Now all he can do is save small groups of humans (without upsetting the senior partners of Wolfram and Hart). He's working on a plan though, all he needs is the right firepower. Wesley gives a response that tells a little about his position now. He says he'd give anything to leave and be able to move on, indicating that he did die at the end of Angel but the senior partners had prevented his soul from passing on so he could do their work and continue to get Angel to work for them. Then he says that if Angel doesn't get some control, the wrong person is going to. As he says this, Angel is looking at a picture of his "firepower", some kind of orb.

The orb is elsewhere at the moment. Specifically, in the chest in the jelly-like Lord of Westwood. The creature sits on a throne in an arena surrounded by girls, other demons and Betta George, a telepathic fish. On his throne, the Lord of Westwood is yelling idiotically at some humans to get them to fight. When they won't, he orders Betta George to telepathically force them to fight. The fish says he doesn't have that much power so the Lord of Westwood imparts him some power from the orb in his chest and Betta George reluctantly forces the humans to start slaughtering each other. In the middle of the gladiatorial brawl a group of angry, armed and hooded strangers enters the arena. Suddenly a weighted bag slams into George's head knocking him out and the attackers advance upon Lord Kr'ph himself. Kr'ph sends his demon lackeys to fight and they willingly put themselves in harms way for their master, but as one of the attackers says, their fighting ability leaves something to be desired. The attackers easily slice through the demon defenses and amid the fight their hoods are dropped and the leader is revealed to be none other than Gunn. Kr'ph has, at this point, turned from threats to bargaining but Gunn knows what he wants and has no problem taking it. He sticks a hand into Kr'ph and rips out the orb from his dying body. With the main bad guy dead, the other demons fall soon after leaving Gunn and his team standing in a field of corpses. No demons are left so Gunn has his men wrap up the fish and Gunn brings the girls back to wherever "Team Gunn" is hiding out.

Back at the offices of Wolfram and Hart, Angel is putting a sword away when he hears someone or something outside yelling "six for six". Apparently it's Burge's son again and he's saying that he gets to kill six humans because Angel killed six of his men. Angel stands on the edge of his building remembering that he was told not to leave and watches the demons circle the humans. As Burge's son is about to kill a human, Angel throws his desk outside as recompense. When the demon flies up at Angel, the man takes out a stake and throws it into his eye, a declaration of war.

Elsewhere, the Gunn's men are writing something arcane on the walls and body cover the floor. The corpses seem to be the people they saved before and they all have bite marks on their necks. Around the corner, Gunn, now a vampire, is draining one of the rescued girls.