Damn, but I've missed Buffy.

Sure, in the aftermath of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's seventh and final season, I've picked up a sampling of the collected Buffy comics from Dark Horse, but -- as good as some of them are -- it just hasn't sated my thirst for more. But series creator Joss Whedon has gone a long way to fixing the problem with Season 8, a new Buffy series that picks up where the TV finale left off.

Have you wondered what Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles have been up to since Sunnydale imploded? Joss has the answers. Have you pondered the effect on the world of the sudden existence of countless powerful young women with Slayer powers? Joss knows, and he's willing to share. Has it occurred to you that someone -- or something -- might have survived in the rubble of Sunnydale? You might be surprised by that one.

Did you think it was kind of lame when we learned in Angel that Buffy was off bopping in Italy with the powerful Immortal? She wasn't. Whedon handily explains that away -- without messing up the continuity even a bit.

The Long Way Home is the first story arc of the new series, and it takes us to the Scottish castle where Buffy hangs her hat as leader of a Slayer commando unit, where Xander acts as a new Watcher and ops coordinator, where Willow takes care of both mystical and technical affairs, and where Dawn -- still kind of whiny, damn it -- parks her very, very, very large sneakers.

Without giving too much away, I'll say that Buffy is hit with a magical assassination attempt and the American military takes an unfriendly view of the Slayer army, which strikes where and when it sees fit without respect to international boundaries. And, to round out the book, there's the very touching and well-imagined stand-alone tale about a very special Slayer with a very unique assignment.

I was pretty sure that nothing would fill the large Buffy-shaped hole in my heart. I'm not sure a new comic series is as good as a new TV series or a string of big-budget films (hint, hint), but it does a far better job than I could have expected. With Joss at the helm, you know the story is good and the specific voices of his beloved characters sound exactly as they should. The art, by Georges Jeanty, falls just short of photorealism; it's beautiful stuff, well drawn and fluid, and the characters are instantly recognizable as the actors who portrayed them.

Buffy the Comic Book has been hit-or-miss over the years. This new incarnation is a bullseye. I can only hope the creative team, led by Whedon, can maintain this outstanding level of quality.