Angel’s extremely prolonged death finally comes to a close in Angel After the Fall Issue 14. I think Superman took less time to die than Angel did. But the climax of everything is at hand. Gunn has Illyria in Fred’s form and is ready to fulfill what he thinks is the final plan, to bring out Illyria’s form. Meanwhile Spike tries to save Angel with a dose of vampirism by turning him again, which would have made Spike, Angel’s sire, after already being sired by Angel for a truly confusing relationship. Also it would have brought Angelus back for some truly epic ugliness.

Spike however is stopped in his plan by Connor, and everyone is stopped in their tracks by the arrival of some of Wolfram and Hart’s very demonic senior partners, who are pretty much who we thought they would be, arriving on razor clawed jet planes and plotting real estate purchases in Cleveland and the restoration of Angel, who cannot be allowed to die since he is meant to bring on the apocalypse. With scenes like that and after 6 years and all the effort that Wolfram and Hart has invested in Angel, it almost seems as if he would really have been better off defeating them by staying dead.

Gunn meanwhile does his best to manipulate Illyria, only to realize that what Angel had been telling him all along was true, and he was the one being manipulated by the Senior Partners who positioned the whole thing to play out for Angel’s benefit. Angel does return to life, but Illyria gets tired of living, returns to her original gigantic demon queen form and decides to collapse time and end all of existence. Like I said, the problem just got a lot bigger.