For months, BOOM! Studios and writer Bryan Edward Hill have been keeping a secret about Buffy The Vampire Slayer. And unlike a common bit of unannounced comic publishing news, this secret isn't rolling out as a cover tease or solicitation announcement. It's a fully fledged series arriving in stores far sooner than you'd expect.

As of next week, Angel is back -- and in more ways than one.

Not only will the brooding, heroic vampire to appear in BOOM!'s new Buffy relaunch series with its fourth issue, Angel is also making his way into a solo series that will blaze all-new ground for the franchise thanks to the creative team of Bryan Edward Hill and Gleb Melnikov. Adding to the intrigue is the fact that the first issue, Angel #0, has never been solicited, and yet will hits the stands exclusively in print next Wednesday alongside the fan-favorite character's reappearance in Buffy #4.

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As BOOM! VP of Marketing Arune Singh explained to CBR, Buffy executive editor Jeanine Schaefer and her team took Jordie Bellaire's grand design for the main Buffy series and saw Angel's first appearance in issue #4 not just as a milestone for the new continuity, but an opportunity to draw fans further into what BOOM! can do with Whedon's beloved cast. "It's part of that really cool Joss Whedon tradition where you don't just have a cliffhanger, but have one last surprise waiting for you," he explained.

In particular, the move is meant to help drive interest to comic shops in an era where everything is immediately disseminated and dissected online. "We looked at this as a natural story point where we could launch an Angel series from Buffy #4, so let's create that excitement purely as a comic book store event," he added, noting that these stories would not be available via digital channels until May 1.

Angel #0 cover art by Boris Pelcer

For his part, Hill laughed at the thought that he has an entirely new comic launching without saying anything about it until the week before it went on sale. "When you write screenplays and television shows and comic books, you learn how to keep a secret. So I haven't been teasing anything. My lips are sealed," the writer said. He also spoke with CBR about how this take on Angel will explore new territory never before seen in the Whedonverse, what old familiar faces may be on tap for his Los Angeles-based adventures, and why the horrors of being young are even more powerful in 2019.

CBR: Bryan, the BOOM! line of Buffy comics is a reboot in the strictest sense, but it's meant to evoke the classic series. In the latest issue, we're seeing Angel's introduction to the series ahead of his own new series, and I don't think it's spoiling too much to say this version of the fallen vampire calls back to his introduction in the first episode of Buffy in that he's a sullen, skulking presence on the scene. What was the baseline you wanted to work from as you put this important character back on the board?

Bryan Edward Hill: In Buffy, when we see Angel we're experiencing that through Buffy's point of view because we experience the show that way. So those aspects of his character emerge because of that dynamic. When you're telling a story about Angel, you're telling it from his point of view, and you're much more aware of his intentions. So some of that lurking quality recedes because you understand why this person is putting himself where he wants to be.

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And one of the things we've been talking about is that if you're a character like Angel – who's life is as long as its been or that he's been dead this long, depending on how you want to look at it – then suburbia might be the last place you'd want to be. I got really fascinated by the idea of this guy with all his dynamism and wisdom and experience dealing with the climate of suburbia. It's like I feel when I go to Santa Monica. I live downtown [in Los Angeles], and when I go to Santa Monica, I can't empathize with people who think tofu is that important. But there's something to learn for Angel – the small things for people can be just as important as the big ones.

When we meet Angel in issue #0, we see a character who's thinking about the breadth of what he wants to accomplish and not necessarily the individual wins and losses along the way. Angel will always be about the largess of the overall mission of redemption while also dealing with the slings and arrows of being a young person in 2019.

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One major difference between BOOM!'s Buffy title is that while the initial series revisits the high school years fans know well, your comic is going to be checking in on Angel in LA during that same time. It's really an unknown chapter of this universe. Was that part of what you wanted to explore?

Yeah, that certainly was a draw for me. I've always been a big fan of the character and of the show. I was more of an Angel fan than a Buffy fan, honestly. And you have thoughts as a fan when you're growing up watching stuff when you wonder what all those years and all those adventures were like. Jeanine [Schaefer], the editor on the book, always talks about Highlander as one of our influences – just in terms of the ability to window into epic storytelling in the past while also conceptualizing what's going on in the present. So building that out into a real mythology and seeing the concentric circles of what's he's done both as Angel and as Angelus, that was very interesting.

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When you tell a story about a character who's trying to reconcile with the sins of his past, you want to have a rich, interesting and layered past to draw from. And that undiscovered country idea, that's something as a storyteller that I'm always on the hunt for. I'm always searching for the places that don't have flags yet. At the same time, I'm equally excited about bringing him into Buffy's world and Buffy into his world in the ways that we'll eventually do it. And we'll be visiting reincarnations of characters we know and updating it all in a way I think has a contemporary understanding of what the world is like in 2019. Unfortunately, I think every year it gets even harder to be a young person. Now young people have difficulties that I didn't have growing up. Managing that is certainly of interest to me.

One question you hint on is the issue of how much you'll be playing with what we've seen before. The original Angel TV series with its setting of Wolfram & Hart had plenty of characters and ideas that had nothing to do with his Buffy years. Will you be pulling some of those pieces into this series or working more to build up an all-original supporting cast?

Angel #0 variant cover art by Boris Pelcer

Without going into too many details, as a comic writer you often work in the space of adaptation and of interpretation. For me, it's kind of like music. If I sit down at the piano and play a pop song, I might interpret it my own way, but it's really important that you recognize the melody. It's important that there are signifying aspects of that creative work that you want to maintain. So I would tell old fans that they should expect versions of what they are familiar with for sure. They may not get them in the order they expect, and the effect of them may be different than they expect. But they'll all be present.

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And I think for new fans, I would tell them that you don't need to be intimately familiar with Angel or Buffy to enjoy this book. You can pick it up from issue #0 forward, and you'll be immediately caught up on this iteration of the story. It's a bit of a delicate balance, but I don't believe creatively in throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What Whedon created is enduring, and there's an archetypal logic that those characters and story elements matter. It's more about how we look at how they exist in 2019 to both honor the spirit of what they are but also make them as relevant as we can to modern audiences.

When people pick up the #0 issue, they'll see the landscape you're playing with, and I don't think we're spoiling too much to say there's some demon stuff as opposed to pure vampire action, and a new character in the mysterious Fee Fee. Should these be taken as signs of what the first arc is going to be focused on, or are you trying to switch things up right away?

I think that the overall thematic I'm dealing with is what lies behind the veil of all reality? What are the battles that we as people don't see between good and evil? Angel is fighting those battles against his enemies and along with his allies. That's always been the thing that fascinated me about Whedon's work. It's always been about those who know and those who do not know. It's about the burden of knowing and the responsibility that comes from knowing. What I'd say you can expect are the supernatural causes of real world trauma and how the two are related. If you think about a young person depressed because of what they've been put through on the internet, you wonder if there's a demon who feeds on that depression. Is there a being that creates feeling in others that compels them to behave a certain way online to abuse people emotionally? Issue #0 scratches at that surface, and then it continues more and more in the coming issues.

That jibes a lot with the way I've always seen the early seasons of Buffy described as "high school as a horror story." Angel's not in high school, but it is the emotional stress of the modern world turned into genre storytelling.

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These days, I think high school is always a horror story. From Wes Craven in the '80s, Whedon in the '90s and on to what we're doing now, it's hard growing up, man. I think the recognition of that particular difficulty is what these stories are all about – and also the heightening of it in supernatural terms. It's truth in fantasy that leads to a greater truth. That's really our mission in this story.

Your artist, Gleb Melnikov, is going to be a new name to a lot of readers, but his style seems to fit into the look we expect from Whedonverse comics. He can do detail and likeness really well, but he can also do a lot with just a few lines – letting shadows do a lot of the work when the horror calls for it. What's been your experience of collaborating with him?

Because I'm also a filmmaker and a photographer, I very much like to let my collaborator who is visualizing this narrative have the leeway to interpret everything as they would like. I definitely look at it as a collaborative process. We're both telling the story. I might write the words, but that's not the experience the reader's going to have. They get the images and the words in the story. And so I've always responded well to artists who interpret effectively. I'm a minimalist by nature. If you look at my writing or my photography, I try to get the most done with less because I find that experience as a viewer more interesting.

I really like what Gleb was doing. It has such a graphic quality. Every panel is satisfying in terms of it composition and shape. The way things look, it all feels indelible. The experience you want in a comic panel-by-panel is the feeling that this was the only image that could tell this story. And when I look at Gleb's work, I see a certainty of line. I respond to that very much, and I was elated to see the art.

Check out both Buffy The Vampire Slayer #4 and Angel #0 in comic shops Wednesday, April 17 from BOOM! Studios.