Spike: Asylum

Spike: Asylum
Publication information
Publisher	IDW Publishing
Format	100 Pages, full color
Publication date	September 2006–January 2007 (monthly)
No. of issues	5
Main character(s)	Spike, Lorne
Creative team
Written by	Brian Lynch
Artist(s)	Franco Urru
Letterer(s)	Michael Heisler, Sulaco Studios, Neil Uyetake, Chris Mowry
Colorist(s)	Matteo Gherardi, Elena Virzi, Fabio Mantovan, Donatella Melchionno

Spike: Asylum is a five-issue comic book limited series based on Angel television series. It was released from September 2006 through January 2007. The five issues were collected together in a single trade paperback in May 2007.

Ruby Monahan has gone missing and her family recruits Spike to track her down. It seems Ruby (a half-demon) has been checked into "Mosaic Wellness Center", a rehab facility designed to cure the demonic. Evidence shows Ruby is instead being tortured severely inside Mosaic so Spike agrees to infiltrate.

Whatever is going on, many of the clients do want to murder Spike, having a history with him, and are willing to hurt his newfound encounter-group friends to do so. And just where is Ruby anyway?

In his blog, writer Brian Lynch has commented on when the comics takes place within Buffyverse continuity:

Angel comics are not usually considered by fans as canon. However unlike fanfic, 'overviews' summarising their story, written early in the writing process, were 'approved' by both Fox and Whedon (or his office), and the books were therefore later published as officially Angel merchandise.

Later, Betta George from Asylum appears in Lynch and Joss Whedon's canonical Angel: After the Fall. The Mosaic Wellness Center is seen briefly, and Spike refers to him and George as going "way back". Later references under Lynch's penas the series went on (such as in the After the Fall Epilogue in issue #23) would place the events of Spike: Asylum more definitively within the chronology of the series.

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Wikipedia