Spike: Shadow Puppets is a limited series

Limited series

A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....

 comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 based on the Angel

Angel (TV series)

Angel is an American television series, a spin-off of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The series was created by Buffys creator, Joss Whedon, in collaboration with David Greenwalt, and first aired on October 5, 1999...

television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 series. The Spike centric comic was released by IDW Publishing

IDW Publishing

IDW Publishing, also known as Idea + Design Works, LLC and IDW, is an American publisher of comic books and comic strip collections. The company was founded in 1999 and has been awarded the title "Publisher of the Year Under 5% Market Share" for the years 2004, 2005 and 2006 by Diamond Comic...

 from June 2007 through October 2007. The four issues were collected together in a single trade paperback in December, 2007.

Continuity

• The continuity of this comic is unconfirmed. A scene on page 3 of issue #2 with Angel, Illyria, and Wesley at Wolfram & Hart, indicates it occurring during the final episodes of Angel season five, sometime after "Shells
  Shells (Angel episode)
  "Shells" is episode 16 of season 5 in the television show Angel.-Plot synopsis:Wesley thinks that Fred is alive, if a little blue, but he soon realizes that she's really Illyria. Her expression is blank and her movements are staccato impressions of who Fred once was. Illyria turns and is shocked...
  
  ", but before "Not Fade Away
  Not Fade Away (Angel episode)
  "Not Fade Away" is the 22nd and final episode of season 5, and the series finale of the television show Angel. Written by series creator Joss Whedon and directed and co-written by Jeffrey Bell, it was originally broadcast on May 19, 2004 on the WB network...
  
  ". The fact that Wesley is still alive in Spike's brief fantasy in issue #2 seems to imply that the story takes place prior to "Not Fade Away". However, the later appearance in issue #4 of "Spoiler Wesley", as well as the fact that Spike is supposed to have been working solo for a while at this point, would set it after season five entirely.
• Shadow Puppets best shares continuity with the previous Spike: Asylum series, of which writer Brian Lynch commented "...I'm just telling the best SPIKE story I can, timelines be damned."
• The original ambiguity of Shadow Puppets place in the continuity is directly referenced (through use of a pun) in issue #1, when the puppets attack Spike with the "Official Smile Time Cannon", Spike remarks "I hate... official cannon."

Canonical issues

Angel

Angel comics

Angel comic book refers to one of two series published by Dark Horse Comics during 2000–2002. Both of these series are based on the television series Angel, and were published while the television series was on air. The first volume was an ongoing series halted after seventeen issues. The second...

 comics such as this one are not usually considered by fans as canonical. Some fans consider them stories from the imaginations of authors and artists, while other fans consider them as taking place in an alternative fictional reality. However unlike fan fiction

Fan fiction

Fan fiction is a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator...

, overviews summarising their story, written early in the writing process, were 'approved' by both Fox and Joss Whedon

Joss Whedon

Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon is an American screenwriter, executive producer, director, comic book writer, occasional composer and actor, founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-creator of Bellwether Pictures...

(or his office), and the books were therefore later published as officially Buffy merchandise.

External links

• Johnston, Rich, "LYING IN THE GUTTERS VOLUME 2 COLUMN 92", ComicBookResources.com (February 20, 2007).
• "Teaser for the next Lynch/Urru SPIKE project!", IDWpublishing.com (January 22, 2007).
• June solicitations on Comics Continuum