I found your observations really really interesting (hope it's ok that I just friended you to stay on track with your thoughts on the comics).

I really hope that you're right and Spike is going to have an appearance in S8 (and if there's a god a cover done by Jo Chen), even if just as an important part of Buffys past. It looks to me like Buffy purposefully avoids thinking about him, maybe because it's still painful. But then I might just interpret that in because I can't really imagine her being indifferent towards him.
Or maybe Joss doesn't want the souled vampires to play as large a part in the comicverse as they did on the show. I'm not sure, but i agree that it might be to early to write Spike off in S8.