I think the question of whether season 8 is canon is pretty much like the question of whether Maccabees is canon (it is if you're Catholic; it's not if you're Protestant). By that I mean that there are going to be distinct communities, some taking the comics as canon, others not. The author doesn't get to dictate how the text is received.
Emotionally nothing over at IDW counts as canon for me. As Shapinglight says, Lynch's Angel was too flat to move me as the 'real' Angel. Oddly, though I like the Buffy comics more, I don't emotionally think of them as canon either. The Buffy I saw at the end of Chosen wasn't on any obvious trajectory to robbing banks to finance a high-tech army holed up in a castle, and I haven't been given any kind of story to explain how she got there. Among other things we skipped over one of the central questions of her story which is what she would do if she had a choice. (Seeing she's made a choice is not the same as watching her make it). So this just feels like another fanfic -- one of many possible outcomes post-Chosen. Whether it's an interesting option depends a great deal on how much repair can happen in the last quarter of the series.
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Emotionally nothing over at IDW counts as canon for me. As Shapinglight says, Lynch's Angel was too flat to move me as the 'real' Angel. Oddly, though I like the Buffy comics more, I don't emotionally think of them as canon either. The Buffy I saw at the end of Chosen wasn't on any obvious trajectory to robbing banks to finance a high-tech army holed up in a castle, and I haven't been given any kind of story to explain how she got there. Among other things we skipped over one of the central questions of her story which is what she would do if she had a choice. (Seeing she's made a choice is not the same as watching her make it). So this just feels like another fanfic -- one of many possible outcomes post-Chosen. Whether it's an interesting option depends a great deal on how much repair can happen in the last quarter of the series.