It is mid-afternoon on Saturday at 2003’s Comic-Con International in San Diego, and I have just fulfilled my goal of seeing science fiction legend Ray Bradbury in person. But now I rushed back to Room 6CDEF for the next panel that was to start at 3:30. The Cartoon Network panel in Room 6CDEF was over, and the family that had promised to save me a seat had, understandably but annoyingly, evaporated. Still, I found empty seats not too far distant to the stage, settled in one and held onto another. I sighted my friend Meloney Crawford Chadwick, who had just entered, and waved her over to my seats. Meloney and I met at the first major comics convention I ever attended, and she too had a long history in the comics business, as a major figure at Eclipse, Harris, and Dark Horse. And now I am envious of her, because she is the writer of the trading cards Inkworks publishes about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. These, for the relatively few of my readers who may not know, are television series, one about a young woman with superhuman abilities, and the other about her ex-lover, a vampire, presenting their adventures with intelligence, wit, and dramatic skill that reveal new artistic potential within the fantasy adventure genre. I may have gotten to work for Marvel and DC chronicling their fictional universes, but she gets to write in an official capacity about the Buffyverse! And we have both come to see the mastermind behind both shows, the creator of Buffy and co-creator of Angel, in the panel “Dark Horse Presents: Joss Whedon.”
BUFFYCON PART 1: THE MAN BEHIND THE SLAYER
Joss Whedon appeared in the doorway, and I spotted him moments before most of the rest of the audience did, and the assemblage rose in a standing ovation. Flashbulbs aplenty went off, as if in homage to Whedon, although being on the other end of the cameras had its disadvantages. “I’m blind!” exclaimed Whedon, moving through the aisles, claiming he was “running about to avoid cameras.”
In the Angel writers’ panel that followed, we were told that much of the distinctive dialogue style of Buffy – the “Buffy patois” – comes from Whedon’s own style of speaking. Especially for Xander, the compulsive jokester on Buffy, we were told they just “write down how Joss talks.” And you will see this exemplified in the quotations below, as Whedon continually shifts from facetiousness, mock innocence, and outright wisecracking to considered analysis of his work and then, as if by reflex, punctuates it with a joke. It’s a different, more American style of addressing an audience than Neil Gaiman’s dry wit, but equally successful in entertaining the crowd.
Whedon started off with something of a brief State of the Union address. “Thank you to Dark Horse Comics for bringing me out here for Fray, for letting me make a comic that was closest to my heart and the slowest thing ever written.” Fray is a comic mini-series written by Whedon himself, depicting a vampire slayer who lives in a future century, long after Buffy’s time. “The last issue should be coming out in the next few weeks. Thank you for your patience; it was all Firefly‘s fault,” his third television series which kept him so busy for much of 2002.
Reminiscing about the Comic-Con, Whedon recalled that he first came to Comic-Con the summer after Buffy‘s first season, along with “Nicky and Alyson” – Nicholas Brendon and Alyson Hannigan, who played Buffy’s friends Xander and Willow – to “see if anyone was watching the show.” (I saw all three sitting at the Dark Horse booth that year, but I regret to confess I had not attended their panel, and was not yet watching Buffy regularly. I did not get hooked until the beginning of Season 2. I know, I am ashamed.)
Whedon claimed that at that Comic-Con seven years before, he was surprised to hear the audience for his panel “make cheering sounds.” He joked that it was “like a drug” – “Somebody recognized me!” – and assured us he was “on methadone now.”
“Now,” Whedon declared, “we all know Buffy is done.”
Saddened by the thought, the audience moaned, “Awwww. . . .”
“Nobody told you guys?” Whedon asked. “That’s so weird.” Then he returned to a serious tone, saying that returning to Comic-Con following Buffy‘s finale was “sort of a bookend to a journey that has been, obviously, the most important and extraordinary thing of my life,” and he said, “Thank you, guys” – his audience, for our role in making this possible.
Turning to his second show, Whedon reported that “We fought to keep Angel on the air. It was kind of a battle, which was,” he said with evident understatement, kind of “annoying. This year we’re going to hit our 100th episode. We’ll be making some changes and we’ll also be doing a lot of stuff exactly the same because personally I think the show is going really well. Thursday of next week I will begin shooting the first one.”
“And then there is that third show, Firefly.” This was Whedon’s space opera modeled after classic Westerns, which he created for the Fox network, but which was cancelled before all the episodes that had been filmed were telecast. The audience erupted in applause, and Whedon bowed forward and held out his microphone to amplify the response. “I’m such a whore,” he said. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting to hear that.”
“Firefly has been the most exhilarating and painful journey I’ve ever taken in quite so short a period of time. I loved that show so much. I loved everybody on it, and everybody who worked on it. And I knew that there was somebody who didn’t work at the network who agreed with me! I believe December will be the DVDs. Every single episode, including the ones that never aired, all in widescreen and all with commentary. And I am, in fact, in the process of still struggling, as I have been since the day we were cancelled, to get a Firefly movie made. I have no news except that I have hope and in the next couple of months I will know definitely whether or not we may actually be shooting one within the year.” [Editor’s Note: yesterday it was announced that Whedon has signed a deal with Universal, and will shoot the Firefly movie in the first quarter of 2004.]
With that, Whedon took the first question from the audience. It was about Spike, the popular vampire character from Buffy. Originally a villain, Spike mellowed over time, primarily because he realized he was in love with his nominal enemy, Buffy. They even had an affair, but, according to Whedon’s mythology, vampires lack souls. So Spike underwent a series of trials that restored his soul, and ended up heroically sacrificing his life in Buffy‘s last episode. Nevertheless, it was subsequently decided to bring Spike over to the Angel series, whose title character is the only other vampire who got his soul back. Fans have been wondering just how Spike will be resurrected.
So, asked this first questioner, could Whedon “shed any light” on some of the “rumors about Spike?”
“We’re just good friends,” Whedon replied.
Trying to get past Whedon’s defenses, the audience member persisted, asking if Spike would return as a ghost.
“Some of you have been here before,” Whedon began, so we would know what to expect: “I’m not telling you dick. But however we bring him back, he’ll still be James Marsters” – the actor who played him – “so how bad can it be?”
The next question stayed on the same topic area: why did Spike react differently to regaining his soul than Angel did? “Well, he’s a different guy than Angel,” Whedon began. “Hopefully, he’s a different guy because otherwise Angel‘s going to be really boring.” But seriously, Whedon hypothesized, ” I think Spike was actually a lot closer to human. Angel was at full-tilt evil,” and it took him one hundred years to try “to figure it out, what it was he had to do. Spike actually went in search for a soul when he had none. So I think he was much more evolved than Angel, personally, I think that’s why it was easier for him to make the transition.”
The next audience member shifted to the topic of Whedon’s now homeless creation. Had he tried selling Firefly to the Sci-Fi Channel?” Yes, Whedon said, but, he claimed, the Sci-Fi Channel responded, “‘Ah no, that’s not for us, that’s too sci-fi.'” The audience laughed, and Whedon took it further. “And Oxygen said, ‘Too many chicks.’ And you’ll never believe what the Western network said.”
In a pleading tone, a woman asked if Whedon was ever going to tie up what she viewed as loose ends from Buffy‘s finale, “like is Anya really dead,” maybe in a TV movie or in Fray, perhaps.
“Bless your desperation,” replied Whedon in a kindly tone. “And I share it. The idea was to have closure so that people felt like we came full circle, that we said what we needed to say, but not end everything, so that one day there may be a movie, a TV-movie, a spin-off.”
Buffy‘s final episodes both used and diverged from continuity elements that Whedon had previously established in his Fray comics. Whedon noted that “There are now things in Fray, mythologically, that don’t match up, which I’m going to have to explore when I do the next series of Fray comics. Oops, did I say that?”
But as for what happened to the Buffy characters following their escape from the finale’s concluding disaster, Whedon asserted, “I’m pretty sure we’ll be seeing some of those characters show up on Angel next year. So we should learn a little bit about where they went.”
But, sounding a recurring refrain, Whedon apparently did not want to rush into this: “We’re really tired.”
Appropriately for Comic-Con, an audience member asked if Whedon wanted to write any DC Comics or Marvel characters.
“I really would,” replied Whedon. “It’s only a question of time. There are many, many characters in both universes that I would hunger to get my hands on, intimidated though I would be.”
Now that in itself is interesting. I remember reading that the novelist John Updike was a big fan of the Spider-Man newspaper strip. (And that seems odd considering how poorly it compares to the best Spider-Man comic book stories, which apparently Updike had never seen.) Updike was asked if he wanted to try his hand at writing comics but demurred, saying it was a very different art form and he would not feel comfortable with it. Now here is Whedon, “intimidated” by the idea of working with the classic Marvel and DC superheroes. How different their attitude is from that of so many comics professionals and executives who just dive right in, without feeling any awe at all, and in so many cases produce such mediocre work. And here are two great writers from other media who, perhaps, perceive more clearly just how difficult good comics writing is.
And again, with the funny. “I’m thinking I would like to do Ultimate Ultimate Spider-Man,” Whedon ventured. “Just reboot Spider-Man again. Because, you know, it’s like 37 issues old and I think the kids today can’t relate to that.” See? No wonder Joss is my hero. Then, seriously, he added, “I’ve always wanted Buffy to fight Batman.” (Paging DC Comics?)
(I don’t know if Whedon spoke to anyone at DC at the Con, but he did say he had been “just talking to Joe Quesada,” Marvel’s editor-in-chief. But how did Whedon find him, since, as we know, there is no Marvel booth. Is it hidden in a secret location? Does someone from Marvel slip Celebrity Writers they want to attract something like a treasure map? And then would the Writer in question weave his way through the Convention Center, moving from one landmark marked on the map to the next. And, finally, does this Writer end up knocking at a hidden door and giving a password – “Joey da Q sent me”? – like at a speakeasy in the 1920s?)
The real problem about his getting to write for Marvel or DC, Whedon confessed, was that he is the sort of person who is “not that bright. . . about my time.” Still, he continued, he “would love to write any of the canon characters,” adding, with mock enthusiasm, “Dazzler!”
A new question: did Whedon “regret” any direction he took his shows in? Would he make any changes if he could go back?
“I don’t know how this whole feminism thing got into Buffy,” Whedon groused. “That’s just embarrassing.”
Then he gave us the real answer. “I really don’t have any regrets,” apart from some occasions when an actor was unavailable, such as Seth Green leaving Buffy or the actors who played Darla and Lindsay being otherwise occupied at the end of Angel‘s second season.
“I’ve been luckier than almost anyone else in TV,” Whedon declared. I got to do almost exactly what I wanted on two different shows for, right now, a grand total of eleven years. That’s an extraordinary gift. And as I learned last year, rather strikingly,” – another reference to Firefly – “it doesn’t come very often… So, I’m not big with the regret.”
I noticed during this Comic-Con that some panels’ audiences policed their own kind, making their displeasure at certain inappropriate behavior quite clear. So it was when an insufficiently self-aware audience member began his question by thanking Whedon “for seven mostly great seasons of Buffy.” The audience groaned at the faux pas.
“Calm down, people,” Whedon said, acting above the fray (so to speak), then adding, “Get him, security!”
In response to a request for more commentary tracks on the Buffy DVDs, Whedon commented, “I never fathom why that’s cool.” He said he had been trying to do commentary for Buffy‘s final episode, “Chosen,” earlier that day, and had trouble coming up with things to say.
This seems odd, since he is certainly never at a loss for words when he talks to a Comic-Con audience. Maybe that’s the secret. Whedon, like Neil Gaiman and Stan Lee, is a true showman, each with his own style, in interacting with convention audiences. The commentary track Whedon did jointly with writer Marti Noxon and actor Seth Green for the episode “Wild at Heart” in the Buffy Season 4 DVD set is consistently funny and entertaining, and even keeps going after the show stopped. Whedon obviously needs an audience when talking about his work, or at least a supporting cast!
Another questioner suffered from a mild case of hubris of a different sort. He wanted to know if Whedon and his writers read Internet discussions of his shows, “because,” the fan claimed, “we’ve talked about stuff and then four weeks later it’ll be on screen.”
“Obviously I’ve gotten most of my ideas from you,” Whedon replied. Then, thoughtfully, he inquired of no one in particular, “Is that legally binding?”
“When we go to websites we’re looking for a general feeling of what’s not playing, what are people really passionate about and what are they debating and where are we getting it right and where are we getting it wrong? If you see something four weeks after it comes out on your website, that means we’ve been working on it about eight weeks before that, at least.”
This is a welcome change from what I’ve read in interviews with various creative figures, in and out of comics, over the years, who dismiss what the “fans” say and claim they instead heed what the more general audience wants. Sometimes I wonder, though, if the core audience is like the proverbial canary in the coal mine. X-Files writers kept claiming how the audience would come to appreciate the intended replacements for Mulder and Scully, Agents Doggett and Reyes, but the majority of core fans disliked them. And my guess is that the core fans actually stuck with the show longer than the general audience, which apparently shared their opinion but left in droves. Political commentator George F. Will observes in the September 1, 2003 issue of Newsweek that “Political parties decline when they alienate their core voters,” a lesson that I suspect applies to core followings in popular culture, as well.
Whedon and company do not simply do what the fans want, having stated that the show must not do the expected and must send its heroes in unpleasant situations for effective storytelling. But they do monitor how the core audience reacts. I suspect that is in part because Whedon and his writers have been and are themselves fans of various movies, TV shows and comics. And partly this is a testament to how the Internet makes the core audience of a show and their opinions more visible. That’s one reason there are now so many presentations for films and television series now at Comic-Con.
I suspect that Buffy fandom’s first choice for a Buffy spin-off would be a series featuring the “bad girl” Slayer, Faith, played by the popular Eliza Dushku. But she is starring in a different series this fall. And so came a question from one of the many fans who seem to believe that Dushku made the wrong choice. Might there be a Faith spin-off if her new show Tru Calling –
Whedon interrupted: “if it’s NOT her true calling?”
The fan persisted: what if Tru Calling was cancelled, adding, in an apparent effort to press one of Whedon’s buttons, that “the Fox network kind of mishandles new shows.”
“Obviously I’m not going to wish ill on Eliza’s new show,” Whedon said diplomatically, “but boy, do I want to see Faith again! As I’ve said, we’re all just sort of reeling from the last seven years, and we don’t have any particular plans, but if Eliza became available, I think that would probably become an issue because there’s not a person on my staff who isn’t hungry to do something about that.”
A number of questioners wanted Whedon to take the long, historical view of his contributions to the television medium. This next one asked did he “think through the changes you’ve made to television,” particularly in experimental episodes like “Hush” (which was mostly silent) and “Restless” (mostly a series of surreal dreams).
Whedon started, “It wasn’t really like” – and then he shifted into a snooty, pseudo-British voice – “‘Well, I’ll show television how it’s done.'” or “I invented TV.” Back in his normal voice, Whedon explained that “When I created Buffy, part of the reason was I wanted to direct films, but I was writing films. Buffy was one big graduate school for me and my writing,” and for his writing staff as well.” It was about “trying to be better, trying to grow as an artist.” I have encountered so many people working in genre comics who refuse to consider what they do to be “art,” that it is rewarding to hear a writer who deals in heroic fantasy refer to himself as an “artist,” and, by extension, to his work as art.
Then a fan asked, perhaps wondering if Whedon shared the fan’s own feelings, if Whedon missed or was “in mourning” for the show?
“I’m not in mourning,” Whedon maintained. “I miss a lot of the writers, I miss a lot of characters.” But, he said, he felt that with its last season, Buffy was “coming to a head,” and that “seven is a good number” for the length of a series. Besides, Whedon added, he was “really, really exhausted,” a theme that has been cropping up in Whedon’s interviews for months now.
Perhaps heeding Whedon’s admission of exhaustion, an audience member then wondered if there could be a continuation of Buffy ten years from now, on television or in comics form.
“It could,” Whedon admitted. “The great thing is the show’s about growing up. If they do and we were to come back, it’s not like, ‘I can’t believe they’re trapped on the island again!’ And wherever they are in their lives is wherever the story will pick up.”
An audience member then asked what Whedon thought what Buffy‘s legacy was to television? This was really a variant on a previous question, but this time Whedon replied in terms not of storytelling craft but of theme.
“I honestly believe that we were in the middle of a sea change about the way people perceive female heroes,” observed Whedon. “What’s really important to me is the fact that when I started the idea of Buffy, it was a new concept: the idea of a young high school girl being somebody important and powerful was obviously new.” Whedon modestly cautioned that Buffy did not bring about this revolution alone: “I think there are other shows like Xena that deserve way more credit than they get.” But, Whedon continued, “We got the crest of the wave.”
Then someone raised an unpleasant subject: did Whedon expect the negative backlash to Buffy Season 6?
“My advisors all told me everyone loved Season 6,” Whedon replied, feigning nervousness: “I have to go.”
But he remained. Season 6 was and remains controversial, since all of the regular characters went through dark psychological periods in their lives: the popular character Willow witnessed the murder of her lover Tara, and turned insane and evil, and Buffy herself drifted away from her sense of purpose into an affair with Spike, that bordered on sadomasochism.
“Season 6 was a real challenge for people,” admitted Whedon. “It was very dark. It was very upsetting. And I think it was because the character of Buffy herself was sort of” – because the character of Buffy herself was in question. . .was sort of taken away from the audience. I think that’s why when people say it went too far in the darkness, that’s what they’re missing, and I don’t disagree with that. We ourselves felt like after awhile, ‘Okay, we’re dealing with some interesting issues, but holy Jesus! I’m so depressed! So we wanted her to come out and find her power. I think in retrospect when all seven years are taken together, you’ll see that as with any fiction, it always gets darkest before the end.”
I found Buffy‘s Season 6 a valuable and challenging experiment, that pushed the envelope on heroic fantasy. Since the Marvel revolution we are used to seeing heroes who grow angst-ridden over their lives, and who even (temporarily) abandon their calling out of despair, or, as Stan Lee put it in Amazing Spider-Man #50, “Spider-Man No More!” Whedon took it further, showing us in the Buffy of Season 6 a hero, a superhero, indeed, who genuinely suffered from clinical depression, even if that word was rarely used. And yes, I too felt that her descent went too far and lasted too long, but, then again, had it not gone “too far,” perhaps it would not have had the dramatic impact that it did. I expect part of the problem fans had with the story line was that the causes and motivations for Buffy’s descent weren’t made sufficiently clear; her recovery likewise just seemed to happen without clear cause.
Buffy Season 6, to me, is comparable to the “grim and gritty” period in superhero comics in the late 1980s and early 1990s. And just as superhero comics have not truly recaptured the vital, positive outlook they had before the “grim and gritty” wave, neither did Buffy in Season 7. She was back in heroic mode, but the character had lost much of her warmth and humor from the first five years.
Buffy‘s final episode, this year, ended on a highly positive note. Buffy had Willow use her magical abilities to alter the spell that only empowered one female to be a Slayer at a time. Now every girl or woman with the potential to be a Slayer has that potential activated. An audience member wanted to know just how many women that was. Hundreds? Millions?
“I hope to explore the ramifications,” Whedon said, in Angel or a later Buffy spin-off. As for why he made this plot twist, “We were trying to make a statement about women and where they are in society and where they could be,” Whedon explained. His point, he said, was that “strength” was “to be shared,” rather than confined to one individual hero. “We need not have heroes so much as to all see ourselves as heroes.” If there is one quotation to be taken away from Whedon’s talk at the Con, I believe that was it.
Then came probably the most difficult question of the entire hour. Towards the end of the notorious sixth season, the still literally soulless Spike attempted unsuccessfully to rape Buffy. (We learned, by the way, in the next panel that this had been executive producer Marti Noxon’s idea.) But then they grew closer together in the final season. An audience member asked, “What kind of message did that send?”
Here Whedon turned quite serious, with no jokes whatsoever. “It’s something that we on staff have been debating for years, and we figured our ambivalence was exactly what we wanted to project, and we used that on the show. We knew that we couldn’t come back from an attempted rape to a romantic sexual relationship. But what we did want to say was that we could come back to a place of trust between these people. That man could redeem himself.” Whedon said he thought that was “the best possible message to get out there.”
Whedon stated that “in time what went on with Spike and Buffy was very textured and complicated.” The relationship, as it evolved in season seven, “has a romantic/sexual angle but not a physical one.” Whedon declared that he didn’t like “the Luke and Laura thing,” alluding to an infamous story line in the soap opera General Hospital long ago, in which a character named Luke raped the heroine Laura, and they ended up as lovers and even got married.
As for Buffy and Spike, Whedon said, he and his writers “went back and forth endlessly. Should they get together once, should they never get together. . .should she feel guilty about that emotional need?” Whedon summed up, “Hopefully some of that spilled out into the show, because it is probably the most complex question that is asked in the entire run of the show.”
There was a little girl in the question line (who, come to think of it, had unfortunately just heard that whole discussion of rape), who asked Whedon who his favorite Buffy character was.
Whedon looked about in mock cautiousness, and observed, “There are no actors from Buffy here.” And then he answered – “Willow” – bringing tremendous applause from the audience.
“Which is yours?” he then asked the little girl, who replied (perhaps unexpectedly), “Faith.” “Not bad,” acknowledged Whedon.
The next questioner wanted to know where all the cast members of Buffy were “going.”
Whedon dropped into a hushed tone of voice: “They go to Cast Member Heaven.” But no, not really. He mentioned that Sarah Michelle Gellar and Michelle Trachtenberg were currently doing movies, and that Alyson Hannigan had one just about to come out, referring without naming it to the latest in the American Pie series. “Very tasteful and for the kids,” commented Whedon.
“But we’re also talking to a bunch of cast members about coming on Angel when they have the time. So I think you’ll be seeing them around all over the place. They’re pretty good at their jobs.”
For that matter, Whedon asserted, “I haven’t created my last TV show.” In an apparent reference to the fate of Firefly on the Fox network, Whedon added, “There may be Fox execs who say, ‘Yes, you have.'”
The next questioner compared Buffy to Tarzan and Zorro, heroes whose popularity has continued long after their creation. “That’s always been my intent,” Whedon acknowledged, that Buffy would be an “icon” whose life as a fictional character would go on “beyond me.” Having turned serious, Whedon joked his way out, as if by reflex: “We’re looking for a Buffy-Tarzan-Zorro teamup.”On the subject of television aimed at the “lowest common denominator,” Whedon said that he did not watch reality TV shows, inasmuch as “I don’t like shows about backstabbing, competition and idiots” (yet another reason he is my hero).
One of the most popular and critically well-received episodes in Buffy‘s history was the musical, “Once More with Feeling,” in which the characters performed songs composed by Whedon. So another audience member asked if there was a musical episode in store for Angel.
“Somewhere David Boreanaz’s hair is standing up,” Whedon said, referring to Angel‘s lead actor. But no, Whedon demurred, saying that a musical was appropriate for the “Buffy universe,” but “the Angel universe, not so much.” Whedon and company have repeatedly referred to Angel as a show with more adult concerns than Buffy, though, as one writer pointed out in the next panel, Buffy Season 6 was darker than Angel ever gets.
Abruptly, Whedon changed the subject to talk about one of the stars he worked with. “I don’t want to say diva, bitch, pain in the ass, talentless hack,” Whedon went on, as I, and no doubt the rest of the audience, equally startled, wondered what’s going on? Is he going to say something he shouldn’t? Has he gone loopy? And then Whedon introduced Nathan Fillion, who played the lead in Firefly and the villainous preacher Caleb in the final episodes of Buffy, and who was watching from over by the doors. Not the tripartite name we expected! Whew, Whedon was just playing a mind game with us! Serious, now, Whedon praised Fillion as the “best hero I’ve ever worked with, possibly the best villain.” Come to think of it, that says a lot right there.
Another questioner asked if Whedon had formulated any ideas for an eighth season of Buffy. “It’s interesting,” Whedon replied; “I was in a coma.” So, I take it that when he claims to have been exhausted by seven seasons of Buffy, he is not kidding.
But Whedon can and should look back on his achievement in seven years of Buffy with pride.
The night before, my academic acquaintance Peter Coogan and I had had a friendly argument over whether or not Buffy is a superhero. Certainly the show has repeatedly used that word to describe her, though I see Peter’s point that Buffy is not a pure example of the superhero genre. (I can even supply reasons: no masks and costumes, and more importantly, most paranormal elements are based in the supernatural, not science fiction.) Nonetheless, we agreed that the superhero genre is a strong influence on Buffy.
And it seems to me that Buffy and Angel are actually better contemporary examples of superhero stories than most of today’s superhero comics. Too many of these comics read and feel too much as if longtime readers of the genre are doing jaded critiques on these characters, many of whom have been published for twenty to over sixty years. The new stories lack the positive energy, the imaginative vitality, the sense of wonder, the sheer spirit that these characters and their adventures radiated in their prime. In the 1960s the torch of creativity in the super hero genre passed from DC to Marvel, and in the mid-1980s it went back to DC. But by the early 1990s, I believed the torch had passed almost entirely away from comics, and it was Warner Brothers Animation’s Batman and Superman series that best embodied the spirit of the superhero myth.
And in the late 1990s the torch passed to Joss Whedon’s Buffy and Angel. Whedon pushed the envelope of the genre in large part due to his guiding principle that he and his writers have continually reiterated in interviews: the fantasy adventure storyline in Buffy and Angel should serve as a metaphor for the characters’ emotional and psychological issues. So it was that Buffy’s battles against supernatural menaces became dramatic projections of her struggles to mature through adolescence and young womanhood.
Once enunciated, this principle seems so simple and obvious. And yet no one had propounded it before. Stan Lee’s early Spider-Man stories make an overall parallel between Peter Parker’s angst-ridden personal life with his combats in costume, but no metaphors specific to individual stories are drawn. Former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter came closer when he decreed that there must be a personal “conflict” for the hero in each story. But it took Whedon to finally formulate the principle and, in his TV series, to demonstrate it again and again.
And here is another reason why Whedon’s work is so significant. Just as Matt Groening considerably altered conventional opinion about animation for adults, Joss Whedon has gained new respect for the fantasy adventure genre. Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s very title ironically acknowledges its roots in horror movies about teenagers, not usually thought to have artistic merit (as the Emmy Awards voters show by continually overlooking the show). Yet Buffy has won widespread critical acclaim in the mainstream media and considerable attention within academia. The final episode of Buffy was even hailed in a New York Times editorial. And I watch the show and think, this is a superhero comic, brought to the screen with intelligence, artistic ambition, and respect for the genre. Many viewers who love the show probably disdain the superhero genre on principle, and yet Buffy‘s greatness shows what the superhero genre can achieve.
Towards the end of the panel came the question, who were Joss Whedon’s influences?
“Anyone I’ve ever seen,” replied Whedon, but, he added, if he had to name “two off the top of my head,” it would be “Stan Lee and Charles Dickens.” Dickens makes sense as a major influence as well: a master writer of commercial serial fiction which he elevated into high art, who transformed melodramatic narratives of hero versus villain into profound conflicts of archetypal good and evil, who combined brilliant comedy with emotionally affecting drama, and who so often dealt with young protagonists struggling towards maturity. And should anyone question the degree to which Marvel Comics have influenced Joss Whedon, Buffy and Angel, here is the proof.
Now, another difference between the Comic-Con of today and the Con of five years ago is the spread of cell phones. I don’t like cell phones: they keep going off in inappropriate places, like theaters, museums, and sporting events. At least the acoustics at Comic-Con are so bad for people who don’t have microphones that the vast spaces muffle the noise these phones make. Oh, do I hate people who don’t turn off their cell phones – or set them on vibrate – in theaters or museums, or convention panels. I live near a restaurant which has a large sign, “Please use cell phones in lobby,” hanging in full view. And people sit at the table beneath it and talk on their cell phones. Why are such people so stupid?
And then, at the panel’s end, strangely enough, Whedon exclaimed that his phone was ringing. No, no! It can’t be! He’s so smart! He’s my hero! So here is the difference between Joss Whedon and his creation: Buffy’s cell phone never goes off in mid-apocalypse.
BUFFYCON PART 2: THE MASTER’S DISCIPLES
But, in retrospect, I suspect that ringing cell phone was a prearranged signal to let Whedon know it was time to wrap this panel up.
“And now I have to shut up because we have another panel coming on,” Whedon declared.
Seemingly from all around us, members of the Angel writing staff appeared and made their way up on stage. The audience was in flux: most stayed but a good number left. Meloney, sharp-eyed and quick to seize opportunities, spotted vacated seats further up front and we swiftly staked our claim to them. (It was still not my personal best for a Buffy panel: five years ago I got front row center. But this was pretty darn close.)
Whedon introduced the assembled writers; newly promoted head writer Jeffrey Bell; David Fury, formerly of Buffy and now executive producer of Angel; Steven S. DeKnight, Drew Goddard, Ben Edlund (also known as the creator of the comics series The Tick), and the writing team of Sarah Fain and Elizabeth Craft. The moderator was Nancy Holder, writer of Buffy and Angel novels.
“These are the people who allow me to have time with my son,” Whedon stated. Then he addressed the assembled writers, “Remember, people, this is your moment to shine, but remember I’m in the room.” And with that Whedon vanished into the auditorium.
Jeffrey Bell wondered, plaintively, “Joss is gone. Why are they still here?”
The panel went by the imposingly purple title of “Buffy and Angel Writers: The Demise of Buffy and the Mystique of Angel.” Yet while Buffy was discussed, this was really the Angel writing staff for the forthcoming new season. With Buffy‘s end, many Mutant Enemy writers had moved on to new projects. And so such popular scripters as Marti Noxon, Jane Espenson, Douglas Petrie, Mere Smith, Rebecca Rand Kirshner, Drew Greenberg were nowhere to be seen. To Buffy fans, this is like the Round Table breaking up!
Seeing the writers who were on the panel gave me the same impression I get from reading interviews with Mutant Enemy writers past and present: it reminds me of my generation of comics pro friends at their best – the humor, the joking camaraderie, the commitment to doing their best possible work in their genre, and the enthusiasm.
Bell started off by giving his own introductory State of the Union address, explaining that “We’re going in a different direction this year… We are now at the center of Wolfram & Hart,” the sinister law firm whose partners also practice black magic. “Our guys are now running a big evil corporation and trying to make sense of why they are there.” Referring to the return of Spike, Bell asserted, “We also feel he died a noble, heroic death on Buffy and to bring him back as if nothing happened would not be fair to him [actor James Marsters] or the character, and so we feel whatever he comes back as is something that we have to earn. So I ask you to bear with us as we figure out what exactly that looks like.”
Then Bell turned the floor over to David Fury to discuss how the writers collaborate with each other. “Collaboration,” Fury began, “the art of passing off work to someone else.” Having gotten his laugh, Fury went on to explain how a story for Buffy or Angel evolves. “Basically, when we’re in the room we are going off a general idea that Joss has. He’ll have maybe one small story point or some emotion that he wants to bring out in the episode, and then it’s up to us in a room trying to brainstorm a bit and trying to figure things out. I have the great fortune of working for Buffy for six seasons and Angel unofficially for all of it. This is the best bunch of writers you could ever imagine being in a room with. And one of the reasons I’m here on Angel is I refuse to leave Mutant Enemy.” Fury maintained that Whedon “has got to create another show” when Angel reaches its end so Fury will have another job to go to.
Steven DeKnight said that the writers “spend ninety percent of the time laughing” at their meetings. Whedon and other Buffy writers have stated in the past that Season 6’s “nerd” trio of villains – Warren, Jonathan and Andrew – were partly parodies of themselves and their own discussions. One may judge the truth of this from DeKnight’s following anecdote. He recalled how once the writers debated who would win in a fight between a caveman and an astronaut. “People actually got angry,” he said wonderingly, and it took an hour. (Now this is a good job. They get paid to do this.)
The question arose as to whether working on Buffy, the more famous series, was more prestigious than writing for Angel.
Bell contended, “I’m not going to be bitter, but there’s Buffy and” – his voice dropped – “there’s Angel.”
“Firefly,” Fury interjected, “was the trophy wife.”
Returning to the previous subject, Bell turned to Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain. “Another example of collaboration is Liz and Sarah can write together as a team. One of them does nouns, the other does verbs, and together they put out really wonderful scripts. We actually don’t know who the talented one is. We believe one is talented and the other one is just getting half the money.” Indeed, it was later pointed out that Craft and Fain were sharing a microphone whereas everyone else had his own.
Drew Goddard recalled that his initial script for Mutant Enemy was his first writing job, and that before that his jobs involved wearing “suits” and working in “cubicles.” (There are some of us who find this a different sort of horror show.) In contrast, Goddard recalled being on the set watching his script being filmed, watching a guy on fire run right by him “and they give me a paycheck.”
“Envy us,” Fury commanded the audience. And I do.
Bell then voiced a sentiment that consistently turns up in interviews with the Buffy and Angel writers: “The coolest thing about our job is Joss.” We were told how the problem arose as to how to end Angel‘s third season, and “Joss became Neo in The Matrix,” going into the zone, coming up with ideas on the spot, “and episodes 20 to 22 got broken” – basically, plotted out – “at dinner.”
Questions were now coming from the audience. One person wanted to know about Buffy characters turning up on Angel in the future.
Bell said that “A big part of it is finding out a need for why that character will show up, and we have thoughts about that for many of the characters, and then it’s just a matter of making time and money and scheduling work, but we have hopes for all of them dropping by.”
Fury added, “Sometimes we’ll come up with some interesting emotional ideas and we’ll want to save it for some of these characters. It would be nice to get Sarah [Sarah Michelle Gellar, who plays Buffy] on the show, particularly with Spike and Angel together. So we’re saving a lot of stuff now and going to keep our fingers crossed and hope that we can get her to do it. Otherwise we’ll find a way to express these emotions without her.”
Then came a question about the evil Wolfram & Hart lawyer played by Stephanie Romanov, and chaos ensued. Is Lilah returning?
“Eliza Dushku?” asked Fury. The audience shouted back “Lilah!”
“Okay, calm down,” Fury told us. “Having trouble with the acoustics.”
“He’s old,” DeKnight offered. It seems that Fury was the oldest person on the panel, though I worried that he’s still probably younger than me.
Undeterred, Fury carried on. “As Joss indicated, she is on another show right now. We would love, love, love to have Eliza back.” And the audience yelled “Lilah” again, as well as “Stephanie.”
Finally Fury got it. “Lilah, sorry. I’m old and feeble. Stephanie, yes, I know who Lilah is.”
Bell asked, “Is David Fury’s nurse in here, please?”
It was explained to us that Fury was the oldest of the writers on the panel. “I’m not entirely Alzheimer-ridden,” Fury pleaded. (Meanwhile I contemplate whether or not Fury is younger or older than me. This is not encouraging for the aging process.) And the answer, by the way, is that Lilah is currently “burning. . .in hell” (and how many other TV show writers can say that about their characters?) so there are no immediate plans for her.
Next question: Who is your favorite character to write for?
Ben Edlund said, “I like writing for Fred.” (For any of you who don’t watch the show, Fred – Winifred – is a young woman, brilliant of science, who was once a nervous wreck thanks to being trapped in another dimension.) “She’s nervous. I’m a nervous person. I think I can understand where she’s coming from to some degree. And my breasts are growing.”
Perhaps we should move on to the next respondent.
And that was David Fury, who still had Ms. Dushku on his mind.
“Boy, that might be Faith,” he said to applause from the audience. “I only had the opportunity to write her twice, but damn! Her voice just comes out of me. The other one I had a good time with was Harmony,” the high school twit turned twit vampiress, who returns to Angel next season. “These two women, I don’t know, just touch some part of me that loves writing for those two.”
Bell likewise picked Harmony. Goddard noted that Faith would have been his choice had Fury not already picked her, so he went with the Mayor of Sunnydale instead, whom he once helped write, and who I think was Buffy‘s best villain ever.
Elizabeth Craft chose Fred, since both of them wear glasses, and Sarah Fain agreed, demonstrating once again that they work as a team.
DeKnight chose “Without a doubt, Tara,” Willow’s lover, a sweet character who was murdered towards the end of Buffy Season 6, and this was the choice that received the loudest applause.
Bell picked “The green guy,” Lorne, the demon turned nightclub owner. “Writing Lorne is so much fun. We’re not as dark as Buffy 6, but our show can be pretty dark, and he is always a breath of fresh air and humor…”
There was a school of thought among Buffy and Angel fans that the two approaching “apocalypses” in Buffy Season 7 and Angel Season 4 would be tied together. Why, asked a member of the audience, had there been no crossovers between the “apocalypses”?
“Apocalypti,” Bell suggested.
Fury tried his best to explain, but the gods of public speaking had turned against him. “It’s very hard to coordinate your climaxes together,” he began, and the rest was drowned out by audience laughter. “Can security please come to the front of the room?” Bell asked. Well, the answer was that the shows were on separate networks, making it too difficult to schedule crossovers.
But the panel’s descent into the absurd was far from over. “I have a question for Drew Goddard,” came a familiar voice to Buffy fans. Meloney swerved around in her seat, a delighted smile on her face. The audience broke into loud applause. It was Danny Strong, the actor who played Jonathan on Buffy, a character killed off in one of Goddard’s scripts.
“Go ahead,” said Goddard, undisturbed at facing this ghost from his past. “Stand up, young man.”
“Very funny, Drew,” replied the short Mr. Strong, sounding unamused. “I just wanted to know how it feels to be a murderer?” The audience, on the side of murdered underdogs, applauded again.
Goddard was utterly without remorse. “You know, it’s not that bad.”
“Is it anti-Semitism?” Strong asked. “I think it’s like anything: at first it kind of tries your conscience, and then it starts to feel good.”
Strong also had comfort, of sorts, for the beleaguered Fury, advising him, “It IS hard to do climaxes at the same time.”
“Who would know better than you and I?” Fury asked agreeably. And perhaps we should not go there.
And yet still more was to come. An unfamiliar, nerdy voice came from the second line of questioners. “Liz and Sarah, are you single?” And it was Joss, undercover, with his partner in crime Nathan Fillion right behind him.
Craft and Fain, looking young, attractive, and pleased, each said, “Yes.” “But they only work as a team,” Fury pointed out, redeeming his past errors. “Where do we line up?” inquired Fillion as he and Whedon disappeared once more into the crowd.
With this the panel’s plunge into comedic chaos had struck bottom, and more serious topics resurfaced. Angel had been in danger of cancellation last spring, and so last season’s final episode moved its setting from a darkened old hotel to the well-lit and spectacular offices of Wolfram & Hart to show the network that the show would look “big and shiny and happy” if it came back in the fall.
Bell mentioned that “initially” one of Angel‘s major themes was “addiction.” He described Angel as “a recovering vampire” who “fell off the wagon last year.” “It’s a very old man trying to find redemption,” making him “the opposite of Buffy,” who is so young. I found it interesting he would describe Angel as so old, since, despite his chronological age, Angel seems to me not only to look like a young man but to act like one. It’s not as if he dresses in outdated styles, or has trouble understanding the ways of younger generations (like anyone born in the 20th century?).
Now an audience member wanted to know how the writers kept their dialogue so fresh and original.
“If you don’t,” Bell revealed, “Joss makes fun of you.” And he asked Sarah Fain to recount what happened to her.
“It was our first episode of Angel last year,” Fain told us, “‘Supersymmetry,’ and we had a very unfortunate line. It was, ‘Brilliant, absolutely brilliant,’ said by Wesley. And in context it really wasn’t that awful, I’d just like to say.”
Craft interrupted, “Sarah wrote that one, by the way,” and Fain laughed.
Whedon saw the offending line and commented on it in his “English Shakespearean mocking voice,” or what the writers called The Voice, for short. “We’ve all suffered it,” admitted Edlund. Although, it would appear, at least some of the writers mimic The Voice behind Whedon’s back, not one of the panelists would do it for us, perhaps fearing that Joss was still lurking about somewhere in the vast Room 6CDEF. But in fact, we had heard Joss perform The Voice in his own panel, when he said, “‘Well, I’ll show television how it’s done.'” (Go back and look it up, if you like.)
Towards the panel’s end the writers were asked if the regular characters would change in the course of the coming season. Fury replied that “There are changes in store for our characters now that they are working for the most evil corporation on the planet. And working from within to do good, and are basically given the keys to enormous toys and facilities and all sorts of resources they didn’t have before. It’s going to make them different than the people who were living in a hotel working clandestinely to fight the forces of evil.”
Here is Whedon’s principle in operation again. Angel and company’s experiences at Wolfram & Hart will serve as metaphor for a dilemma of adult life: how to function amid the temptations and harsh realities of the workaday world without becoming corrupted or selling out. And it is a high concept true to the heritage of supernatural tales as well: it is Faust for 21st century corporate America.
The panel, by the way, was presented by the praiseworthy website CityofAngel.com, and if you want to read more quotes from these two panels, you can find them there. (It was a great place to double-check the quotes I’d taken down at the panels, even if I did at times become bewildered when their version of a quote’s wording differed from mine.)
LET THEM EAT CAKE
With the end of this unofficial Buffycon for today, I headed down the corridor to Room 8, arriving halfway through the panel “Claypool Comics: 10 Years with the Stars!”
Never heard of Claypool? Well, it seems, neither has New York’s weekly newspaper, The Village Voice. “Every other remotely independent comics publisher has gone out of business over the last 16 years,” Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth told the Voice earlier this year.
And this is not true. Certainly, many comics publishers have gone away, as he says. But first comes the question of what is an independent? Though it changed owners a few years ago, Marvel is its own company, Marvel Enterprises. Is it an independent? What about Dark Horse and Image? Or does Groth consider them “majors”?
But in any event, there are indeed still some comics publishers who are independents by any definition and still survive. In Saturday there was a panel titled “20 Years of Antarctic Press, or How We Survived in Publishing on a Shoestring Budget.” And Claypool is another independent survivor, which this year celebrates its tenth anniversary.
The two central figures at Claypool are both longtime friends of mine, Ed Via, its publisher, and Richard Howell, its editor, about whom you will read more in a column in the near future. Ed lives in Virginia, Richard in New Jersey, and they also employ a few staffers based on the West Coast, as well as freelancers from around the country.
Claypool published three ongoing comics series, all in black and white, and all dealing with the supernatural. There is Deadbeats, a continuing serial drama chronicling the lives of characters in a small New England town plagued by vampires, the “deadbeats” of the title. This book is written and drawn by Howell, a personal creation that draws upon his affinity for daytime and nighttime television serial drama, as well as his enthusiasms for supernatural fantasy ranging from Dark Shadows to Buffy. Then there is Soulsearchers & Co., a bright and inventive comedy about a team of costumed characters battling supernatural opponents, written by the prolific Peter David and originally illustrated by the amazing Amanda Conner. Richard was one of the very few to recognize Amanda’s talent years before she finally became a star among comics fans, and she still draws the charming and witty covers.
I’ve long thought that Soulsearchers would make a wonderful animated series, or, with appropriate CGI, a funny live action show. Finally, there is Elvira, another supernatural comedy book, starring the celebrated and spectacularly sexy horror movie hostess in her comedic adventures, often taking the form of parodies of a wide range of pop culture targets.
I have long thought that Richard has the best job in comics. Ed believes in Richard’s abilities, and allows him to pretty much do what he wants with them. The books do not have to earn huge X-Men-level profits; Ed, who has other sources of income, wants to see these books being done, and as long as they turn a profit, he’s happy. The books fill a niche for a loyal audience whose taste other companies seem to ignore. And Richard makes a good, stable income from his work. If only more of the comics business could be like this.
Among the “stars” on the panel were Amanda; frequent Claypool writer Kurt Busiek, another person whose talents Richard appreciated before the major comics companies did; talented artist John Heebink; and, representing Elvira, writer/actress Cassandra Peterson and her husband/manager Mark Pierson. A highly attractive woman, Ms. Peterson looked strangely familiar, and another Claypool artist, Steve Leialoha, was busily sketching her from the audience. Why, if Ms. Peterson had black hair in a beehive instead of her long brown hair, and if she was wearing black, she would look just like – but it is not for me to expose Elvira’s secret identity. I am a gentleman.
Claypool may be a tiny company, but it had its own booth on the convention floor, which is more than I can say for another company, and its representatives handed out free comics. People who attended the Claypool party even got to have pieces of the 10th anniversary birthday cake! This traditional kind of interaction among the company, the creative personnel, and their audience is important. It is yet another way that Claypool survives contentedly as if in a protective time warp, despite the changing ways of the 21st century comics industry.
MASKS AND MERRIMENT
Following the Claypool panel, I checked in with my documentarian colleagues Constantine and Ben, who were riveted with attention watching a panel discussion by various filmmakers whose work had been shown at Comic-Con’s film festival. Ben was having a particular run of good luck at the Con: Thursday night, by sheer chance, he had met Stan Lee, Friday he became friends with animator Bill Plympton, and today he had encountered and chatted with Quentin Tarantino. Ben reported that Tarantino said he would have a panel tomorrow. I thought his panel was on Friday, I thought, puzzled.
Then I did another circuit of the Convention’s main floor. Look, there’s the Dorling Kindersley booth where Scott Beatty was doing a signing today for DK’s new Ultimate Guides to the Batman and Superman animated series. I wrote the new, updated edition of DK’s Ultimate Guide to X-Men that came out this year, and I would have been happy to spend time at the booth signing copies of the book. Had I been asked.
Better fortune met me at the DC booth area, where I was invited to dinner with former Marvel co-workers Danny Fingeroth, Jim Salicrup and DC’s Adam Phillips and his wife in Seaport Village.
Following dinner, I met up with Constantine, Ben, and Lyman the intern just within the doors of Ballroom 20, where the annual Masquerade was in its final moments. It too has changed over the years, and for the better. The costume contests I attended at my first conventions were usually embarrassments, with fans lacking in self-awareness wearing shoddy costumes better suited to thinner people. In my experience San Diego always attracted contestants with better design skills and better builds. But for years the audience was rowdy, noisy and obnoxious.
But what I saw of the concluding award ceremony this year was impressive indeed. The audience was well-behaved. Instead of a comics pro as emcee, there was actor Robert Englund, best known as horror icon Freddy Krueger, who had appeared earlier that day at the New Line Cinema panel. Englund was clearly doing a great, enthusiastic job as master of ceremonies. And the prize-winning costumes I saw were superb, including a collection of X-Men, and an extraordinary group of characters from Hayao Miyazaki’s recent animated film Spirited Away.
It was now around 11:30 PM as the Masquerade ended, and our group headed out, passing through the immense Masquerade Party that was continuing in the Convention Center’s Sails Pavilion. Constantine enthusiastically pointed out the many different styles of dancing that attendees performed, all to the same music: all these different groups having a good time in their own ways.
The Masquerade is part of the very essence of Comic-Con’s annual celebration of comics. In old native cultures tribesmen donned masks and costumes in order to take on the aspect of higher beings, to represent spirits in material form. At Comic-Con we celebrate characters from comics and animation and fantasy films. And in the Masquerade, the most gifted costumers visually and figuratively become those characters onstage. The heroes of pop culture become manifest before us, brought to life by people like ourselves.
Constantine, Ben, and Lyman were at the end of their journey to Comic-Con. They, and many others, would be heading home tomorrow. But I still had another day to go. And though in past years Sunday at Comic-Con was something of a letdown, it was so no longer, as you shall see next time.
-Copyright 2003 Peter Sanderson
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