SDCC Wrap-Up: Joss Whedon Panel

POSTED BY , 30 July 2007

Joss Whedon has a unique relationship with his fans. Despite being relatively private, and hardly ever showing up to fan events, he's managed to make most of his fan base feel like they know him personally. At the Joss Whedon panel Saturday night at Comic-Con, which took the form of an open Q&A, questioners routinely would bring him gifts (or, tributes if you will) that they had made themselves, and would often start their questions with, "Hey Joss, we met four years ago, remember, I was the girl who talked to you about Buffy?"

Yet, despite all of this abject adoration, Joss is a down to earth, congenial presence. Which is probably exactly why he gets the abject adoration. Also, his writing is really good.

So what did we learn from the panel? We learned that:

• He refers to writing Runaways and Astonishing X-Men as his "Merry Marvel Mid-Life Crisis," and says he'll be concentrating on creator owned projects from now on.
• On that same note, he's starting a completely original web-comic for Dark Horse and Myspace called Sugar Shock. It was announced separately at the Dark Horse panel, but Joss pushed the comic hard at his panel, saying if you want original Whedon goodness, you should go here.
• Serenity is coming out in a deluxe edition DVD, which, given the fan response to the trailer shown (which contained no new footage, as far as I can tell), is going to sell like hotcakes.
• Buffy, the comic book is essentially an open-ended run, as far as Joss is concerned. However, he does have an ending for Season 8. Double however, he also knows what happens in Season 9.
• Angel Season 6, being published by IDW, will be a more limited run, 12 issue maxi-series, and has a "huge budget."
• The biggest news, by far, for Buffy fans was that "Ripper," the proposed spin off movie starring Anthony Stewart Head as Giles, is moving forward with the BBC, and looks like to film next year.
• And finally, Joss revealed that he hasn't shopped this around anywhere yet, or told anyone, but he and Drew Goddard have written a script he calls "The horror movie to end all horror movies," and that he's ridiculously excited about it.

Other than that, as the last large panel I attended at the con, it emphasized to me how the annoying few can ruin something for the many... But that's an entirely different post in which I alienate everybody. Look for that later today or tomorrow.

- Alex