[ashleyt]

Willow was pretty freaked I'm also surprised her eyes weren't black. I'm glad Buffy isn't happy about the guns but if that's all she has to fight with then she should at least learn to use one.

[comic fan]

Angel #25,the conclusion of the Dru two parter,is out today.

[comic fan]

I have my copy of Angel #25.I thought the story overall,both this issue and last, was on the plotless side.I was hoping issue 24 was like that on purpose and this issue would have more meat.But it was about the same as #24.The art was great.The best way to read this two parter is to approach it as a slient comic issue.A slient comic issue is a comic book with no dialog or very little dialog and the story is told completly through the art.Taken in that way,I think this works better like that.

I did like the idea that Dru had visons/premonitions of L.A. getting sent to hell and the events of After The Fall.

[amy2345]

My only question for this finally battle with Twilight ok this a battle without magic then how does epic battle fall into the Fray timeline b/c I read the Fray the epic battle from what I remember is seeing a slayer maybe its Buffy?? I not sure, it's a slayer using the scythe and of course the scythe is magically then how could that be used in the finally battle without the magic. Plus thing about putting the slayer power back into the earth sounds good but I'm thinking of the damaged slayer Dana sure if the same is happening to her then how will she fuction with the knowledge that she now going to be weak again like she was before.

[Burning Up A Sun]

Thanks for all the updates. Some very interesting stuff is happening.

[ashleyt]

Thanks for the update comic fan

[comic fan]

Dragon Con report about Buffy Season 8 and Season 9.

Dragon*Con 09: ‘Buffy’ Season 8 and 9 Details

Dragon*Con 09: ‘Buffy’ Season 8 and 9 Details

Posted by Tom Cheredar | September 16th, 2009

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 comic book series (Dark Horse) will tentatively conclude at issue #41, according to editor Scott Allie, who sat on a Dark Horse Comics panel at Dragon*Con 2009 earlier this month.

While Allie kept mum on all future plot details, he did say the final story arc would be a four-issue run written by Brad Meltzer (DC’s Identity Crisis mini series, Justice League of America) with art by series regular Georges Jeanty.

Buffy head honcho Joss Whedon will follow up the Meltzer/Jeanty run to tie up loose ends and set the stage for Season 9.

“We will do a Season 9 but there will be a break after Season 8 [ends],” Allie said, with no indication of how long the duration of the break would be.

Allie also said Season 9 could have a different editorial approach, possibly having one creative team as opposed to the rotating crop of writers and artists that was done in Season 8.


Jeanty, who joined Allie on the panel, said he would like to be involved in some capacity for Season 9 but had not made a decision to reprise the role of the book’s regular artist.

The current issue of Buffy Season 8 (#28) hit the shelves September 3.

[ashleyt]

We're on issue 24 right?

[comic fan]

Originally Posted by ashleyt (View Post) We're on issue 24 right?

Nope,we're up to issue 28.Issue 29(Retreat Part IV of V) comes out in two week,I believe.

[comic fan]

Joss talks Buffy Season 8 and 9 in new Dollhouse Season 2 interview.Here's the Buffy bits.

http://www.complex.com/blogs/2009/09...-eliza-dushku/

Complex: How long do you see the Season Eight Buffy comic playing out?

Joss Whedon: Well, 40 issues was always the goal, and that’s how we’re playing it. We’re around issue 30 now, we’ve got about 10 to go, five of which I have to write, so I have to get on that. Then we’ll pause for breath and then we’ll start Season Nine.

Complex: So Season Nine is a definite lock?

Joss Whedon: Yeah, unless Dark Horse suddenly doesn’t want it. I have had for a long time a conception for Season Nine that is very different from Season Eight. It may not run as long, because 40 issues sounds great until you realize that it’s four or five years.

Complex: Speaking of the Buffy movie, what are your thoughts on the idea to bring it back without you?

Joss Whedon: You know, I don’t give it thought. The people who own the rights are making a business decision, and that’s their business.

Complex: And you have a lot of other comic-projects that are related to you with the Shepherd Book comic, the Dr. Horrible comic and the Cabin in the Woods comic tie-in.

Joss Whedon: Yeah, it happens. They keep asking for a Dollhouse comic and I tell them that when they can draw Eliza the way she looks in real life we can do one. Other than that, it’s not really worth it. The other ones, they all lend themselves to it and they’re all different genres. Dr. Horrible is funny hero stuff. Cabin in the Woods, not so funny—more like classic monster, EC horror stuff. And Buffy is pretty much straight-up superhero stuff.

[ashleyt]

Thanks for the news

[comic fan]

Bill Williams talks his Angel comics co-writing gig.

Exclusive: Comic Book Writer Bill Williams on 'Angel' - FEARNet

Exclusive: Comic Book Writer Bill Williams on 'Angel'

by Joseph McCabe



IDW's Angel comic has been a godsend for fans still mourning the loss of the brooding-but-soulful vampire detective show. Now those fans may have even more cause to rejoice: beginning with issue 28 of the book, acclaimed comic writer Bill Willingham (a.k.a. the co-creator of Fables) will take over the writing chores from departing scribe Brian Lynch. Joining Willingham will be his longtime friend and collaborator Bill Williams, best know for his work on the webcomic SideChicks. Williams will provide a continuing back-up story in each issue featuring a character new to the Buffyverse, Eddie Hope. In the following exclusive interview, Williams give us the dirt on Hope and on what we can expect when the two Bills begin their joint stint on Angel.

Once writer Bill Willingham takes over the main writing on Angel, you'll begin writing a back-up feature starring Eddie Hope, a new character left over from the book's recent "Hell on Earth" storyline. Can you talk a little bit about Eddie?

In "After the Fall", Los Angeles went to Hell and then after some time everything snapped back to normal with the people of LA sharing the memory like a fever dream. Well, almost everything went back to normal. Eddie Hope was fundamentally changed by his time in Hell and by the associations he made there. Now, Eddie knows the worst people in Los Angeles and he has made it his job to hunt them down and finish them.

The first story "A Devil Walks into a Bar..." hits the ground running as Eddie confronts someone who had committed atrocities when the city went to Hell. They argue whether that really happened or not, which is one of the debates that runs through the feature. It also shows that Eddie can transform much like the Buffyverse vampires who get their 'vampire faces' on. Eddie's transformation into his devil form is much more severe and much scarier than what you can do on television. I think that at the beginning of the series Eddie thinks of himself as a lost soul who only has his mission to keep himself going. So, he throws himself into the mission and decides to make the world a better place one body at a time.

I have an amazing amount of leeway to tell fun stories. Eddie was in Willingham's original pitch to IDW complete with his devilish origins and secrets. Willingham's instructions to me were to go have fun for a few issues and then we'll have him crash into the Team Angel characters later. The whole Eddie story will spin out over the length of the back up stories.

Have you drawn inspiration from film noir, or from other fantasy tales, in telling Eddie's story?

I'm a fan of writers like Chandler and Hammett and the comics on that family tree like Criminal. I'm a big fan of British mysteries like Prime Suspect and Foyle's War and that dry approach to storytelling. I recently saw Steven Moffat's Jekyll, which is fantastic. I'm also reading Matthew Sturges' excellent novel Midwinter. Kick in a dozen comics a week, a few random webcomics and there's a load of stuff in my stew-pot of a brain.

If anything, I'm taking inspiration from the Angel television series. When I first talked with Bill about writing the back-up series, I had to watch the last four seasons of Angel in six weeks to get up to speed. I had seen some of the episodes in syndication and I had watched the first season on DVD, but there was a lot of real estate to cover in a short time. Before Bill and I sat down to map out my part of the series, I came up with a fifty-page Angel Bible that was full of notes and things that I would like to take a second look at in the Eddie stories. Since then, I have been going back and watching Buffy and making notes on that as well since it takes place in the same world. In my research, I came to find that there were two kinds of Angel episodes. There were the 'brooding' episodes and the 'caper' episodes. The brooding episodes of Angel were carried by the performances of the actors. While the artist on the Eddie stories is great, the language of comics is different from the language of television. I thought the caper approach was the stronger way to go, so the Eddie chapters are loaded with action. In one scene in Chapter Four, Eddie is standing on the hood of a speeding truck as the driver is shooting at him while Eddie is punching through the windshield.

My goal is to write the short Eddie stories as if it was television writing with no effects budget to hold us back.

How did you and Bill Willingham come to work together on the book?

Bill Willingham and I have been friends for more than fifteen years now. I met him when he, Keith Wilson and I were sharing a cartooning studio in Pflugerville, Texas. I was Keith's inking assistant at the time. Later we rented a house together in Austin and I published the criminally underlooked series of his called Pantheon. He moved out to Vermont, but we stayed in touch. I would head out and visit him a few times a year when he lived in Las Vegas. A few years ago I ended up in a writing group, Clockwork Storybook, with him and Matt Sturges, Chris Roberson and Mark Finn. Willingham has a great wanderlust and I helped him with his last move. In fact, I was in the car with him when he talked with our editor Mariah Huehner about working on the Angel series.

Bill wrote me into the pitch document he made for IDW. That was pretty cool, especially when they bought it. So when we got together at our annual Clockwork Retreat in May, we worked out what we were going to do in the first year of the series. I sat down and wrote the first few scripts and ran them past Willingham. We made a few changes and they were good to go to Mariah. I was feeling pretty good about my work. I had written some pretty solid pages and, man, I was certain that back-up series was going to shine. Then I read Willingham's first script and it's just great. He is one of the few people that I can describe as a genius.

Clearly, I never imagined that our new book would end up on the back cover of the PREVIEWS catalog.

Can you talk a bit about how you may be tying Eddie's story into Bill's writing?

Eddie's relationship to Team Angel is top secret for a while. I don't want to spoil something that will spin out of the lead story in the Angel series.

When I first started working on the project, I was struggling with how to approach the character. I knew the nuts and bolts, but I was missing something in the tone. Eddie is a bit of a loner; he has no sidekick to explain things to, so he will be talking to himself in captions for a while. I was grasping for the right voice to use. So, I was chatting with Willingham about Eddie and I asked him if Eddie was a good guy or a bad guy. He said that Eddie is a guy with a mission. That helped clarify things for me and helped me tap into the ambiguity that is spread all through Joss Whedon's work.

Will any of the regular Angel cast appear in your story?

I have wanted to avoid having Eddie bump into any of the Team Angel characters until some specific cool things happen in the lead story. I want to stay off of Willingham's toes, so most of them are off of the table for the first few months. But in talking with Mariah, she had a good idea in that I should makes sure that the Eddie stories are firmly tied into the Angelverse. So in the fifth chapter, Eddie bumps into electric Gwen Raiden. As the story goes on, there are loads of references to specific Angel episodes. The bad guy in the first few chapters is Jacob Crane, the wicked gourmand who tried to serve up a werewolf girl in the fifth season of Angel.

So I'm playing with the background characters for the first few months. Once Bill pulls the trigger on one story thing in particular, I'll shift gears and change the way I integrate the other members of Team Angel into the Eddie stories. But remember, the back-up stories are four pages long. That's not a lot of fictional real estate. At four panels per page, I only have sixteen panels to tell a story. Anybody can write a sweeping epic, but writing a good short story is a real challenge.



Can you talk a bit about the artist who will illustrate your writing?The early design sketches that I saw made me go back and do some rewrites on a chapter because of David Messina's art. I added more action and stretched a fight scene because Eddie's devil form looks so freaking cool. I've gotten a good look at the first story and the art is dramatic and Eddie looks like some gothic nightmare sprung to life. I can't wait to see more.



I got a look at some of Brian Denham's pages for the lead feature and they are pretty sweet too. This will be a very pretty book.

How long have you been a fan of Joss Whedon's Buffyverse?

I came along late in the game, after the Angel television show was cancelled. I am a comic book inker and sometimes I work late into the night. Angel was in syndication late night here in Austin and it came on after something else I was watching. And I got into it after a few episodes. I started to make time to watch it when it came on. Eventually, I got all of Whedon's stuff on DVD. Angel in syndication led me into Firefly and then the Serenity movie and back into Buffy. And I can sing most of the Doctor Horrible numbers. Joss Whedon has a real talent for twisting the knife in the hero's side and I admire that.

What appeals to you about Joss's creations?

Joss Whedon's characters are allowed to be bright. They have smart comebacks and they do smart things. Most of the horror tropes require the characters to be as dumb as a dining room table. I grew up in the Golden Age of the slasher films like Friday the 13th and watched the Halloween movies. I need my horror/ suspense to have more than a bunch of random teens being chased through the woods.

Whedon's characters all want something, even the monsters want more than just a full belly. The heroes have a plan, the bad guys have a plan and they all grow and learn over time.

Do you have a favorite character?

I am hoping that some of the new characters in the Angel comics resonate with the readers and become some of their favorites too.

Like most people, I grew to love Spike. Even when he is miserable, he owns that moment. He doesn't pout, he doesn't brood. Spike does things that make him happy and to Hell with the consequences. That's bold. I love Captain Mal and I love the wackiness of Anya in Buffy. And of course, of course, Bad Horse.

Have you followed Brian Lynch's writing on IDW's Angel comic?

I read the "After the Fall" series as it was coming out. This was before I got the gig to write the back-ups, so I only had a passing knowledge of who some of those background characters were. I have not had the chance to go back and re-read them since I started swimming in the Angel ocean. I tend to give away comics after I read them.

We were on a panel together at the show in San Diego this year as they rolled out the announcement that Willingham was the new regular writer on the Angel series. Brian is a nice guy and he has a real grip on the characters. I love his take on Spike. And his tweets are funny too.

Can you say how long you see yourself working on Angel? When you and Bill decide to leave the book, is it likely you'll leave together?

That is entirely up to the nice people at IDW. If Willingham decides to take off at some point down the road, any new writer will want to get all twenty-two pages of storytelling space. With luck, I will have bonded with the people there and I will have more opportunities to work for them. For now, I'm the new guy keeping his head down and doing the best work possible.

Willingham and Mariah go way back. She worked at DC and worked with Bill on the Fables series out of the Vertigo office. So they have worked together for a while and they have a good relationship from what I can tell. When we were in San Diego this year, I told Mariah that I'd be sending her a road map for where I saw the Eddie stuff going. She seems to be onboard with the overall plan, but sales will dictate what we can do over the long run.

What else are you working on right now? Are there any other comic book titles you're interested in writing, any other characters? Or is there a new project you're developing?

I have a pitch working its way across desks and through the IDW offices. In that pitch, Eddie bumps up against other Angelverse characters in interesting ways. I really wish I could say more, but I don't want to jinx myself there.

For the past two years plus, I have been writing and (mostly) inking and (mostly) coloring a webcomic called SideChicks which runs on the Graphic Smash website. It's about super-powered female bodyguards. The current story has art by Robb Phipps (Mantra) with some inks by Jon Alderink. Previous stories had art by Walter Geovani (Red Sonja) and Fransisco Rodriguez de la Fuente (Robin). I'm inking and coloring the next story which has pencils by Jose Luis who is doing a Red Tornado mini-series for DC right now.

Back in June 2009, Thom Zahler (Love & Capes) and I had a strip in the Zuda competition. We started in 5th and finished there. I wanted to write something like the old Herbie strips, but a little darker.

I've got another project in the works which is a sweet story about a cat. No really. The girls that have seen the pages want to hug them. It is that adorable. Anyway, the project is penciled and I need to make the time to finish the inks and colors on that too.

Might we see you and Bill work together elsewhere in the future?

Bill has a pretty full dance card right now. He's co-writing a couple of monthly comics and doing the full writing chores on a few more with another series waiting in the wings. I like working with Bill because he is so damn clever and he really makes me bring my best work. We have talked about doing a couple of other things but it is too soon to tell if those will happen. Willingham really doesn't have a lack of people wanting to work with him, he has a lack of hours in the day to make all of that happen.

In real life, what's your greatest fear?

I don't know if this counts as a "fear" exactly, but I hate going to the dentist. So I didn't for quite sometime. When I finally went back years later, I had all kinds of problems. I had stuff scrubbed and scraped and I struggled with the process. And I kept thinking, "Man, I am paying people to do this to me." One of the things that I had to have done was this incredibly grizzly and painful procedure where they pull your gums back and stitch them up so that they heal closer to the teeth and the gap cause by inattention is closed. The end result is good and I am healthier than ever, but the process is painful. But when I was in the chair, they hooked up a heart monitor and I had to ask how often they used the heart shocking gear next to it. They said, "Almost never." I did manage to get good drugs though.

Now, I kind of bargain with my guy. I just went in today and he was going to have to take some measurements, which means that he would stick a metal probe under the gum and stop when he feels resistance and counts the rings on the metal probe. And he was going to do this a couple of times per tooth. I was in no mood to be stabbed today, and I had just been checked a few weeks back so, we made a deal. He checked the problem areas and left the rest alone. I can rationalize the pain as well as anyone I suppose, but it's something that I feel all of the way to my bones.

So if I had to guess, my personal Hell will have a special room full of needles and dentist chairs.

[comic fan]

Angel Solicitations For December.

Comics Continuum: IDW Publishing for December

ANGEL #28

Written by Bill Willingham, art by Brian Denham, covers by Jenny Frison, David Messina.

An all-new adventure begins as Eisner-winning writer Bill Willingham (Fables) takes Angel down some pretty twisted roads as the group's (and its leader's) fame starts causing tension and testing loyalties. Starting in December, Willingham and new artist Brian Denham present part one of "The Crown Prince Syndrome!"

32 pages, $3.99.




ANGEL ANNUAL #1

Written by Brian Lynch, art by Stephen Mooney, covers by Mooney.

When L.A. went to Hell in After the Fall, so did thousands of screenwriters, one of whom wrote a movie based on Angel's experiences there. The first-ever Angel Annual presents an adaptation of Angel's travails, Hollywood-style, in Angel: Last Angel in Hell: The Official Movie Adaptation. Mooney presents two movie poster covers, one featuring the real Angel and company, the other with their Hollywood counterparts.

32 pages, $7.99.




ANGEL: A HOLE IN THE WORLD #1

Written by Scott Tipton, art and cover by Elena Casagrande.

IDW's series of adaptations of landmark Angel episodes continues with "A Hole in the World," one of the series' most heartbreaking episodes! Adapting both "A Hole in the World" and "Shells," this five-issue mini-series tells the tragic tale of how Illyria came to fight alongside Angel, and at what terrible cost. This month, a mysterious shipment to Wolfram & Hart puts Fred in mortal danger...

32 pages, $3.99.

[ashleyt]

Thanks for the info!

[wilywiccan]

Originally Posted by ashleyt (View Post) Willow was pretty freaked I'm also surprised her eyes weren't black. I'm glad Buffy isn't happy about the guns but if that's all she has to fight with then she should at least learn to use one.

I think that the only reason Buffy acts the way she does about guns is because the writers wanted a build-up to Seeing Red. Prior to S6 Buffy had no anti-gun freakout when Darla shot at her with two guns in Angel, she wanted to stay with the man with the musket in Halloween, Cain aimed his gun at her in Phases, she used a rocket launcher in a crowded mall in Innocence, she nearly blew her brains out while posessed in IOHEFY, she was shot at by a female police officer in Becoming #2, she had a male police officer aim his gun at her in Becoming #2, happily handled a gun and got two snipers to off each other in Homecoming, she had two police officers aim their guns at her in Dirty Girls, she eagerly wanted to use the guns in The I in Team, she had a boatload of military men pointing guns at her and took one of them in Primeval, and saw Xander with a gun in The Replacement.

I hated in Flooded when she said "these things, never useful" and in As You Were when she acted as if using that gun was really difficult and said "I'm not exactly gun girl". Those two pieces of dialogue were only added because of Seeing Red. I get Buffy being anti-gun after SR since since she got shot and Tara died.

I totally bought Willow freaking out like that knowing her magick was gone. She has used it as a crutch since S3. A way to prove that she isn't helpless and geeky and a nobody and useless. She used it for quick fixes instead of getting her hands dirty or putting in hard effort. She used it to solve all of her problems even though it usually made her problems worse.