Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Dark Horse and Myspace.com partnered to present a contest calling for short essays about how Buffy the Vampire Slayer has affected fans’ lives. Joss has picked the best of these essays, and the writer of the winning essay will be drawn into an upcoming issue of Joss’s current relaunch of Buffy, in the Season Eight comic series. We assumed that this simply meant that someone’s picture would be drawn in as an incidental character, but when over the last few days Joss picked the winning entry, he decided to make her more involved.

"I read a lot of moving entries," Joss writes, "but the enormity of Robin Balzer’s struggle was overwhelming just to hear about. She deserves a place not just in the book but in the mythology of Buffy. I thought it would be hard to put someone in the book gracefully, but just thinking about Robin opened up not only a cameo character but another branch of the Buffy mythos. She’ll appear in issue ten, and it feels as though she’s been waiting there already. I’m grateful to her husband Jerrod for sharing their story with me, and for helping build ours."

As often happens, the winner was a little unconventional, an entry that stood out not just for the quality and the scope of what the writer had to say, but the fact that he was writing on behalf of someone else. Here’s the winning essay, by Jerrod Balzer.

"I’m writing for my wife, Robin Balzer, for this essay, because she’s disabled.

"Robin and I didn’t have cable or satellite for years, so we had only seen the original movie of Buffy until the first season came to DVD. At that time, schizophrenia was gradually taking over my wife’s mind. Our growing love for the show as each season came out gave something for my wife to focus on and look forward to during those first dark and confusing years. The character Drusilla gave her a fantasy icon to relate to, and kept her spirits up as though she were a part of the story, and of course Buffy’s character gave her the strength to battle her ’demons.’

"Now, she’s completely disabled from her illness, in and out of coherence, but I keep Buffy and Angel posters on the wall which give her focus even when we’re not watching them. We’ve also become attached to Firefly. Again, she can relate to River in her own way. We really owe a lot to the imagination of Joss Whedon.

"For this reason, I know it would mean the world to my wife, Robin, if she could see herself with Buffy in a comic. For the struggle she consistently goes through, I feel she deserves to be with a character that’s helped her so much over the years."

As Joss mentions, Robin will appear in issue ten, which is quite a bit further down the line than we originally planned to feature the winner. But when he told me how he wanted to involve her, it was clear that there could be no better prize.

We thank everyone who sent their moving and complex entries. We’re glad that this character has had such a profound effect on so many people. I want to close with a list of the five runners up. In Buffy #10, we’ll dedicate a letter column to the contest and to the runners up.
Best,
Scott Allie
PS Buffy #2 is available in comics shops today.

The runners up
(in alphabetical order)
Melissa Brown
Lance Conzett
Chloe (Nicole) Gallagher
Rachel Rosenstern
Natanya Rubin