Buffy The Vampire Slayer

BENDIS: [Laughs] Oh, speaking of, I saw on the board tonight they announced the new Buffy comic. You’re gonna write a new Buffy comic?

WHEDON: I am, in fact. This was originally a concept that was designed to tie in to some Buffy movies that are probably not going to happen. So now the comic is out there twisting in the wind by itself. But I have this arc; this concept of what I refer to as “Season 8” of “Buffy,” which is the “What happens next?” Although it’s very much more comic book in scale and style and time frame. Everyone’s like, “What week will it pick up during?” And I’m like, “It’s not quite like that.”

What I’m doing is working with Georges Jeanty. He’s gonna be drawing the first four, which I’m writing. And Jo Chen’s gonna do the covers. I’m a huge fan of hers. I have this arc laid out which I’m sort of writing up as where I want the series to go and then I’m gonna be bringing in anybody from the camp or any of our friends who have the time to do arcs within that. Just sort of servicing certain beats and then going off on their own. Because at this point, it’s sort of fair game. There are certain characters I’ve been saving because I thought I might make movies about them, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

BENDIS: Why isn’t that going to happen?

WHEDON: I think money is standing in the way. What is ever in the way? What ever makes anything happen or not happen?

BENDIS: I don’t know. You have more insight on that than I do. [Laughs] Hey, remember the animated Buffy? That’s the first time we ever talked, was about the possibility of an animated Buffy. Whatever happened with that?

WHEDON: You know, uh, money. [Laughs] We just couldn’t get anybody willing to pony up for it. I couldn’t do cheesy animation. I needed it to be of the quality of “Batman: The Animated Series” or “Animaniacs.” Really tight. That’s the reason why there’s animation. We had a lot of low-budget people coming in. But if the quality’s not good enough, I have other things to do with my time. So more than likely, we were asking for the moon, but there was no network that was interested in going there. Between Fox and the networks, they could never come up with enough that would make a decent show. And interest wasn’t that high. You feel like you’re holding bags of money up to homeless men who are refusing them. You’re like, “But this is a no-brainer. This works!”

I had scripts by writers from the show that were hilarious because they were the scripts containing what we used to call our ‘Simpson moments.’ We’d pitch things for the regular show that were just too silly or ridiculous or offensive or whatever. Every one of those was in a script and they were hilarious.

BENDIS: And Loeb was involved in this too, right?

WHEDON: Yeah, that’s how I got involved with Loeb in the first place. He was funny because he knew that world.

BENDIS: I’m a huge animation snob. I just can’t handle cheapy animation. It just drives me insane.

WHEDON: Yeah, it makes me crazy. It makes my eyes hurt. And what can be done is so incredibly beautiful. And not especially expensive. But people will only go a certain distance. They will go no further. It kept almost coming back. A new network would show interest and piles of us would line up and ride out somewhere in the valley and go to a meeting and nothing would happen.