Joss Whedon

This weekend Portland was a nexus of Joss Whedon fan activity—having worked with the guy for nearly ten years now, it was a strange experience for me to see it all first hand. Around the world, Joss fans were getting together to watch Serenity and raise money for Equality Now, an organization founded in 1992 to speak out for women’s rights. This fundraiser was started in Portland, by a Browncoat (i.e., Serenity fan) named Bix, who invited me to speak at the Friday evening screening, on the eve of Joss’s birthday. To witness the hard work of a few inspired Serenity fans, read this strip—you can see more like it by clicking the Serenity Tales button at the top of the page.

Later that night, the Buffy Singalong came through Portland. This bizarre event started in my old stomping grounds in Boston, I believe, before going on tour. Clint McClung puts on a fun show, based around the musical episode of Buffy from Season Six. If this show is coming through your town, check it out. As Clint describes it, it’s a lot like Rocky Horror, in that you sing along, and shout at the screen, with props handed to you at the door—but he’s quick to add that what sets Buffy’s musical episode apart is that, "Unlike the Rocky Horror, this show is perfect!"

With the musical episode at only an hour, Clint pads it out with some hilarious extras, including a fan-made music video of the Dresden Dolls’ "Coin-Operated Boy," an ode to self-satisfaction dramatized through clips of Buffy and Riley, contrasted with shots of Angel, her "real one." Great stuff. Serenity, of course, at roughly two hours, doesn’t need padding, but the film was preceded by Joss’s acceptance speech from when Equality Now gave him an award for writing strong female characters. You can see in the speech Joss’s belief in the organization, which, among more conventionally humanitarian activities, promotes positive portrayals of women into mainstream media.

So he wants to step up himself, and he’s conceived his own fundraiser—My Dinner with Joss (www.ebay.com/josswhedon). He’s pulled in Dark Horse, Ebay, and Auction Cause to raise a pile of money by auctioning off five seats at an exclusive get together at the San Diego Comic Con this July. The five highest bidders get a private sit down with Joss, chewing the fat and drinking the drinks. There are some other rarities up for auction as part of the fundraiser, but the main event takes place in a private room in San Diego’s trendy gaslamp neighborhood in late July. The auction will run from July 2 to July 12.

This weekend, seeing how Joss’s fans react to his work renewed my appreciation for this thing of which I’m a small part. The best thing about my job is being able to learn from people who’ve done more than I have, and done it better. Having Joss write the Buffy comic provides me an incredible learning opportunity—but now, as he assumes his Executive Producer role, supervising Brian K. Vaughan while he continues to supervise our artists, I get to observe a different set of skills—skills that made Buffy one of the best-written shows, whether Joss was writing it or not. I’m mostly on the sidelines here, as two of my favorite writers fine-tune these scripts together. I think I’ve learned to be a pretty good script editor, but working with Joss can only improve this editor’s game. Mike Richardson may be dismayed to learn that after thirteen years he’s still paying me to learn on the job, but I’ll keep going until I get it right. When I’m writing or editing, I’m trying to make genre fiction that speaks something real to people—in doing so, Joss’s work has come to mean as much to me as it does to his other fans.

Scott Allie, Editor
EQUALITY NOW