Joss Whedon

It’s been a busy time for ‘the voice of comics’ - Darwyn Cooke, Joe Quesada, Laurell K. Hamilton and Alan Moore were all guests of the radio show last month when it celebrated its 5 Year Birthday Celebration. The broadcast was hit by two powerful forces at the end of the month - Joss Whedon and Mike Mignola. The host of the show, Scott Hinze has a recap of the last episodes of November with highlights, answers and some programming announcements near the end:

I think more than any other guest, I was completely nervous to interview Joss. Heck, I’ve interviewed him before on the convention floor and had some seemingly very intimidating creators on recently, but I was more worried about his judgment of a bad question more than anyone else’s. Due to some production screw-ups, Joss couldn’t make it at the start of the show but that just made his time on the break-free live show that much more valuable. When we did get him on and up and running, we dove right into the Wonder Woman movie he’s currently writing.

When asked, “What’s your overall take on the character of Diana Price? Is she an intimidating feminist, a caring naturalist, a straight-up super hero, what?” Joss answered, “Uh, yes. She is intimidating because she is an Amazon and a princess and somebody who believes very strongly in what she is. I don’t believe that she’s an ‘intimidating feminist’ in the sense that that term is usually used. It’s not because she’s a feminist that she’s intimidating - it’s because she’s frick’n Wonder Woman and she can kill you with her pinky. She doesn’t, because she’s good. The thing that’s interesting to me about her is simply that she’s so righteous and so completely above human nature, that she doesn’t see it in herself and until she does, she’s not actually that effective of a super hero.

I hoped I didn’t rub him the wrong way with that first question because it came back to bite me in the butt. Other Wonder Woman answers: there will be no World War II scenes, but definitely the bracelets, the lasso and if Joss has it his way - the invisible jet.

When asked by a caller if there is any chance of bringing back the cast to do a Buffy reunion movie or project, Joss replies, “Well I’ve learned in Hollywood that you never say, ‘No chance.’ But there isn’t one. Ultimately, it is the universe that I come back to, that speaks to me a lot. We did try to get some tv movies with the insularly characters, whom I love just as much, off the ground, and kinda ran into some brick walls there. The comics grew out of that same desire to create scenarios with these characters that I love and then suddenly, I had created this enormous job for myself - which, remind me not to do.”

More Buffy comic answers: Buffy, Xander, and Dawn are in the first issues and then they will roll out more characters later. Riley and his wife may show up but nothing is set right now as the writers of the comic are going to start with the core characters. The Immortal will be showing up.

Joss has said outright that he is not interested in having people write Serenity novels. “They could be writing books that say ‘feminism is bad’ and ‘the best thing to do is vote Republican’”

I (Scott here) would like to state right now to all of the Newsarama-ites, that am not a Republican nor I do not think feminism is bad. I read and enjoyed the ‘Goodbye to Comics’ blog for Pete’s sake. (Not that Republicans are inertly bad - sheesh).

In regards to more Serenity/Firefly comics, "We are doing another limited series, me and Brett Matthews are writing a new 3-issue Firefly comic series called Better Days that I’m not positive is coming out in the Spring. I’m not as interested as continuing with an actual series, a long-term comic book because there is something about the process of making Firefly that I’m closer to than I’ve ever been and a lot of that has to do with the actors... the Serenity crew - the way they cohered as a group was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced... If it was animated and they were doing the voices, if it was done like A Scanner Darkly, if it was on radio - all of those things would be interesting to me because I would be able to get the actors. To me, the characters just don’t exist without those actors... I don’t see it being something printed so much as someway to get back with them and continue our party that was our party.” And later, Joss adds, “Shepherd Book’s past would definitely be an element of whatever other story I could tell (with the actors). But ultimately, if I find that this is simply not to be, then, you know, I’ll just go online.”

A caller asked which X-Men creator influenced him more Claremont or Morrison and Joss replied, “Claremont defined a generation of writers of which I am one, there’s no getting around it. What he did with Cockram, then Byrne and then Paul Smith, that stuff is completely seminal and I kept coming back to it again and again. But then I find that most of the toys I’m playing with are Morrison’s. Morrison having been right before me- originally the gig was to continue New X-Men, his book, which I really wanted to do because the title looks the same when you turn the comic book upside down, and that’s cool and it’s really important to me. I was really disappointed when they said, ‘Oh and by the way, it’s going to be Astonishing.” And I was really intimidating because it had to be... Astonishing. So I think ultimately, it’s Claremont’s world but Morrison’s sandbox I’m playing in because I was trying to, in my own way, remain true to the kind of storytelling Morrison was doing, even though obviously mine is really different.”

Joss went on to discuss Cyclops’ coolness (or lack thereof) and his take on Wolverine, “Everybody adores him, he’s the easiest thing in the world to love because he’s awesome... they handed [my twist] to me on a platter when they did his origin and I thought, ‘Oh this is too precious. I will finally get to do something to do something with Wolverine that in his 4 billion comics, I don’t think has been done.’ And then I went too far.”

Regarding Wash’s death in Serenity, “The fact of the matter is that it’s a great point of contention with many people. Without it, the movie would have been two hours of blather. I made a whole big thing about heroes getting people killed and the dangerousness of Mal actually becoming somebody who believes in something and how much laying they were laying on the line. And, I didn’t want to kill anybody. In my first draft, I didn’t kill anybody, it was 200 pages long and it was cute, but it was the second season, it wasn’t an actual film. It cam along and I realized, you do this one thing, that nobody’s sees coming, the rest of the movie has enormous resonance and then you can just cheat the rest of the time. ‘Oh look, Simon’s dead! Oh, not really. Oh look, River’s dead! No, not really. Oh look, clearly Mal’s... not so much.’ And it works because you know, I might, cause I just did. You take anyway someone you love, and then every card is on the table. It’s not pretty, but it’s the way to make something creative. I hate movies that lie. I hate movies, like Jarassic Park where just the bad people die, because I don’t believe a just and all-knowing dinosaur. I believe it should be more random than that. The only way to really sell the sacrifices they are making is to make one.”

Meg’s response was, “If you can bring back Colossus, you can bring back Wash.” In which Joss replied, “Well, Joe Quesada just has to tell me to.”

The next caller was Colin from Florida who asked, “Is there any dream projects in comics you’d love to work on?” Joss said, “You know, I do. The one that’s been stuck in my craw for a long, long time -about seven years now- if I ever had the time and could get the rights, I would really want to do a Captain America / Jenny Sparks crossover. I have a story I’m dying to tell. By the way, that’s an exclusive.”

Regard writing a Wonder Woman comic, “No. I don’t think so. I like to tell a story once. That’s why I didn’t retell the movie of Buffy in the series, because I could have, I started the series kind of in the middle. I did same thing with Serenity, I wasn’t going to go back and retell Firefly. Why would I make a movie and write a comic of the movie at the same time, unless I was doing something very different? They need to be their own thing. Usually there is a comic book version of the film coming out at the same time as the reboot, and the All-Star, and the Ultimate, and the Year One, and every other way they can think of retelling the same story without making up with something new —did I say that or think it?— If I were not making the movie, I’d be like, “Ooh, that’s interesting.” But I really do like to tell a story only once, even though all of my stories are oddly similar.”

Joss continues to speak about his upcoming movie, Goners, this work schedule, his favorite horror movies.