Joss Whedon

As you may know, Joss Whedon was scheduled to do a panel for Dark Horse at Comic-con. An amazing, awesome panel that I was in fact, going to miss. I’d missed Joss a lot so far that week—apparently he’d stopped by the Browncoats booth a number of times, and I just wasn’t lucky enough to catch him. I was beginning to think that Joss himself was a myth. Have you ever been snipe hunting? You know, that game where you and your friends run around with flashlights a paper bag in the dark, and they keep telling you that you’ve almost, almost caught that snipe, and they keep falling on something, but just missing it, and it isn’t until much later that you realize that it’s ALL MADE UP?

And then the next year you all do it to someone else? Yeah, I was pretty much convinced that Joss Whedon was a snipe, and all my friends were just going "Ooo, Tiff, you’ve just missed him—isn’t that bad luck!" and then sniggering madly behind my back. And Dark Horse was just in on it, because, well, they’re comic book people. They have a sense of humor, you know?

So it was with some suspicion that I regarded a little entry in the Comic-con program book that said Joss was going to do a signing before the panel. It was before my meeting. I could actually make it. This was too good to be true.

It was. It turned out that the signing was limited to 100 people, and that those lucky 100 would be determined by random drawing. 100,000 people. 100 tickets. I thought I’d heard this story before, only it had something to do with chocolate and gold foil raffle tickets and Johnny Depp or Gene Wilder, and for the most part, it didn’t end well.

Fortunately for me, I have less skeptical friends. When I told them the story, they all disappeared, and a little while later my five friends presented me with six Joss Whedon raffle tickets. My friend Keri laughed as I counted on my fingers. "I asked the lady if I could get another one for a friend," she said, grinning. "She asked, ’what’s your friend like?’" I told her you were a cute guy."

"Ah," I said intelligently, clutching my tickets as hard as I could and totally stabbing my palms with my own nails in the process. Now came the wait.

An hour before Joss’s signing, they post the numbers of the winners. By the time I got to the list, a crowd had already formed—all unsuccessful, judging by their glum faces. Four digit ticket numbers had been written in the order they’d been pulled, so looking through all of them took a lot of checking and rechecking. I really didn’t think I’d win, so I really wasn’t looking very hard, and I’d shuffled to my last ticket and....

....the number matched. "Me me me me me!" I shrieked, startling several passers-by. The crowd glared. I suddenly realized my mistake. "Sorry," I muttered, shuffling through some disgruntled people to the front. The nice Dark Horse PR lady whose name totally escapes me finished laughing at me long enough to have me point out my number before tagging me with a neon green wristband. She told me to get in line in half an hour, and that Joss would sign any 3 items we brought.

So my first issue Buffy comic and I got in the green-wristband line. The Dark Horse PR lady from before came over to chat, and she told me all about how amazing Joss is to work with—"He’s nicer than most nice people". Apparently they bonded over stories of their kitties. Cuteness!

Then suddenly it’s my turn next. I’m trying to not take up a lot of time, since I figure he’s only got a minute per fan, and I’m rehearsing a little bit, because, yes, I am a nerd....and then the Dark Horse PR lady is tapping my arm, because I’m up now, and my inner fan girl totally freaks out.

"Hi!" Joss Whedon says to me. He has a great handshake, firm and energetic without crushing your hand. I tell him about how much I love Buffy—how watching the show got me through my computer science and communications majors. "Oh really?" he says, like that’s totally exciting. I explain that there was a lot of misogynistic discrimination in CS, and that I identified with Buffy because she was as underestimated as I felt. That she did hard, demanding stuff, but was also airheaded sometimes. That because she was tough, I could be too. He grinned so empathetically at me, and then there was the part where he should have signed my comic, and I should have moved on.

Only he didn’t. He just listened. There was a silence where he was going to listen to whatever I had to say—where he would have listened to any fan, because he loves people that much. There was no hurry, no rush—just a space for me and Joss Whedon to hang out.

I explained that I’d been successful, that I’d made it as a cheerleader and a web developer, and he cheered and smiled so empathetically that, tired and amazed, my eyes welled up. "I’m totally going to cry," I said, fanning my face goofily. "I thought you were tough!" he said, laughing. "Not in the face of awesomeness!" I protested with further hand waving. Finally I realized that I was going to have to ask him to sign my comic book and my poster—that he wasn’t going to move his fans along until they were ready, and so I did. He posed for a picture, and he smiled some more, and I gathered all my prizes and rushed off.

The inscription on my Buffy comic reads,

"To Tiffany—

I totally take you seriously,

Joss Whedon"

*sniff!*