Buffy : Season 9

Graphic Books Best Sellers: A Bounty of Buffy

There’s only one new book on our lists this week and that honor goes to Volume 8 of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which lands at No. 1 on our softcover list this week. The series, published by Dark Horse Comics, was presented as “Season Eight,” a look at the adventures of Buffy and her friends as if the television series had continued. The first issue of the series had orders of more than 110,000 copies. The series also made some news when Buffy had a brief affair with a fellow (female) slayer. “Season Eight” lasted 40 issues. The concluding storyline, issues No. 36 through 40, is collected in Volume 8. All of issue No. 36 is available on the Dark Horse site.

(As always, the complete lists can be found here, along with an explanation of how they were assembled.)

In honor of the conclusion of the series, and its appearance on our softcover list, Scott Allie, the co-editor of “Buffy,” with Sierra Hahn, answered some questions by e-mail.

Q. What was the impetus behind the decision to co-write the middle three chapters of the five-part “Last Gleaming” storyline that concludes Season 8?

A. Joss was gearing up to write the final five when it started looking like he was indeed going to write and direct “The Avengers” for Marvel. He wrote the first of those final five, the first issue in “Last Gleaming,” and then the timeline started getting scary. Rather than winging the last four, he decided it’d make sense to nail down an outline. So I flew down to Santa Monica where we spent three intensive days at his office banging out the outline, as well as talking through Season 9. The day after I left, he emailed me the script for the first six or seven pages of the next issue, and all looked on course. But then some other stuff came up that slowed him down for another little while. Since we’d outlined it together, he told me, “This means we’re officially co-writing the finale.” Which was welcome news, of course, a cool challenge. I would write pages of script, based on the outline we’d come up with together, and he’d give me notes. Getting notes from Joss on his own characters is a pretty educational experience. The final issue is an epilogue, a very personal sort of thing that Joss wanted to handle himself, so he made the time for that one.

Q. How much involvement does Joss Whedon have in the Buffy-universe of comics?

A. Quite a bit. He’s co-writing “Buffy” with Andrew Chambliss, who’d worked with him on the “Dollhouse” TV series, and then “Vampire Diaries.” He held a great writers summit for Season 9 at his house, where we had Chris Gage, Andrew, me and Sierra, who’s my co-editor on the books. We had some other writers who may or may not be writing issues of Season 9, but they were the people he wanted in the room to figure the series out. But it’s all overseen by him: selection of artists, cover sketches, all of that. He edits the scripts, has more of an approval role on the art itself.

Q. As a continuation of the TV series, did you find that Season 8 brought in people who had not read comics before?

A. Absolutely. That’s always been a great thing about “Buffy,” even before we were doing Season 8, before Joss was directly involved in the comics. His involvement definitely brought even more people in. I love doing books that bring new readers to the medium. You’ve got to grow the audience.

Q. Is there anything you wish had gone differently with Season 8? And how much of the experience of Season 8 has informed the decisions on Season 9?

A. The experience of Season 8 did everything to shape Season 9, in a lot of ways. One way is that we’re going shorter – instead of 40 issues, Season 9 will be 25. However, it’s two simultaneous series of 25, “Buffy” monthly for 25, and “Angel and Faith” simultaneous for 25, so way more story, in a much shorter period of time. Also, Season 8 got so caught up in the big epic stuff you can do better in comics than on TV that we sometimes got away from the real personal heart of what made “Buffy,” and all of Joss’s work, great, in the first place. So that will also be more the point of Season 9. Though it will be somewhat epic. Just no armies.

Q. During Season 8 the license to produce comics starring Angel was returned to Dark Horse. He will have his own series alongside Season 9. Will the series be intertwined?

A. Well, both series, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel and Faith,” stem from the events of Season 8 — very directly. You could even say that the main thrust of A&F is more a followup to Season 8 than the new “Buffy” series is. The world was changed by Season 8, and those changes to the world are consistent from one series to the next, and some secondary characters will have similar roles in the two titles. Also, there will be spinoffs, miniseries featuring familiar characters from both TV shows, and those will connect the two main series.