Buffy : Season 8

Hey everybody—

The first part of this is gonna be spoiler free, then there’ll be a spoiler alert down below.

Many of you will respond to the above with, “A little too late for a spoiler alert, dickhead!” Well, that’s what we thought Friday morning, and that was one of our two mistakes. But more on that in a second. If you haven’t seen the spoilers, don’t read past the image below, avoid our Facebook page for now, and be careful about Buffyfest, CBR, and MTV.

There is a major Season 8 spoiler out there, one that no one wanted to see early, and that was released by accident. Because there’s so much speculation among the readership online, I want to start by explaining what happened.

Late Thursday afternoon (January 7), I got an email from Georges saying that a friend of his had called to ask if this spoiler that had leaked was really true — the uncensored covers to Buffy #34 had been released to the internet. I felt like the ground was yanked out from under me. Sierra and I just stared at each other with our mouths open. I called Georges up to confirm, and yeah, this had happened, and it was on the fansites. I don’t mention the fansites to cast blame. The blame is all with us at Dark Horse. We put a lot of energy into containing this secret, and then a colossal error was made. Our first instinct was to figure out how to retract the images that leaked, but the fact that it was on fansites told us the cat was out of the bag. Had it just been Diamond’s website, maybe we could’ve retracted it; but once an image is on the internet, anywhere on the internet, I don’t think you can ever get it back. The fact that it was on multiple sites, including many that we don’t have close relationships with, meant we shouldn’t waste time talking about a retraction.

So Sierra, Dark Horse president Mike Richardson, and members of our marketing staff scrambled to figure out what had happened, measure the extent of it, and figure out how to respond. I focused on getting in touch with our creative team, particularly Joss and Brad Meltzer. With Joss hard at work locking picture on the final episode of Dollhouse, this took some time. Meanwhile we came up with a strategy to obfuscate, to try to make it look like this wasn’t really as spoiler. I’m not gonna go into detail about the plan, but it was ambitious, and would’ve kind of worked.

When I got Joss, around 5:30, I broke the news about covers getting out. He asked the key question: “Which cover?” I said, “Both of Buffy #34, but more importantly, the Georges one.” If Georges’s #34 cover hadn’t gone out, we could’ve dodged. But his cover really sort of sealed it, due to the characters and clothing depicted. Because of which images leaked, and how far they’d spread, Joss felt that there was no putting the cat back in the bag. I misspoke when I told Buffyfest that the pics were posted on the fansites; they were linked with spoiler warnings. The point was, the information was out there. We discussed Dark Horse’s plan to obfuscate, and came up with another more outrageous idea. But ultimately, we both felt it would be wrong if you got this answer by accident and were left to debate it for nearly two more months, with Joss and the rest of us playing cute in interviews, only to have it all pay off with the fact that yes, you had the answer after all. We know that the readership isn’t monolithic, that you’re all going to have different thoughts about something like this, be we knew that in your shoes WE’D feel cheated and manipulated. Joss felt that owning up was the only option, that there are still twists and turns aplenty, and that this spoiler merely opens up a whole other range of questions. You can certainly disagree with the decision, but this is the truth, and this was what we all agreed upon Friday morning, when the Dark Horse team met and hatched a strategy to address this situation head on.

This spoiler was the result of a mistake. We took a lot of precautions to prevent it. For both #34 and #35, we created dummy covers to be used in the Diamond catalog. When you see the catalog for April-shipping books in a few weeks, you’ll see altered versions of the two #34 covers, spoiler free. If those images had been the ones sent out, as they should have been, none of this would have happened. But someone made a mistake. The initial online reaction showed a mixture of anger and confusion. The anger was directed at two issues: 1) that we spoiled such a big surprise; 2) that the spoiler might be an elaborate hoax, and that we were now laughing at readers for being so easily fooled. We felt we couldn’t do anything about 1). After four years of keeping this secret, this was devastating, and it didn’t occur to us that there was any containing it. We felt it was too late for spoiler alerts. So we wanted to deal with 2), and make it clear that we were not messing with you, that an accident had happened, and that the spoiler was real.

The mistake here — the second mistake — was that in responding, we should have spoiler-alerted everything we put out there. I stand by confirming the spoiler, though debate about that is natural. But we should have kept spoiler-alerting, for readers who hadn’t already seen it. I shouldn’t have tweeted as I did, Facebook should’ve been handled differently, and we should have suggested CBR arrange their story differently. This simply didn’t occur to us, because all we could see was that our big secret was blown — that eclipsed any thoughts of still trying to protect it. We didn’t consider the fact that many Whedon readers have the know-how to avoid spoilers, especially if properly warned, no matter how big and shocking they may be. For this, we are very sorry.

Okay, so like I should have said Friday—

CATASTROPHIC SPOILER ALERT!

Read no further unless you already know—

(Although no NEW Spoilers ...)

So with the covers out there, Twilight’s identity is revealed, but the real meaning of Twilight remains a mystery, and will be a mystery past #33, past #34. Angel’s plan and what it means to Buffy, in so many different ways, will continue to unravel through #40. People have pointed out that Angel was the biggest reveal we could have gone with, and seeing readers’ reactions confirms for me that this could still go a million different ways. Xander and Dawn are together, Buffy can fly, and Twilight is revealed, but what happens next will change everything. The contest at facebook.com/darkhorsecomics is meant to give readers a place to talk about the spoiler in terms of the story itself — go there and comment on the hints you picked up on or the red herrings Joss threw your way while we kept the mystery going. Knowing this readership, you’ll come up with stuff that’s perfectly legit, that we neither intended nor realized. For instance, my comment that Twilight was not Obama, but was a president, was totally off the cuff; I thought it would sound like my usual smart-ass bunk. Only after the comment posted did I realize that Angel had been the president of Wolfram and Hart (and, in fact, Angel Investigations). In the context of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, I joked more than once that our Twilight was Bella, because I was afraid that Edward was such a blatant “homage” to Angel that if I said our villain was Edward, people would take it as a clue.

It’s always the stuff that doesn’t occur to you that hangs you.

To all Buffy readers everywhere, I apologize for spoiling the reveal, but I hope you all enjoy the way the story itself is told over the next ten issues. This week’s issue is written by Joss, and I really think it’s a great one. I’m sure you’ll let us know.

Peace,

Scott