Tomorrow's LA Times has an article (available on the Website today -- another sign of the Times' announced commitment to focus its attention on its Website instead of its paper) about Joss Whedon's plans to produce the eighth season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in a 30-episode comic book series from license mavens Dark Horse.
This isn't the first time that TV creators have supplemented TV series with comics miniseries; J. Michael Straczynski wrote or co-wrote several comic books that told side stories concerning his BABYLON 5 TV series; and Whedon himself wrote the comics miniseries FRAY, a story about a future vampire slayer that dovetailed into the final TV season of BUFFY.
But this series is innovative both in continuing the plotline of a finished TV series; and in Whedon's plan to produce the series like he show-ran the TV series: He will write the first five issues, and then have subsequent issues written by staff writers (drawn from his staff writers for the TV series) in collaboration with comics writers.
Comics writers, movie writers, and novelists writing comics series have been the rage for a few years, ever since Kevin Smith wrote a memorable run of DAREDEVIL in the late 90's that in part led to the run's artist, Joe Quesada, becoming editor in chief of Marvel. Some are better at it than others: Whedon took to comics like a natural; Smith started out too verbose, but adjusted; mystery novelist Greg Rucka became a fantastic comics writer; and novelist Brad Meltzer has been hit-and-miss. Comics writing is tricky, in that comics resemble movies and TV (they tell stories through the interaction of words and pictures, and the rules of panel-to-panel storytelling resemble those of movie directing and editing) but are ultimately different (comics stories must be told through a series of static images that give the illusion of action; movement within a panel must be implied; and comics offer the advantages of image juxtaposition and page design which can only be artificially and clumsily duplicated in movies through split-screen). It will be interesting to see how Whedon's staff writers adjust.
The image is from the LA Times Website; and doesn't carry a copyright notice, but I'm guessing it's copyrighted by Dark Horse and Warner Brothers.
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