Geek Penthouse: Joss Whedon on Buffy Vs. Black Widow

If you’re anything like I am, you watched that teaser clip, from Joss Whedon’s upcoming Avengers flick, of Black Widow tied to a chair and still kicking the shit out of three or four guys and you wondered: “Why can’t I control when I get an erection? I’m a fucking 40-year-old man!”

However, if you’re anything like Amanda, you wondered who would win in a fight: the Widow, or Whedon’s most famous creation, Buffy The Vampire Slayer? I know she wondered this because she asked me while I was drafting the above-linked article; I sat quietly for a moment after her question, and after some intense consideration, I could only reply: “…I gotta go put on clean pants. New rule: don’t ask me about purely theoretical superhero girl fights. No, this does not supercede the existing rule to not ask me to solve complicated mathematical word problems in front of you and your friends.”

Thankfully, Whedon has responded directly to the question to USA Today, saving those of us wallowing in the realm of superhero geekdom the heartbreak of hours of heated bar debates, ill-advised and extended podcasts, and shameful and furtive midnight laundry sessions.

To wit:

Forward Into The Past: Faith & Angel #6 Review

Remember that episode of Buffy where Willow got all twisted on dark magic and couldn’t leave the house? And she was willing to ignore anything else that was going on in the Buffyverse because she was just too willing to roll around in the darkness in exchange for a free taste for a load of evil across her naked chest (Perhaps I’m misremembering the episode… but if I am, don’t you fucking dare tell me)? Yeah, that’s what Angel & Faith #6 is: the crack of the Buffyverse.

Whereas the actual Buffy The Vampire Slayer comic feels committed to advancing the Buffyverse and showing the Scooby Gang pushing forward into adulthood, Angel & Faith as written by Christos Gage, particularly in this issue, feels committed to beefing up and filling out previously mentioned areas of the Buffy mythos. On its face, this can be dangerous; any storyline that is less concerned with advancement and more concerned with its own continuity runs a serious danger of crawling up its own ass and dying (hello, Grant Morrison’s run on Batman!).

Buffy Summers: Party Slayer: Review Of Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 9 #1

Fun Fact Of The Day: today, I discovered that my taste in classical music runs toward pieces that involve string instruments, restrained use of the woodwind family, and, are actually Led Zeppelin. Mostly the latter, actually. I determined this during a brief, but abortive attempt at cultivating a taste for classical music while trapped in traffic gridlock on the I-95 corridor. This may not have been the best time to make the attempt, but it’s not like I had anything better to do. I was trapped in a sedan sandwich between what appeared to be a head made mostly of cell phone in front of me and a morbidly obese individual in a Toyota Yaris who seemed to have dozed off in back of me. He would appear to wake every now and again to shovel a fistful of Funyuns down his head and then drop right back to sleep. It was fascinating except for that part where I worried he’d lose control over the brake pedal and smash me into Funyun dusted road pizza. I needed something to distract me.

There are seven television seasons that one could point to in the Buffy-verse as being “Classic Buffy”, as opposed to the comic book Season 8, which I consider to be “New Coke Buffy”. I wanted to like it, but even Whedon has said in interviews that by the end of Season 8 things needed to be reined back in and brought back to basics. But hey, sometimes, you just have to try. For every instance of “No, I think I need something that rocks a little harder than Mr. Vivaldi here”, there is also an “anything goes” reverting back to “basics/world with no magic”. Sometimes the classic is better.

I Live Through Angel and Faith #1

Emo Angel is emo.

I’ve noticed, in the short history that this site has been live, that my posts have been DCnU centric. That’s a shame, because there’s certainly a wealth of other comic book business that is managing to make it out into the world, despite the sucking vacuum of the New 52. Did you know, for example, that a comic book store is launching in Toronto that is intended to be specifically for kids? This is exciting, because I often find myself standing in the middle of a comic store in downtown Toronto pissed that they won’t let me do keg stands because of all the teeming, unwashed masses of children that cling to my ankles like so many fleas. Now I can be surly in public in Toronto in peace.

What? Your comic store doesn’t let you do keg stands? You need a better comic store.

Did you know that Image Comics plans on releasing “Morning Glories” #12, “Screamland” #4 and “Spawn” #211 for sale September 7, 2011? Yes! New Spawn! The one thing in my life that is 1992, every day, all the time.

And, meanwhile, Dark Horse released Angel & Faith #1 last week. Part of the “Season 9” arc of the Buffyverse, “Angel & Faith”, written by Christos Gage with art from Rebekah Isaacs, finds Faith in possession of Rupert Giles’s mysterious journal of mystery. This is because Angel killed Giles at the end of Season 8. BUT! It’s not his fault, you see – he was under the influence of Twilight and, as we all know, Twilight ruins everything.