While Comic Con is known for the crowds, costumes and craziness, the core programming of the five day holiday-from-real-life live quietly in the meeting halls where the working folk of the all-media pop world share their experiences and expertise in writing, production, drawing, as well as the legal arena of comic books and intellectual property. In that mix is the “after-market” world of successful franchises, whether it is movies or television. One of those avenues is comics.
Once More with Comics panel, photo by Shan Ray
In the comparative quiet of Room 6ab, a panel of writers, publishers and ex-actors got together on the dais to talk about the graphic novels and comics that the works and worlds of Joss Whedon have generated. The line up on the dais included authors Katrina Hill, Jennifer Stuller, and Traci Cohen to examine how series of comics and graphics novels have emerged as a few form of canon that was based on television series from the Joss Whedon-verse of Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which has spun off comic series for many of its characters, such as Angel, Spike, Faith, and on the Firefly side, Wash and Shepherd Book. Others on the panel were wirters Amber Benson, Jane Espenson, Christ Gage, publishers Scott Allie and Mariah Huehner, and actors Clare Kramer and Tom Lenk.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of Firefly, the cross-genre television series about “cowboys in space”, and the 20th anniversary of Buffy.
