Voices From Beyond
I'm kind of thinking I need to get back into the interviewing thing, in particular, interviewing Buffy and Angel writers and artists.
When I first started interviewing people 10 years ago or more, the logic behind it was quite simple. I didn't feel that I could write books, make movies or write/draw my own comic books, so the next best thing would be to interview the people who did them. Also, by doing so, I could satisfy my own curiosity by asking every question that I ever wondered about while watching a particualr TV show, reading a passage in a book, or admiring an artists draftsmanship. It was a perfect arrangement, really, and I enjoyed it immensely while I was doing it.
Even when I was a features editor over at the website previously known as Silver Bullet Comicbooks and churning the things out weekly like on an assembly line, there was still a charge I would get from the odd Q&A that really sung, or I would be grabbed by one of the submissions that were sent in, like this early interview with Jamie Smart, a creator who quickly became one of my favourite comic book personalities after I had the pleasure of editing this piece.
Anyway, while my last contribution to that site was 2 and a half years ago, my final published interviews have, more or less, all been Buffy or Angel related thanks to a little something I cooked up on my website Meanwhile... called the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Post Mortem. I got the idea in my head to do a few Buffy related interviews since I had a relationship with Dark Horse Comics at the time, the publisher of the then running Buffy comic book series (not to be confused with the currently popular, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8). The old series was coming to an end, the show had come to an end, and I think Angel was close behind, so it all seemed like a good idea to explore the lore, as it were.
I figured I would rassle up as many guys and gals from the Whedonverse as possible and compile them all in a final love letter to the show and the fans. The people I managed to snag were show writers Jane Espenson and David Fury, comic book editor Scott Allie, a slew of the artists working on the books like Jeff Parker and Alex Sanchez, as well as Eric Wight, one of the designers for the ill-fated animated series.
Some of the folks I tried to get but never managed to? Seth Green, Amber Benson, Tom Lenk, Stephanie Romanov, Nicholas Brendan, Drew Goddard, Drew Z. Greenberg, and last, but not least, Joss Whedon himself. I actually had a scheduled interview with the guy at one point, but he backed out at the last minute. Hey, he's a busy guy and I don't begrudge him the fact that his career comes before my interview.
Much.
I was going to punctuate the event with a couple of 'lost' interviews but that never really materialized. I still have the Christopher Golden and Karl Moline pieces sitting on deck. I really should dust them off and run them anyways.
Overall, the interviews were a blast to do and if you do a casual google search of my name online you'll probably come up with a couple pages worth of links that connect you to places that have run, re-run, or ripped off my stuff. Announcements for the Buffy Animated series, early word on the Season 8 comics, and the first look at Angel Season 6 courtesy of David Fury were all highlights of the Post Mortem. In fact, the aforementioned Season 6 preview with David Fury (and some other comments made during the interview) caused quite a stir in Whedon fandom assembled, finally culminating in a few words from big guns Tim Minear and Joss Whedon himself over on the Whedonesque site.
Man, just going back and re-checking these bits for links is giving me the same 'hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck' feeling that I got when things first starting boiling over.
So, yeah. Online, if anyone actually recognizes my name at all, I'm sure I'm pretty much identified as the Buffy Interview Guy despite years of toiling away and contributing to various sites. These interviews, on my shitty looking website (which has been due for a facelift for, like, 8 years) are what kind of made my mark.
Fast forward to the now. I haven't really interviewed anyone for a while, nor have I published anything except these blogs since I don't know when. In that time, Whedon has launched the Season 8 and the Season 6 from Dark Horse and IDW, respectively. Writers from the show are back doing the comics as well as new talent contributing to the After the Fall storyline over on Angel's book, and every time I sit down and read one of these things I'm coming up with all kinds of new questions and angles. Every revalation or returning character or event that ties into something that happened on the show or in previous iterations of the comics give me openings to approach the material in a critical way, and I also come up with stuff that could feed off of things that were discussed in some of my earlier Q&As and could stand to be updated or just expanded on. I keep looking at the wife and saying, I think I have another Angel interview in me. Or, I should e-mail DHC and see if I can get some of the writers on Season 8 to open up about the series in a way that they haven't in the media to this point.
And that's my thinking on the matter.
Do I or don't I?
I guess we'll see.
Later!
When I first started interviewing people 10 years ago or more, the logic behind it was quite simple. I didn't feel that I could write books, make movies or write/draw my own comic books, so the next best thing would be to interview the people who did them. Also, by doing so, I could satisfy my own curiosity by asking every question that I ever wondered about while watching a particualr TV show, reading a passage in a book, or admiring an artists draftsmanship. It was a perfect arrangement, really, and I enjoyed it immensely while I was doing it.
Even when I was a features editor over at the website previously known as Silver Bullet Comicbooks and churning the things out weekly like on an assembly line, there was still a charge I would get from the odd Q&A that really sung, or I would be grabbed by one of the submissions that were sent in, like this early interview with Jamie Smart, a creator who quickly became one of my favourite comic book personalities after I had the pleasure of editing this piece.
Anyway, while my last contribution to that site was 2 and a half years ago, my final published interviews have, more or less, all been Buffy or Angel related thanks to a little something I cooked up on my website Meanwhile... called the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Post Mortem. I got the idea in my head to do a few Buffy related interviews since I had a relationship with Dark Horse Comics at the time, the publisher of the then running Buffy comic book series (not to be confused with the currently popular, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8). The old series was coming to an end, the show had come to an end, and I think Angel was close behind, so it all seemed like a good idea to explore the lore, as it were.
I figured I would rassle up as many guys and gals from the Whedonverse as possible and compile them all in a final love letter to the show and the fans. The people I managed to snag were show writers Jane Espenson and David Fury, comic book editor Scott Allie, a slew of the artists working on the books like Jeff Parker and Alex Sanchez, as well as Eric Wight, one of the designers for the ill-fated animated series.
Some of the folks I tried to get but never managed to? Seth Green, Amber Benson, Tom Lenk, Stephanie Romanov, Nicholas Brendan, Drew Goddard, Drew Z. Greenberg, and last, but not least, Joss Whedon himself. I actually had a scheduled interview with the guy at one point, but he backed out at the last minute. Hey, he's a busy guy and I don't begrudge him the fact that his career comes before my interview.
Much.
I was going to punctuate the event with a couple of 'lost' interviews but that never really materialized. I still have the Christopher Golden and Karl Moline pieces sitting on deck. I really should dust them off and run them anyways.
Overall, the interviews were a blast to do and if you do a casual google search of my name online you'll probably come up with a couple pages worth of links that connect you to places that have run, re-run, or ripped off my stuff. Announcements for the Buffy Animated series, early word on the Season 8 comics, and the first look at Angel Season 6 courtesy of David Fury were all highlights of the Post Mortem. In fact, the aforementioned Season 6 preview with David Fury (and some other comments made during the interview) caused quite a stir in Whedon fandom assembled, finally culminating in a few words from big guns Tim Minear and Joss Whedon himself over on the Whedonesque site.
Man, just going back and re-checking these bits for links is giving me the same 'hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck' feeling that I got when things first starting boiling over.
So, yeah. Online, if anyone actually recognizes my name at all, I'm sure I'm pretty much identified as the Buffy Interview Guy despite years of toiling away and contributing to various sites. These interviews, on my shitty looking website (which has been due for a facelift for, like, 8 years) are what kind of made my mark.
Fast forward to the now. I haven't really interviewed anyone for a while, nor have I published anything except these blogs since I don't know when. In that time, Whedon has launched the Season 8 and the Season 6 from Dark Horse and IDW, respectively. Writers from the show are back doing the comics as well as new talent contributing to the After the Fall storyline over on Angel's book, and every time I sit down and read one of these things I'm coming up with all kinds of new questions and angles. Every revalation or returning character or event that ties into something that happened on the show or in previous iterations of the comics give me openings to approach the material in a critical way, and I also come up with stuff that could feed off of things that were discussed in some of my earlier Q&As and could stand to be updated or just expanded on. I keep looking at the wife and saying, I think I have another Angel interview in me. Or, I should e-mail DHC and see if I can get some of the writers on Season 8 to open up about the series in a way that they haven't in the media to this point.
And that's my thinking on the matter.
Do I or don't I?
I guess we'll see.
Later!
posted by Mike Jozic at
9:09 PM
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