BUFFY: THE ANIMATED SERIES

Joss Whedon’s announcement that he would be serving as executive producer of Buffy: The Animated Series, as well as the writer of Dark Horse Comics’ eight-issue Fray and four-part Angel miniseries, begs one question: creatively, how can he possibly NOT take away from the live-action Buffy and Angel? Well, that’s where Jeph Loeb comes in.

Credited with, among other things, revitalizing the Superman character and making him hip again, Loeb, working alongside Whedon as executive producer of the animated Buffy, should guarantee a show of high quality.

Asked by his manager if he would be interested in “running” the show – and admitting he wasn’t sure what that meant – Loeb went to Mutant Enemy Productions for an interview and was surprised by what he found.

 “I came in in total awe of everyone that’s here,” he says, “and they were saying things like, ‘I can’t believe you took this meeting.’ I was like, ‘Do you think I’m somebody else?’ And then I realized that my comics were all over the place. I knew on some level that Joss was a comic book fan, but you never know whether or not people like your work. So this really grew out of two things: one, I have a background in animation and television, and, two, I write comics that the guys here seem to like. So I had the interview, met Joss and I still can’t believe that we’re working together.

“It’s very odd,” Loeb continues, “to be involved in something that could, and should, become another part of pop culture as you’re going in. I think with a lot of the things I’ve been involved with in the past, you don’t really know what something is or will be. I think the closest thing to it is when I’m working on Superman, where I realize that there is kind of a moral responsibility to be true to the icon and Joss has created an icon in Buffy. She represents so many attributes of female empowerment, female wisdom, that female sense of humor, and I’m just a huge fan of all of those ideas. If I could write Lois Lane comics, I would be one of the happiest guys in the world, so my sensibility tends to run that way. Buffy is just smarter than the average bear and gets away with it. AND, her personal life is a train wreck, which is wonderful stuff to work with.”

Whedon then asked him THE big question: how did he imagine the animated series would look? “I asked, ‘Is this a trick question?’” he explains, “’because it should look like the live-action show.’ I guess a lot of other people didn’t answer the question that way. A lot of people wanted to turn it into ‘Buffy Babies’ or ‘Buffy the Vampire’s Friend.’ I have a sort of philosophy about Saturday morning animation, which is that there is Batman Adventures, which Paul Dini, Bruce Timm and those guys did, and then there’s The Smurfs and that’s it. They only fall into those two camps, and the only other thing that fits into the Batman camp is Batman Beyond and everything else falls into the Smurfs’ camp.”

Buffy the Animated Series (which is reportedly still in active development) will take place back during Buffy’s high school years, particularly when she was a sophomore (time frame-wise, we’re talking about season one). In terms of tone and style, both Whedon and Loeb look to Batman: The Animated Series for inspiration.

“We started talking about the look of the show, which in animation is A LOT of what you’re doing,” Loeb says. “We both agreed that what we wanted to do was break down the same walls that Batman did; which is to be able to do a show that had a style that people had not seen before and created a world that was separate from the world that people knew. If you look at when Batman first came on the air, the idea was to create something that was different from the Adam West television show and different from Tim Burton’s view of what Batman’s world was, which was really something that people world-wide knew, and create something that was true to those things, but by the same token had its own life. That’s REALLY where the comparison comes.

“The Buffy audience deserves the best show it can get,” he adds. “The fans are legion and the fans are wonderfully supportive of the show, and to make anything that would be less than that, Joss doesn’t want to do. Creating something that has that kind of hallmark of quality and characterization is what we’re going to aim for. That sets the bar really, really high and I like that. So the idea is to create something that Buffy fans can look at and enjoy, separate from the live show, so that it’s not just an animated version of those episodes you know. We want to create a show that is accessible enough that an entirely new audience that does not watch the primetime show, is able to hop on and get the same kind of thrill ride and humor and pathos that you get from the live-action show. That’s not asking for too much, is it?”

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