be astonished

Joss Whedon.

He’s just another writer.

Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, a series that follows the life of Buffy Summers and her role as the chosen one who battles vampires, demons and other creatures of darkness (redundant, no?). Do I need to elaborate on this? Buffy (the TV series, not the lead character) is influential to the point that having a strong female lead who’s struggling to maintain a normal life while dealing with the supernatural became a common theme for several TV series like Charmed. Which is the only example I can think of right now. Nevertheless, Buffy became the blueprint of what’s cool. And with “what’s cool”, I’m referring to the usage of pop-culture references in normal conversations, the proliferation of “-y” thing (which converts nouns into adjectives) and more importantly, the reiteration of female empowerment.

The spin-off, Angel which tells the tale of the original vampire-with-a-soul and his adventures with Cordelia and Wesley in the not-so-sunny side of Los Angeles, California. Incidentally, it was noted on several occasions that the show performed better than its parent series. Admittedly, I got bored by the end of the third season but it doesn’t mean that the series’ popularity declined alongside my loss of interest.

In print, Whedon is currently on his final arc for the award-winning Marvel comic book Astonishing X-Men. In a span of twenty-four issues, he managed to garner a ground-breaking audience response to the title by producing a well-structured, well-written, fresh take on established characters which is accessible to new readers and yet retains the respect of longtime fans. His stories include the supposed mutant “cure” (closely resembling the Last Stand’s plot), Colossus’s resurrection, the attack of the sentient Danger Room, the return of Cassandra Nova and the Hellfire Club brought about by Emma Frost’s sudden return to the dark side, Armor’s initiation to the X-Men core team, Cyclops’ death and resurrection and his new look – minus the ruby-quartz visor as he can control his optic blasts. For now anyway.

And then there’s his stint with Runaways, another comic book that features a group of teenagers who became super heroes to make up for the wrong doings done by their parents. Not particularly impressed with his work on this but it’s still superb as compared to say, Brubacker’s run on Uncanny X-Men. Plus it’s really hard to top Brian Vaughan and Adrian Alphona who created this series.

What’s amazing about Whedon is that he has a seemingly-perfect grasp of his characters that he pens their lines with such precision that it projects their personalities right on. Aside from declaring himself as a feminist*, he’s also known to champion gay rights**. Both of which are very evident in most of his works.

*Something that you probably didn’t know you didn’t know: Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) of the X-Men was a big influence on the character of Buffy Summers. **The infamous Willow Rosenberg and Tara Maclay lesbian relationship. And the Angel-Spike encounter in the spin-off series.

Of course there are loads more about him that I need not mention. Actually I should but I’m just trying to cut this short. Ultimately, the point I’m trying to convey is that one shouldn’t dismiss anything as “just another (writer, cook, poet, singer, actress, etc.)” just because.

The mere fact that Whedon’s creations have had that much cultural impact speaks that he deserves the credit as much as the next writer.

He’s probably not the best, but he is damn good.

But with the recent delays in Astonishing X-Men’s release (it takes about four months to release one freaking issue) I might retract that last statement.

I need to know what he did to Shadowcat!*** It’s a bummer knowing he has a penchant for killing his lead characters.

***Last seen in issue #24, Shadowcat passed out inside the Breakworld’s weapon aimed towards the Earth. She phased through it hoping to dismantle the controls from the inside. Unfortunately, she could not find any mechanism as it was made of pure metal with a hollow part on the upper tip. Beast later found out that it was a bullet. And it was fired with Kitty still inside.

These events happened prior to the Messiah CompleX crossover. And not even Kitty’s shadow was seen in any of the thirteen-part issues of that story. Which led the fans to conclude that something bad happened to her in Astonishing X-Men.

In a recent issue of Uncanny X-Men, it was shown that Colossus was deeply affected by the loss of the love of his life but with the recent war between his team and the Marauders/Purifiers, he was not able to give it proper attention. Nothing was clearly confirmed though.

*******

This is a response to my dialogue with TheFuzzyOne and Lina a few months back regarding Joss Whedon.