Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Buffy The Vampire Slayer may have ended its small screen run but the Buffy-verse is set to expand in the funny books this October with the release of Drawing On Your Nightmares, which features a prelude story to December’s Tales of the Vampires, a new series of comics to be written by Buffy creator Joss Whedon. Newsarama spoke to editor Scott Allie, writer Brett Matthews and artist Sean Phillips for more.

Breaking down the special, it contains three stories - a Cal McDonald story set in Vegas written by Steve Niles and illustrated by Ben Templesmith, a Goon story by creator/writer/artist Eric Powell, and the aforementioned Buffy-verse story. The issue comes roughly on the heels of Hauntings, another Dark Horse horror anthology, but with Drawing, Allie was aiming for a different target.

"I wanted to do an anthology different from the Dark Horse Book of Hauntings, something less ambitious, more of a taster than a main course, and I wanted it to be more directly tied into, and tying together, the horror line," Allie said. "So I considered the projects we had rolling, and thought this would make a good cross section. Then, as it turned out, Marketing needed a promotional item for a series of retailer events, including one in Vegas. We decided to theme the book to Vegas, albeit loosely. The Goon story doesn’t happen in Vegas, but it has some gambling."

As mentioned earlier, Matthews and Phillips’ story acts as a lead-in to the upcoming Tales of the Vampires series of books, and Allie gave a slight tease. "It’s set in Vegas, with a grifter trying to take advantage of a young woman who’s obviously a little more worldly than she tries to let on," Allie said. "It’s all about how much of a monster a regular person can be. Brett worked with Joss for a long time on Angel, Buffy, and ultimately wrote for Firefly before it went away."

Matthews elaborated a little more on "Dames." "The story is about a Rat Pack-era vampire that haunts the Strip in Vegas and just sort of grifts his way through his undead life. Of course, his being a couple hundred years old makes him very good at it. So, we spend what starts as a night like any other with him, until things go awry in the interesting ways they tend to in stories..."

"It’s set in the Buffy-verse in as much as the rules regarding vampires, their abilities, etc. are all consistent with that wonderful world created by Joss. Basically and importantly, nothing contradicts the Buffy universe in any way. That said, ’Dames’ is a period piece and not set during any specific mainstream Buffy chronology, nor do any characters from the show appear. I like to think the connection between the two shows most in the way it hits on some of the overarching themes from the series, if indirectly so."

Having worked with Whedon on the creator’s short-lived TV show Firefly as well as co-writing Angel : Long Nights Journey, Matthews jumped at the chance to write the story, and pave the road somewhat for Whedon. "’Dames’ is to sort of prelude Tales of the Vampires with a story that also fit into Dark Horse’s Halloween special, the overall theme and tone of which was sort of summed up to me as Vegas, dirt, and gasoline. I knew immediately those were things I could work with, and ’Dames’ is the result.

"Sean Phillips is responsible for the art, and I mean all of it — pencils/inks/colors/letters. I love it when an artist handles the majority of the art duties for the simple reason that their vision usually gets more fully expressed — it’s really just a matter of having fewer cooks in the kitchen. Sean’s work is just outstanding, and it speaks for itself — all you have to do is look at the pages and you’ll see what I mean. What I like most about how this story turned out is its overall sense of synthesis — the story motivates the art and the art supports the story and the overall tone/mood of the work really comes through as a result. It’s a very uncompromising little story in those and most all respects, and it’s largely because of the support and efforts of the two men I’ve just rambled on about above.

"I didn’t really work as closely with Sean as I do most artists — it’s largely because there was really very little for me to do an artist turns in thumbnails that make my jaw hit the floor. He was very respectful of the script, which, as a writer is always nice and not always the case, and at the same time brought his very unique talents to the table. His work just really shines in this, at least to my eye. The story really does look exactly like I imagined it in my head — I mean, what more could a creator ever ask for... ?

As for Phillips, the artist’s return to blood suckers marks nearly a ten-year break from the monsters. "I painted an eighty page vampire story for 2000AD, called, ’Devlin Waugh- Swimming in Blood.’ It’s about an underwater prison with an outbreak of vampirism. Devlin is sent in to sort it out. It’s going to be collected again early next year as a hardback from Rebellion. But for this story, I drew the vampires as they appear in Buffy."

Nevertheless, the artist changed his drawing style "totally" this time around. "I drew this story really big in charcoal. Each panel was scanned separately and manipulated in Photoshop. Short stories like this are always a good chance to experiment artistically."

Matthews has another, longer TOV in an issue of the upcoming series. It’s "on the literal drawing board, currently in the artist’s hands. Beyond that, it’s the usual whirlwind of everything and nothing all at the same time — I’m not sure what project will be the first to crystallize and be up next. But for this one, I hope everyone who picks it up digs it. Neat little projects like this really do need the support."