He may be best known by Buffy and Angel comic fans as the editor who answers all those emails at the end of their favorite comic books in Slay the Critics, but Scott Allie is slightly more than that. Hailing from the Baked Bean state, which also sprouted comic book talents such as Christopher Golden and Thomas Sniegoski, Scott followed those famous words ‘go west young man’ and found himself in Oregon and at the doorstep of Dark Horse Comics. He’s made a name for himself as an editor, from Joss Whedon’s Buffy, Serenity and Fray to Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, as a publisher, and as a writer having penned his own comic The Devil’s Footprints and short stories for Buffy: Tales of the Slayer. But he is without a doubt one of the busiest and hardest working young talents in the comic book industry.
FractalMatter.com had the opportunity to sit down with Scott during his appearance at Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Georgia this past Labor Day weekend. While the excitement of the convention was enough to keep its attendees on pins and needles all weekend, there was quite a huge buzz coming from the Whedon Universe. Joss has excited Buffy fans by bringing them the official Season 8 continuation of the series in comic book form. Over breakfast in the Hyatt, between gulps of much needed coffee and bites of bacon, extra crispy, Scott caught us up on the latest and greatest from Dark Horse comics.
He began by recapping where we were in the Buffy comic series as the Brian K. Vaughan Faith arc began its 4-issue run, “Brian’s written the fourth issue, its final, Georges [Jeanty] is drawing it, issue 6 has come out and issue 9 is already well under way - so we’re doing good on time. The arc focuses on Faith, but it’s got a little bit of Buffy, Xander, Dawn, Willow and I think the first or second issue reveals a little bit more about what happened with Kennedy, which is a great twist. I don’t think people will expect it,” he says, “but they’re still not going to know the whole picture for a long time. I hope I’m not getting my scripts confused - last night I got the script for issue 16 from Joss.” Scott jokes, “I hope I’m not confusing things, but you can never tell. Anyway if you don’t find out in 6 or 7 you’ll find out a couple months later.”
Following the four issues of Faith, there will be a stand-alone story by Joss, drawn by Cliff Richards, the original artist who first brought the Buffy comics to life. Scott continues, “Then issue 11 will be another stand-alone by Joss and Georges. Joss is really working closely with Brian and Drew Goddard on the next arc, but he’s letting their stories go where they need to go and developing the main story. After 4 issues on Faith he felt he needed to refocus the main thrust of the storyline with the Buffy so that’s why he wrote the two issues.” He explains the importance of Joss’ input, “They’re real significant issues and they provide a lot of information, answer some questions people have been wondering about and move the whole thing forward because 6 thru 9 really focuses heavily on Faith. It’s a real key Faith adventure and it changes Giles’ role in things. Buffy only gets maybe 15-pages the whole 4 issue arc, but it’s enough to keep her thing going and changes some things for her.”
Fans of the TV series will know that the true voice behind Faith was writer Doug Petrie, but he didn’t get involved in the project. “The main reason,” Scott explains, “is that this story was something that Brian and Joss had been talking about for years. Doug would have been great to write Faith, but back when they were talking about doing TV movies of each of the characters, this is actually a story that Joss and Brian had tossed around for that.” Scott also offers, “I think Brian is one of Joss’ favorite writers in comics, he’s one of mine - top 2 – so we were real psyched to get him in right at the beginning, but it was also this story, it kind of had to be him.”
And, of course, it had to be Buffy. If Whedon fans ever wanted a continuation of a story told by Joss it is certainly the Slayer saga, so it’s no surprise that fan response to the comic has been, well, “Great,” states Scott. “The overwhelming response has been very positive. People are shocked by the stuff that we expect them to be shocked by; they’re going to continue to be real shocked. The sales are insane and numbers keep going up. We’ve reprinted the first issue; we have 4 printing of the first issue, 3 of the second and third and 2 printings of the fourth and it’s not that we do fewer reprints because numbers of going down, it’s that we’re printing more copies because we’re trying to learn. Issue 5 we didn’t have to reprint because we just printed the hell out of it, it’ll keep selling for months after it comes out, crank it up,” he jokes.
“The fans are critical about weird things, some people have written in to say that the dialogue’s not right, it doesn’t sound anything like the characters, wow – do you know who’s writing it? Is that even possible? We were real surprised that they didn’t figure out that Satsu kissed Buffy, that Satsu’s in love with Buffy. In the letter column I run pretty much every letter I get.” Scott admits, “The only letters I don’t run are the ones with real crappy attitudes but if you say, ‘I don’t like it and here’s why,’ and you’re not just trying at attack somebody I’ll run it. And partly I’ll run it because 99% of the response is so good it gets embarrassing and it’s good there’s some descent and I’m willing to show it.”
Fans have always had a strong voice when it comes to what Joss creates and that sometimes can offer a little influence on the story. “The way it could potentially affect it,” Scott explains, “is more like, ‘oh nobody picked up on the Satsu thing, maybe we need to be a little bit more clear about that stuff,’ because it’s comics and it’s not TV. Joss really knows what he wants to do with the 40-issues and there is room for it to change over time but I don’t get the impression that Joss is terribly influenced by that. He’s got a story he wants to tell. The great thing is there’s going to be plenty of opportunity for people to believe that, because there are certain things that people keep asking for that are going to happen.”
As soon as it was announced that Buffy Season 8 would be created, fans were already asking about a Season 9 and Scott admits they’ve talked about what the story for season 9 is. “It was pretty early on,” he recalls, “it was before issue 2 or 3 had come out that Joss was like, ’so we’re going to do season 9 right?’ yeah absolutely! ‘Well, here’s what I want to do.’ It’ll be real different from season 8 and it might be a different duration.” Scott laughs, “that will make people’s minds explode, ‘But I thought a series of comic books was 40-issues?’ well, maybe it’s 33 or 21 if that’s what the story is. That’s the difference in the freedom that’s so good about this.” Scott explains, “In any season of TV, with almost no exceptions, it’s going to be 22-episodes and you have to tell it in 22-episodes and you certainly can’t tell it in 32-episodes, maybe you can do it in 23. If season 7 needed to be 31 episodes, that was not going to happen, physically impossible. With the comics originally we were talking about 20 issues and then 30, and every time we talked about the story we weren’t talking about numbers, we were talking about what was going to happen. How do we do that in 25 issues, how do we do that in 35 issues?” he would question. “Finally we were having lunch one time and we mapped it out, 8 arcs and with the fill-ins that’s 40 issues. The reason that number feels permanent is because it was based on blocking out the story. It could still change if Joss decides there’s a whole other chapter we forgot to do, then you’ve got 45-issues.”
Every writer and artist has their favorite characters, so Scott and Georges are no exception as they look forward to having other characters return to the series. “What can I say without giving stuff away,” Scott muses, “there are characters that everybody wants to see. In San Diego we had a breakfast: my assistant Sierra, Georges, Joss and me. There was a lot of stuff that Sierra and I already knew that Georges didn’t know and his jaw was on the table!” Georges told fans in a panel the previous days, “If you guys think you’ve been shocked by some of what’s happened so far you have no idea, your worlds are going to change because of what’s going to happen in the not too distant future.” Scott admitted that, “Georges has got his eyes open about that and Joss said some things about some characters, that this guy’s going to come back, I’m not quite sure how just yet - but there are characters that people ask about that are on their way back and we’re psyched because they’re really good characters.”
What has really put the charge in all this is Joss calling the new Buffy comic Season 8. Scott made it clear in explaining what this title means, “It is a season of the TV show. It’s the official chorological follow-up to the show, but more specifically than that it’s run exactly like a season. It’s a story that has the scope of a whole season and Joss is the executive producer on it. I’m a guy who never likes using movie titles, like executive producer on comics because the jobs are different. The job he’s doing is most like executive producer, because he writes a lot of issues but not all of them, he approves everything from colors to letters to pencils to the scripts by other people, he breaks the stories with the different writers and he’s there every step of the way. He’s devoting a lot of time to it and we’re paying him to do that role.” Scott explains, “George Lucas never executive produced a Star Wars comic. This has never been done before and it makes sense that Joss is the first guy to do it because he’s a real genuine crossover between filmmaker, television producer and comics writer.”
While Scott takes the Buffy reins as second nature that’s not all he does at Dark Horse nor is it all that DH has to offer its fans. They are as busy as ever and Scott fills us in on all of it, including a few additional unique Whedon tid-bits. “One of the biggest things for DH this year, after Buffy, is mySpace Dark Horse presents,” he begins, “Dark Horse presents is the old anthology that we did, it was the birthplace of Dark Horse Comics. Basically Mike Richardson decided he wanted to publish a comic book anthology and try to sell it. So he started DHC to publish that anthology, it was a huge hit and the whole company grew out of it. Buffy’s first appearance in comics was in DHP, it got cancelled in 2001 and ever since I’ve been trying to get it back in one form or another,” Scott admits. “These horror anthologies I’ve done over the years were really my attempt to do DHP. We formed a friendship with MySpace and a bunch of us were having breakfast in New York after New York Comic Con this Spring. We were talking about how we’ve got to make MySpace a cooler place for comics and talked about Dark Horse doing stuff online and about DHP.” The outcome of this conversation was, “What if we bring Dark Horse Presents back as a full color monthly anthology, free, online. The best creators doing exclusive original material that you can’t buy, free online.”
The first issue launched live during the San Diego International Comic Con and it included the first chapter of Sugarshock. “Which is a brand new thing by Joss that was created just for DHP,” Scott explains. “Basically I asked him, ‘we’re doing DHP I would love to have you in.’ One night, me, Joss and Brian Vaughan were emailing back and forth, late at night, and Joss was supposed to be writing Goners, ‘but damn Scott Allie, all I can think about is Dark Horse Presents,’ oh he’s thinking about it, cool,” he recalls. “Then a week later a script showed up. Wow. It’s incredibly funny; it’s much zanier than anything he’s done before. It’s real crazy but it’s like take the Buffy banter, the patter of Buffy dialogue and increase it from 33 to 45 and then just run it in these 8-page bursts with just the most bizarre characters and that’s what Sugarshock is. It’s also the first time that Joss created something totally original, just for comics - Fray was just for comics, but it was a slayer so not completely original - and you can totally tell because it would be pretty hard to pull it off in any other medium and it’s such great Joss dialogue.” MySpace.com\DarkHorsePresents
Also in the pipe is the first issue is an Umbrella Academy story. “Umbrella Academy is another creation of Gerard Way, the front man for My Chemical Romance. He was an intern at DC Comics for awhile and he always wanted to be a cartoonist and it just didn’t work out so he ended up forming one of the biggest bands in the world.” Scott recalls, “Then he contacted me and saying, ‘hey I want to do a comic’ and so we’re doing it. It’s really fun and Joss is actually a big fan of My Chem so I introduced them in San Diego and they hit it off.
In addition, Scott continues, “We’ve got Serenity launching next year, we’re going to do another 3-issue series starting in March. Two scripts are written, and the third issue is two-thirds drawn so that stuff’s moving alone. I’ve got another Devil’s Footprints in the works that will hopefully come out the end of next year. We’re going straight to trade, original graphic novel, rather than doing 4 or 5 issues so we’ve got to get everything done before we can solicit it, so it’s pushed way back. It’s a sequel to the first one.” On the Lucas front Scott offers that, “Star Wars has a major event they have scheduled for next year that they haven’t announced anything yet, but it’s going to be something unlike we’ve ever done in the Star Wars comics yet. And the Star Wars books have really been picking up for us the last few years after the movies ended it made the editors of the Star Wars books say, ‘alright we’ve got to do something really important now,’ and the books have been getting more and more popular.”
Dark Horse will be re-launching Conan from Issue 1 and as well as a few other Robert E. Howard stories. “We’re stopping at issue 50,” Scott explains regarding Conan, “taking a month off and then re-launching a new number 1 in May. Then King Kull, another Howard character, launches in June and then in July Solomon Kane launches and I’m writing that one. I’m really excited about that one,” he admits, “Kane’s a real crazy character, his basic MO is that he’s out to reap the vengeance of the Lord on all the monsters, all the sinners, all the bad men and he’s crazy – he’s a religious zealot, he’s a puritan and he’s out there to kill anything to get in his way. And not to say that that by itself makes him crazy,” Scott laughs, “but the way that he does it, he’s a real interesting character. He’s real fun, lot of monsters, a lot of colorful stuff. Solomon Kane is so not a Joss kind of character,” he jokes, “if there was a character like Solomon Kane in the Buffyverse, he’d be in one arc and Buffy would kill him.”
Over the years Scott has picked up a few things working so closely with Whedon and he explains ways of approaching different material from a perspective he feels he’s learning from Joss. “Working with him over the last, I think ‘99 is really when we first started working together, has taught me a lot. Since starting Buffy, because I’m his editor, I’m the only guy who’s really in on it – every decision that gets made we’ve got to bounce off each other so he’s given me much greater access to his process and that’s been the best thing.” Scott reveals, “To me as a writer and me as an editor working with him like that has been the most educational kick I’ve gotten in years. It’s great seeing what he writes, seeing why he writes it, picking it apart with him a little bit. One of the best things I’ve ever seen, when Brian started turning in his scripts, Joss was giving Brian notes – Brian is a writer who can write circles around me and just blows my mind with everything he does including his Buffy scripts - but then Joss comes in and shows him, and me, how to make it better. I will never forget this nor will I ever delete any of those emails,” he confesses, “It’s a master’s course.”
- In 1999, Kristy Bratton teamed up with professional web designer VirginiaObeius to co-create the 'definitive source for Angel' website,CityofAngel.com, offering a fresh behind-the-scenes look at the series asnever before seen by its fans. In the course of the five years whichfollowed, Ms. Bratton wrote over 75 articles for CoA covering the gamut ofentertainment from conventions as the San Diego International Comic Con,London's Starfury events and Dragon*Con. Spotlight features on thecreative force of "Angel" included Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt, TimMinear and Marti Noxon. Highlight features on actors Andy Hallett, AmyAcker and Stephanie Romanov, plus Behind-the-Scenes features on makeupartist Dayne Johnson, set designer Stuart Blatt and stunt coordinator MikeMassa. Ms. Bratton's photography work has been published in the OfficialBuffy/Angel magazine by Titan. She has written for the Official StargateSG-1 magazine with features on Don S. Davis, Peter DeLuise and CarmenArgenziano. Her daily inspiration is the memory of her beloved, femaleyellow lab, Tobi who has a cameo in Tom Sniegoski's novel, "The Fallen:Leviathan." www.CityofAngel.com