Joss Whedon recently spoke with IESB on the picket line and discussed some of the projects he’s been working on solo, as well as some of the projects he’s had to curtail due to the strike, including the television series "Dollhouse" he had planned to produce with former "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" actress Eliza Dushku.

Along with a brief recap of his current comics work, IESB provided this bit about the project he plans to work on with "Firefly" and "Sarah Connor Chronicles" actress Summer Glau:

“There’s a few things I’m trying to do without the studios,” said Whedon, “either for the internet or shorts and there’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time which is a ballet with Summer Glau. We’ve been talking about it for years and I’ve been doing most of the talking and none of the doing. I finally finished the score and we have a choreographer working with us. We’re hoping that sometime in the late spring/early summer we will actually get to shoot it.”

Well, here’s one that flew entirely under my radar: Kim Krizan, the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter for "Before Sunset", will be one of several writers contributing stories to Zombie Tales from Boom! Studios, which is being relaunched as a monthly anthology series in April.

Krizan will join horror veterans Steve Niles and Joe R. Lansdale in the first issue of the series. Johanna Draper Carlson of Comics Worth Reading conducted a brief interview with Krizan that explains the jump from film to comics and brings up another aspect of the story that passed me by completely: the "Dazed and Confused" connection!

(That last bit will probably only appeal to IMDB "trivia" section obsessives like me, but it’s worth noting.)

How have you changed your style and/or process for comics?

It felt to me that in writing a comic my process became wild, fast, and sharp — while in a script or book I would be slow, laborious, and careful. The medium did seem to dictate another approach, and it was fun to write. Both film scripts and comic scripts are written for visual media, but I had to consider the importance of things like the turning of a page as an opportunity to add tension. I very easily and naturally put in violent imagery which was rather satisfying. Chip read it and said, “Wow, this gives me the creeps!” and said I was good with horror. Well, I don’t watch horror films. Driving in LA is enough horror for me.

Hmmm… I wonder if she’s ever been driving in Jersey. shudder

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" fan site SlayAlive.com recently called upon its members to submit questions about the ongoing Dark Horse Comics series Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight, which picks up where the uber-popular television series left off.

After sending everything over to Dark Horse, Editor Scott Allie provided 30 occasionally spoiler-ific answers about Buffy: Season Eight, including this tease of a continuity-establishing connection between Buffy and Fray, Joss Whedon’s 2001 miniseries that fast-forwards the Buffy into the future:

12) How close is the link between ‘season eight’ of Buffy and the Fray comics? Also, how certain is a Fray follow up? Are they closely related?

Ever since the Scythe showed up in Buffy Season Seven, there’s been an undeniable connection between Fray and Buffy, and Season Eight definitely continues down that road. And as I’ve said before, Joss and I always talk about doing another Fray series, but we can’t do it anytime soon. He’s too busy.

(via whedonesque)

Yes, you read that headline correctly. Sure, I chuckled a bit at yesterday’s announcement regarding the upcoming Manga Bible, but I’m still cleaning tuna salad off the desk after reading about Mecha Manga Bible Heroes.

It wasn’t so much the development of such a series by JMG Comics that set me off. In fact, it makes perfect sense to combine religious education with something as popular as manga. What really caused me to laugh up my lunch was this line from the description of the first issue, Mecha Manga Bible Heroes #1: David vs. Goliath:

“David is a young kid who has to go toe-to-toe with a giant super robot covered in every conceivable type of weapon,” said Hall. “Other than that, everything is what the Bible describes, down to the small details that most versions of the tale gloss over.”

Is it me, or is that a pretty wide "other than that"? But I digress…

Another interesting aspect of the announcement is that Diamond won’t be handling distribution of Mecha Manga Bible Heroes – which could necessitate a minor mecha-miracle if JMG wants to get copies of the issue to readers.