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Sorry, I forgot to include the significant parts of the interview....

Sam: Well lets go right into Buffy then because; let's face it, that's why people are going to read this.

Georges: Sure.

Sam: Now were you a Buffy fan before you became involved on the book?

Georges: That's a really interesting story because no I wasn't. The editors are Scott Allie and Joss Whedon, of course. Scott had been the editor for the Buffy books originally and there were fifty or so Buffy books that had come out in the past few years. And apparently, this is what Scott told me, was that when Frey had came out Scott was editor on that and it was Joss' first time writing comic books and they enjoyed their relationship extremely well and from there Scott said "We really want to do something else. Let's keep this ball rolling" and, of course, it took a few years and that ball was rolling a bit slower but when it did Joss was like, "Yeah, I really want to continue this Buffy stuff because it looks like the movie's not going to happen so I really have all this stuff here that I want to get out. I don't want to leave it there and of course Darkhorse and Scott are like "Well, hey, let's do it. What are you doing? Let's stop sitting around!" And Joss was like "Yeah, yeah. Let me get back to you. I definatly want to do this." And Scott tells me that another year or so goes by and all of sudden Scott has a script from Joss Whedon and says this is the first issue of a four issue arch of what he was going to entitle Buffy Season 8. And of course from there everything sort of took hold and originally it was going to be twelve issues and just get in and get out and thank you very much. From there it sort of grew into twenty four issues. And from there Joss sort of enjoyed what he was doing so much and realized Hey, you know what? I can take a whole issue and it doesn't even have to be about Buffy. I can do something obscure that I liked about that universe but could never do as a B plot on the TV show but I can deal with it in the comic book. This is great!" So from there this brainchild became more of a forty issue extravaganza that Darkhorse said is, yes, Season 8 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and if you like your slayer you'll be liking it for a couple of years.

Sam: Well I know, as a fan, it was like a dream come true when I heard about this project. To have Buffy back, by Joss Whedon, and not have something cheap or cheesy. To have the same quality of the TV series. So if you weren't a fan, did you get up to speed and are you a fan now?

Georges: Oh, I was quickly. As soon as I got the gig, which is kind of funny because I actually had my trepanation about actually, doing this. I thought, "Oh, alright, maybe Ill do four issues and then, well, okay." But I wasn't thinking that was something I'd want to stay with because it'd be huge. Darkhorse was nice enough to send me Season 6 and 7 of the series and of course once I got the gig I got educated pretty quickly and was watching one or two episodes a night on DVD and quickly getting caught up. From there I thought, wow, this is actually very very good and I thought to myself that this was something I wanted to continue. From there I went out and bought Seasons 1 through 5 and started watching them so technically my final episode of Buffy was the end of Season 5, so I knew already what happened in Season's 6 and 7 because of the comic book and what I needed to be prepared for. But as a fan my final images of Buffy is her dying which is sort of poetic in a sense.
Sam: Okay, fan boy to fan boy, whats your favorite season?

Georges: You know, its funny, but I for some reason get this a lot. Season 6 is just such a strong season and it sort of ranks up there. There is just so much growth and unacceptability that you just don't see half of coming and it just really matures the series as a whole.

Sam: Now that's the season with the nerds and Dark Willow, right?

Georges: With Dark Willow and Tara being killed and Buffy going with Spike. I think people just hate the idea of her and Spike hooking up.

Sam: I actually think the addition of Spike to the cast added a lot to the series.

Georges: I would think that after seeing Seasons 1 through 5, and don't get me wrong because I love Season 3 because of the introduction of Faith and Faith is such a great character, and there was so many cool things that they did in Season 3 but I just can't look at Season 6 and not feel so emotionally moved and if a show can do that to me then they deserve what escalates.

Sam: How close do you work with Joss Whedon?

Georges: Well, Joss is, well, man, that guy totally surprised me. When I first got this gig I wasn't really familiar with the Buffy stuff but I was familiar with Joss. I had actually watched Firefly on television and I had seen the movie and I knew of this guy Joss Whedon and how big he was in the industry and when I first met him it was through the e-mail and I thought that the code is the writer and the artist develop this relationship since they are going to be working together and with Joss I was wondering who I was going to have to go through. Maybe I was going to have to deal with his secretary or representatives or what. So I e-mailed him passively saying "Well Mr. Whedon if I can ever talk to you let me know whens a good time because I have questions every now and again and I like to get a feel for what the writer is thinking" and he writes me back with a message that says "Dude, here's my phone number at home. Here's my cell number. Call me whenever you need and if I can't talk to you then leave a message and I'll definatly call you back and we'll go from there." I was like, okay, you don't want me to talk to your secretary or something and he was like, "No no. Give me a call." I was like, Alright. Okay...Joss. Sure thing! So he very much surprised me because I think all of us layman have this idea of what these movie star types are like because its all that stereotype that we have within us and Joss is so counter to that. Joss is one of those guys who you don't think of as "the great Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy." Your going, "Thats the guy at the comic shop. Yeah, I've seen him there." He's just so very approachable and very genuine and all of that star struck thing fades quickly and you think that youre with a regular guy and he's a very cool guy.

Sam: Now I was looking tonight at the list of writers that you have coming up on the book and you have Brian K. Vaughn, Brad Meltzer, Jeph Loeb. Youre working with a really heavy group of writers here!

Georges: Yeah, that was another thing that editor Scott Allie impressed on me which I didn't get at the beginning. He as like, "dude, don't leave because we'll be getting a lot of good writers and, yeah, you'll be drawing Buffy for a while but you'll be working with so many high caliber writers that it's going to add to your resume and, I have to say, in hindsight he was correct because this is a really great gig for anybody to establish themselves in the business because I get to ride on the coattails of all these great writers which I have no problem whatsoever.

Sam: Now back to your art. I have a bit of a love/hate for comic books based on TV series. I collect some of the older ones from the '60s.

Georges: What do you have? The Star Trek Dell comics?

Sam: I have some of those. I have some of the Dark Shadows ones, and The Mod Squad and one of my favorite guilty pleasures is The Partridge Family and David Cassidy comics. Now specifically I'm thinking of The Partridge Family comics, the art is horrendous. It's almost like the artist took publicity shots and traced them and added dialogue. And then in the Dark Shadows, for the exception of Jonathan Frid or David Selby, none of the other characters resemble the actors at all. Now the stuff your doing on Buffy isn't like any of this because it's absolutely beautiful and you seem to capture the look and the personality of the characters and their resemblance to the actors that portrayed them. How hard is it able to take a real person and put them into a panel and make it possible for me, the reader, to recognize them as being Willow or Xander or Buffy?

Georges: It was really hard at the beginning because I had never drawn these characters before and I didn't know what I was doing at all. I had to draw and redraw. When I do a page with the Buffy stuff in particular, it takes me thirty percent longer then if I was drawing a regular superhero page because that thirty percent is devoted to the likenesses. I'll be the first to say that I don't get it right all the time but there is an effort made there of taking that character and making sure that you can tell the difference. It may not look spot on like Willow or Buffy but can you tell, in that page, that this person is supposed to be Buffy and that person is supposed to be Willow and if I can accomplish that in some small way when I've done drawing I feel that I've done justice to the character because I don't just sit around and draw a facsimile of what I think they might be. I subsequently taken so many photos of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Allison Hannigan and everybody else involved that I got a notebook of just all of these face in rows. Eliza Dushku and Anthony Head and everybody. This is how I like to approach my drawing. I'll draw a face our first with whatever their supposed to be doing, like Buffy is shocked or surprised and then I'll go through my little catalogue of photographs and look for a picture of Buffy in a similar pose. It's never an actual pose but I want to find something where she is similarly surprised, and from there I'll try to render on the page more to what it looks like to that character. I'm not a big fan of just tracing over the faces because, in all honesty that would take a lot longer because then we'd have to find exactly that expression and exactly that size and that perspective and how that character is looking that it would just take too long. So from there I feel that I've developed enough of a short hand for the character, which is ironic because I really had trouble with Eliza Dushku as Faith in this four issue arch which is out now because, just as I finish her arch, I finally thought that I know how to draw Faith. I know how to draw Faith solid and she's gone and after these four issues we're going back to Buffy and Dawn. If I had another four issues with Faith she would be dead on.

Sam: Will Faith be back eventually?

Georges: Well when you read it you'll see that it's set up...well, obviously in the Whedon universe people kept coming back and forth and with this comic, yes, as you can see with Joss in the first issue arch, Amy and Warren have come back, so, yeah, I don't think we've seen the last of Faith but I don't know when she'll be back with so much attention based on her.

Sam: Now youre talking about characters weaving in and out. Now with IDW do the Angel books, how much of Angel and Spike will we see in this series? I head that Darkhorse couldn't get the rights to use the characters; although we already saw Spike and Angel in a very graphic and disturbing way already that I can only hope to eventually wash from my mind. But on the other hand I've heard because Joss owns them he can issue them to anybody at anytime.

Georges: Well I believe that 20th Century Fox officially owns the characters so if there is any official title going to they have to go through them but, yes, I would dare say that Joss Whedon has a very big influence on what the characters can do and where they characters can go. Yes, it is true that IDW does have the Angel franchise and with that the use of their characters probably wont come up in the Buffy title but since Joss has such an influence over this I think that if he were, and this is what he did with Angel and Spike as they appeared in issue #2, he himself said to IDW "Hey, this is what I'm doing. I would like to use these characters" and of course IDW, not being stupid, saying, "Yes, sure, you can do that because we would love to be working with you too Mr. Whedon." So on that level it can happen; just I don't think that since the properties are in two separate places that its going to happen often.

Sam: Have you gotten any feedback from any of the actors from the series?

Georges: Interestingly enough, the only one I've actually talked to and had an occasion to speak with was just recently at Dragon Con here in Atlanta. James Marsters and Juliet Landau were down and someone had mentioned to James in his panel if he had seen the new Buffy comic and he said he hadn't and they told him that there was a very graphic image of him, Angel and Buffy and, of course, he was outraged and asked who would even think to do that and who wrote that issue and someone yelled out "Joss Whedon wrote it" and he said "Oh well, okay, if thats the case, that's what Buffy and Spike and Angel are doing." And then when I met him and I told him I was the guy who was drawing the book the nice thing that he had mentioned was that he really liked the art work. I heard that James had written, or co-written, a book for Darkhorse and apparently wasn't too happy with the artwork. But James said that he really liked that one image and I said, of course, "If you ever want to work together let me know because I'm a big fan Mr. Marsters." Other then that I haven't heard from anybody and I honestly don't know why I get that question asked a lot because, when you think about it, these are actors. They play the part that was four years ago now and they are on to other things and I totally get that they aren't sitting around going "Oh, well, theres my character again." I'm sure they would have a passing familiar but I honestly wouldn't expect to hear from Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Sam: The reason we all ask you is because we are whores for information.

Georges: Mind you, I'd love to get a call from Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Sam: Well lets talk about calls for a second here. You know Joss Whedon, right.

Georges: Yes.

Sam: And you have his phone number.

Aww Carlos, I always love you hear your thoughts on these shows. You have such insight, such wisdom and such grace that I am almost speechless.

I appreciate you coming to take a look at Dark Horse and I do understand your desire to stay away, not everyone handles the childlike insulting gang method of posting well, most of us are civilized individuals. Most of us actually have a life outside this Universe and participate only as fun and entertainment. For a lot of the posters you encountered, I think maybe this is all they have and that makes me feel a bit sorry for them, despite their hateful antics. So in thought, don't write them off completely, everybody deserves a second chance and if I can feel that way, considering I am the whipping boy to every other shipper group known to man, I know you can Carlos. You're a special guy and those of us who know you recognize that and love you for it.

Be well and keep posting your thoughts, I enjoy them tremendously.

I can't speak for everyone but I am enjoying the comics a lot. Both of them.

That is the coolest issue to date, Comic. Thanks for bringing it over.

What I am most interested in seeing develop, how will the two series cross-over, cause we all know it's only a matter of time. I live in anticipation for the next canon scene between Buffy and Angel in the comics. The dream cubes were a nice touch, as is the cross-necklace. Your signature picture and Joss taking care to have Buffy facing Angel (Future) in the art is priceless. I loved the issue from the past and specifically how Buffy continues to be so wrapped up in Angel. Everything about this comic has been pro B/A, not that I ever doubted, so yeah, I can't wait to see what happens when it's a real, present day face to face meeting.

Joss pretty much confirmed that Angel will be crossing over the Buffy season 8.