S8, canon, artwork etc.

[elisi]

I've had this sitting on my desktop for at least a week now, and I've been realising that if I don't post it now, I won't be able to until after my parents have left... so in 2+ weeks' time. And honestly I'd rather get it out of the way. I'll do my best to reply to comments, but be warned that I'll be slow! That is of course presuming that you find this interesting enough to comment on...


First of all - I love canon. I’ve analysed and defended pretty much *anything* on the show... AYW, Caleb, S3/4 Cordy, the AR - I determinedly look at the positive side of everything. Basically I feel very, very protective of my show and my characters - even Adam or Kennedy. I love the whole ‘verse, warts and all.

I don’t feel like that towards the comics. I’m curious where Joss is going, but I do not have that compunction to defend him or his story - because it doesn’t feel like my show. The change in format is too great. This post is my attempt at examining why. No spoilers.

1) kindkit put it beautifully here:

I'm with you in general, but I have to say, I disagree about the canon issue. Yes, Joss Whedon is writing. But the show was never just Joss. It was Joss, plus the actors, the other writers, the directors, etc. Which is not to deny that Joss was very much the guiding hand (at least when he was around), but the show was the product of an ensemble of talents.

Whether it's good, bad, or indifferent, the comic is not the show. It's a completely different format. There's no Sarah Michelle Gellar, no Tony Head, nobody interpreting Joss's (or another writer's) lines, supplementing them with body language, etc. [There is, of course, an artist, but that's not quite the same thing as a group of actors.] Because the format is so utterly different, I don't consider the comic to be canon, any more than I'd consider a film version of a play to be "canon" to the play (even if the playwright adapted the script--I'm thinking specifically of Tom Stoppard's film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which I love but which is not the play). I don't consider the Harry Potter films canon, and I wouldn't even if JKR wrote them herself. Similarly, I don't consider Joss's interviews and commentary tracks to be canon--the things he says there may be what he meant, what he wanted the show to be, but I go by what I see onscreen.

The comic is, in my view, its own world, which will develop its own internal canon as it continues. When I write fic, I will write in either show canon or (perhaps) comics canon, but I won't treat them as the same.

There is quite simply not anywhere near the input that we got in the show itself. To quote JM:

But also, like a war, I guess I don't hang out with them because there is a lot of painful memories, because we'd work 12-15 hours a day, which is a lot longer than other TV shows, by the way. We worked a whole lot more than other TV shows, and we were always trying to find more elements, more special effects, more things to put on that brain because it was never good enough. We were always pushing for more, and I feel privileged to have gone through it with them, but at the same time, even watching it sometimes I get some painful memories. It was the best experience of my life, but it was not easy. And I'm proud of it, yeah.

So the input is vastly, vastly reduced. That straight off makes a big difference. One writer and one artist working on a scene is far removed from a whole crew of people, with actors re-shooting a scene numerous times, using different inflections, movements, wording. Look at the dailies for a start.


2) Then there’s the format. No movement, no sound, no music. It’s not the same. And this of course ties in with the whole likeness issue. To quote moscow_watcher (original comment here):

Not to start the whole canon/not canon debate, but on a purely visceral level I don't perceive this drawed Buffy as the one who moved, talked, sang, laughed and cried onscreen. I can be a happy Spuffy shipper who reads and occasionally writes fanfiction and gets her Spuffy fix on fanfiction archives; and, at the same time, I can enjoy the adventures of these new and improved Buffy and Xander who remind me Nikita and Michael a lot.

There was the line ‘drawing the characters, not the actors’ that struck me again recently. It has bugged me since the first time I read it, but suddenly I realised why...

Every now and again someone asks what if they made a film or something, but used different actors - what would people think? Essentially this is what the comics do - they use different actors. And that is why it just doesn’t work for me. SMG is my Buffy! SMG gave Buffy her face, her voice, her mannerisms, her expressions. It is SMG’s Buffy who breaks my heart every time I watch ‘Prophecy Girl’ (“Giles I’m 16 years old... I-I don’t want to die!”), it’s SMG’s Buffy I cheer on in ‘Anne’, SMG’s Buffy that takes my breath away in ‘The Gift’ with her beautiful swan dive, SMG’s Buffy who kicks ass in ‘Chosen’.

Comic!Buffy is OK - but she’s no more my Buffy than Kirsty Swanson.

Tied in with this is the art work itself. I think I originally described it as ‘competent’ and that’s pretty much how I see it still. Having pondered the issue somewhat I think the artist in question is more of a craftsman than an artist. Maybe this is something inherent in working with other people’s stories, I don’t know. (For examples of stuff that really makes me excited about the art, here are pictures by Wendy Pini and Will Eisner.)


3) Then there is that fact that Buffy was *finished* after S7. The show wasn’t cancelled, it ended. Sunnydale was wiped off the map, and since Sunnydale and Buffy always went together, it really was the final, definitive ending.

Interestingly this is why I’m far more excited by the S6 comics of Angel. Poor AtS was cancelled and sent off to an early grave. Yes ‘Not Fade Away’ was the perfect ending, but we know they had a S6 planned and it *kills* me that we never got to see it. A comic will be a pale shadow of course, but still - we *should* have had a S6. (The WB are feelthy people. *spits* We will speak of them no more!)

But there was never going to be a S8.

So no, I’ll never consider the comics ‘show’ canon. Not even if S8 turns out to be utterly brilliant. It’ll be its own canon I think, since I’m sure there are people who’ll want to use it as a basis for fic etc. and that’s fine. But the show ended after S7.

Comments

[crossreactivity.livejournal.com]

The canon vs. not-canon debate is really interesting. I don't like the comics either, for a lot of reasons but mostly because the format doesn't appeal to me. As you and many others have said, a lot of the magic of BtVS was the actors on the show bringing the script to life. That said, I'm not convinced that the comics aren't canon because I believe canon is the characters Joss created and the story he chose to tell about them.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer comes to Sunnydale, meets Giles the Watcher, befriends Willow and Xander, fights demons and saves the world again and again... we all know how it goes, up through S7 when Sunnydale becomes a crater and Buffy faces a future where she is no longer "one girl in all the world". The S8 comics clearly pick up after that and go on to tell us what Buffy is doing post-Chosen. The format may not be the best, but the basic facts (for example, that she is teamed up with Xander training slayers) don't change regardless of how well or how poorly the story gets told. I'm sure others will disagree with me, but I have trouble with the idea that "execution" (i.e. film, sound, music, actors) has anything to do with whether or not the story itself is canon.

[swsa.livejournal.com]

But I think there is an argument to be made about the execution/format changing the story when you realize that if BtVS had been told from the start in story form, Angel wouldn't exist, Spike would be dead after about 5 appearances, Dawn would be about 10 years old when she first showed up, Anya would've never been seen after Doppelgangland, Faith's arc would've been drastically shortened/altered. Those are HUGE things that were all actor/network driven that would've most likely only happened if the story was told through television episodes.

[crossreactivity.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand your point. BtVS played out the way it did because that's the way the story was written... by Joss and his team. What I was trying to say above is that a story can be conveyed in different ways. In this case it began with the TV show (I'm excluding the original movie because it was obviously intended as a standalone) and continues in the comics. Canon to me is not the format, it's the characters and events and the world that's created. It should be a consistent world, and so far the comics seem to fulfill that. It might not always be true (we've only seen two issues) but according to what Joss has said that seems to be his intention.

[swsa.livejournal.com]

I'm saying that if the story had always been told through comic books, then there would be much of the story we know now that wouldn't exist. And I think that's why some of us have trouble putting the comics on the same level. The story is Joss', yes, but it's the story he told while being affected by actors, by the network, by changing things as they went along, by fan reaction, by character chemistry...all things that don't really come into play in this format.

[crossreactivity.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see! True, he might have told a different story if he didn't have those things to contend with during the TV show, and that alternate version would have become canon... and we would have been none the wiser. The argument seems to be that because the two formats (TV and comics) are different, the story told in the comics can't be canon and I still don't see why. Unless Joss creates a new world that clearly contradicts what came before, there's no reason to view the comics as anything but a continuation of the original story in another format.

[elisi]

That said, I'm not convinced that the comics aren't canon because I believe canon is the characters Joss created and the story he chose to tell about them.
Well I think the comics will be their own canon - people can base fic upon them etc. But it is not the show, even though it is a continuation of the same story. Before they came out I thought that 'if I liked them they'd be canon, otherwise not', but they change in format is just too great for that to apply. The show ended after 7 seasons. This is a new avenue althogether.