Spring 2012 saw the return to creative and critical success of Joss Whedon, with the release of both his horror flick The Cabin in the Woods and the box-office sensation, Marvel's The Avengers. After establishing himself as a premier cult creator, the man who gave us great television with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse and web series Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog, as well as comic books including Fray and Astonishing X-Men, finally became the filmmaker he'd long dreamed of being. Drawing on a wide variety of sources and making use of psychologist Howard Gruber's insights into the nature of the creative process, Joss, A Creative Portrait offers the first intellectual biography of Whedon, tracking his career arc from activated fan boy to film studies major, third generation television writer, successful script doctor, innovative television auteur, beloved cult icon, sought-after collaborator, and major filmmaker with Marvel's The Avengers. Film and television scholar and Whedon expert David Lavery traces Whedon's multi-faceted magic from its source - the early influences of parents and teachers, comics, books, movies, collaborators - to its artistic incarnation.

Director, producer and screenwriter Joss Whedon is a creative force in film, television, comic books and a host of other media. This book provides an authoritative survey of all of Whedon's work, ranging from his earliest scriptwriting on Roseanne, through his many movie and TV undertakings--Toy Story, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly/Serenity, Dr. Horrible, The Cabin in the Woods, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.--to his forays into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The book covers both the original texts of the Whedonverse and the many secondary works focusing on Whedon's projects, including about 2000 books, essays, articles, documentaries and dissertations.

J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon are two of the most imaginative and accomplished men in Hollywood. As writers, directors, producers, and series creators, their credits have straddled the mediums of television and film and range across several genres, from science fiction and horror to action and drama. In addition to spearheading original projects like Lost and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, each has also made his mark on some of the most successful franchises in popular culture—from Mission Impossible, Star Trek, and Star Wars (Abrams) to Alien and the Avengers (Whedon). Their output—both oddly similar and yet also wildly different—stand at the heart of twenty-first century film and television. In J.J. Abrams vs. Joss Whedon, Wendy Sterba compares the parallel careers in film and television of these creative masterminds—pitting one against the other in a light-hearted competition. With in-depth discussions of their works, the author seeks to determine who is the Spielberg (or perhaps the Lucas) of the twenty-first century. The author looks back upon the beginnings of both men’s careers—to Whedon’s stint as a writer on Roseanne to Abrams’ early scripts for films like Regarding Henry—and forward to their most recent blockbusters, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This books also looks at non-fantasy successes (Abrams series Felicity; Whedon’s adaptation of Much Ado about Nothing), as well as commercial failures. At the heart of this study, however, is a tour of their genre-defining hits: Alias and Buffy, Lost and Angel, Super 8 and Serenity along with Whedon’s Avengers films, and Abrams’ rebooted Star Trek adventures. Filled with sharp-eyed analysis, illuminating anecdotes, and unexpected connections, J.J. Abrams vs.Joss Whedon will appeal to fans of either (or both!) of its subjects, and to any fan of well-told tales of the fantastic, on screens large or small.

Screenwriter, director, producer and comic book author Joss Whedon is best known for his television series and films featuring villainous vampires, angry gods and even bloggers who wish to rule the world. Within these works is a prevalent yet commonly overlooked theme--the corporate antagonist. This book examines the effects of this corporate culture on the protagonists of Whedon's most famous works (including Buffy, Roseanne, the Avengers, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Dollhouse) to reveal explicit sociopolitical commentaries on corporate control in the real world.

Drawing on the works of Shakespeare and American screenwriter Joss Whedon, this study in narrative ethics contends that Whedon is the Shakespeare of our time. The Bard wrote before the influence of the modern moral philosophers, while Whedon is writing in the postmodern period. It is argued that Whedon's work is more in harmony with the early modern values of Shakespeare than with modern ethics, which trace their origin to 17th and 18th century moral philosophy. This study includes a detailed discussion of representative works of Shakespeare and Whedon, showing how they can and should be read as forms of narrative ethics.

When Joss Whedon's television show Firefly (2002-2003) was cancelled, devoted fans cried foul and demanded more--which led to the 2005 feature film Serenity. Both the series and the film were celebrated for their melding of science fiction and western iconography, dystopian settings, underdog storylines, and clever fast-paced dialogue. Firefly has garnered a great deal of scholarly attention--less so, Serenity. This collection of new essays, the first focusing exclusively on the film, examines its depictions of race, ableism, social engineering and systems of power, and its status as a crime film, among other topics.

Although ostensibly presented as “light entertainment,” the work of writer-director-producer Joss Whedon takes much dark inspiration from the horror genre to create a unique aesthetic and perform a cultural critique. Featuring monsters, the undead, as well as drawing upon folklore and fairy tales, his many productions both celebrate and masterfully repurpose the traditions of horror for their own means. Woofter and Jowett's collection looks at how Whedon revisits existing feminist tropes in the '70s and '80s “slasher” craze via Buffy the Vampire Slayer to create a feminist saga; the innovative use of silent cinema tropes to produce a new fear-laden, film-television intertext; postmodernist reflexivity in Cabin in the Woods; as well as exploring new concepts on “cosmic dread” and the sublime for a richer understanding of programmes Dollhouse and Firefly. Chapters provide the historical context of horror as well as the particular production backgrounds that by turns support, constrain or transform this mode of filmmaking. Informed by a wide range of theory from within philosophy, film studies, queer studies, psychoanalysis, feminism and other fields, the expert contributions to this volume prove the enduring relevance of Whedon's genre-based universe to the study of film, television, popular culture and beyond.

No recent television creator has generated more critical, scholarly, and popular discussion or acquired as devoted a cult following as Joss Whedon (b. 1964). No fewer than thirty books concerned with his work have now been published, and ten international conferences on his work have convened in the U.K., the United States, Australia, and Turkey. Fitting then that this first volume in University Press of Mississippi's Television Conversations Series is devoted to the writer, director, and showrunner who has delivered Buffy the Vampire Slayer (The WB, 1997–2001; UPN, 2001–3), Angel (The WB, 1999–2004), Firefly (2002), Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (Webcast, 2008), and Dollhouse (FOX, 2009-10). If Whedon has shown himself to be a virtuoso screenwriter/script-doctor, director, comic book author, and librettist, he is as well a masterful conversationalist. As a DVD commentator, for example, the consistently hilarious, reliably insightful, frequently moving Whedon has few rivals. In his many interviews he likewise shines. Whether answering a hundred rapid-fire, mostly silly questions from fans on the Internet, fielding serious inquiries about his craft and career from television colleagues, or assessing his disappointments, Whedon seldom fails to provoke laughter and reflection.

This book assesses Joss Whedon’s contribution to US television and popular culture. Examining everything from his earliest work to his most recent tweets and activist videos, it explores his complex and contradictory roles as both cult outsider and blockbuster filmmaker. Crucially, the book insists on the wider industrial, technological, political and economic contexts that have both influenced and been influenced by Whedon, rejecting the notion of Whedon as isolated television auteur. Using key source material, with exclusive access to drafts of many of the episodes across Whedon’s career, as well as unique correspondence with Whedon collaborator Jane Espenson, this book offers unparalleled access to the creative process that helped produce the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Dollhouse and Firefly. Energetic, engaging and informed by detailed scholarship and theoretical rigour, the book is not just an essential addition to the study of Whedon, but a timely and important re-invigoration of television studies in general.

This book explores the transmedial nature of the storyworlds created by and/or affiliated with television auteur, writer, and filmmaker, Joss Whedon. As such, the book addresses the ways in which Whedon’s storyworlds, or ‘verses, employ transmedia, both intrinsically as texts and extrinsically as these texts are consumed and, in some cases, reworked, by audiences. This collection walks readers through fan and scholar-fan engagement, intrinsic textual transmediality, and Whedon’s lasting influence on televisual and transmedia texts. In closing, the editors argue for the need to continue research into how the Whedonverse(s) lend themselves to transmedial study, engage audiences in ways that take advantage of multiple media, and encourage textual internalization of these engagements within audiences.