Fox is Pulling the ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ License From Dark Horse Comics, Joss Whedon Says

As we learned from last month’s confusion surrounding the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot, there can only be one Buffy. Now, it turns out, there can only be one Buffy title being produced at a time.

While we lie in wait for more news about the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot/sequel, creator Joss Whedon revealed that the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Dark Horse comic series will be wrapping up its lenghty run in the wake of Fox pulling the beloved show’s comic book license.

She saved the world a lot…on both the screen and on the page. Buffy Summers has become an ubiquitous pop culture figure thanks in large part to the iconic supernatural TV show that ran from 1997 to 2003, but also thanks to the comic books that ran alongside the show and continued the story of the vampire slayer long after. Now, that era is coming to an end.

The comic book license for Buffy the Vampire Slayer has resided with Dark Horse Comics since 1998, but Fox is taking back the license, Whedon revealed in an interview with CBR:

In the meantime, we want to do something more with Dark Horse right now – especially because Fox is taking the Buffy license and the Firefly license back. And Dark Horse has shepherded these licenses for decades now.

This is likely in anticipation of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot (but not a remake) being developed at Fox 21 Studios, which Whedon is reportedly involved with. It seems that Fox is taking Giles’ famous phrase, “Into every generation a slayer is born: one girl in all the world, a chosen one,” quite literally.

Though I dropped off reading the Buffy comics a long time ago (they got a bit…weird), it saddens me that we can’t have the reboot and the Buffy comics running at the same time. Why can’t we have a series about the new Slayer while we keep up with the adventures of Buffy and the Scooby Gang? Then again, it’s possible that the new series will pull a Star Wars Expanded Universe twist on us, and erase the canon established in the Buffy comics (which expanded beyond the show’s seven-season run up to a comics-only “season 11”) in order to incorporate elements of those comics in the new series.

But that doesn’t mean the upcoming Buffy the Vampire Season 12 comic can’t end with a bang. Whedon says he and writer Christopher Gage are planning a finale that you’ll never forget — probably one of the universe-ending, apocalypse-rising variety:

Similar to the show, we’re not going to close it all off in the sense of “Everybody’s dead!” Though we did think about doing that. [Laughter] But when I sat with Chris Gage, it was with the intent that after everything we’ve been through we wanted to have something to say that mirrors and rounds off where we started this comic [run]. And then they said, “You have four issues,” and it was like “Ohhhh. That’s all the time we have.”

So we dealt with a lot of things in small panels, and I don’t know if I fit it all in, but it was very important to try. We made sure that the journey wasn’t continuing. We wanted to give the Dark Horse era some closure. What they’ve done over the years with Scott Allie and Sierra Hahn, and everyone there has put their souls into this. The artists like Georges [Jeanty] and everyone were such a perfect match. It’s been a great combination, so it couldn’t just end.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 12 will consist of four issues and is written by Whedon and Gage, and illustrated by Georges Jeanty.

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