I’m knee-deep in reworking Section III of my thesis this weekend, wherein I’m trying to demonstrate the actual value of canon when it comes to transmedia storytelling. My case study of choice? The new ‘season 8’ of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, told in comics form by Whedon himself. Why? Simple.
When Whedon’s Fray, a comic about a slayer in the far-flung future of the Buffyverse (and somewhat iffy in its canonicity) debuted in June of 2001, it entered the charts at #98, with sales of 18,247 copies. The first issue of Season 8 debuted in March, 2007 at #9, with sales of 109,919 copies. I know there are other factors at play here, but I’m hoping to do a graph of sales numbers for each of the Buffy comics to demonstrate how important canon actually is… We’ll see if the data backs me up, but still – one hundred and nine thousand, nine hundred and nineteen copies sold. Da-yum.
After researching transmedia storyworlds at MIT, guiding Microsoft in its CTO/CXO's think tank, co-founding Microsoft Studios' Narrative Design team, and exploring the future of entertainment and media as the Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab, I'm now the Creative Director for USC's World Building Media Lab, a storyteller, a designer, a consultant, and a doctoral student in Media Arts and Practice at USC's School of Cinematic Arts. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
