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.
Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
