One of the more important conversations we had as we brought this collection together was whether to use âWhedonverse,â âWhedonverses,â or, what we have ultimately fallen upon, âWhedonverse(s).â We chose the latter because neither the singular nor the plural encapsulate everything we want to highlight in this volume, but both together show the various kinds of intersections of narrative, storyworlds, media, and fan communities between and among these disparate âverses. Joss Whedon has created or co-created several beloved texts in a variety of media, many of which interconnect in several ways. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997â2003), arguably his most studied work, extends into the hit spin-off series Angel (1999â2004), as well as various comics, including the post-televisual runs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2007â2018), Angel: After the Fall (2007â2011), Angel & Faith (2011â2016), Angel (2017), and a variety of one-offs that include key characters such as Willow, Riley, and Spike. Whedonâs space western Firefly (2002â2003) sparked a legendary fan following that prompted him ultimately to make a film, Serenity (2005), and has also found its way into various comic book storylines, including the most recent Serenity: Leaves on the Wind (2014) and Serenity: No Power in the âVerse (2016â2017), and games such as Firefly : The Game, Firefly: Fistful of Credits (board game), and various expansion packs. Dollhouse (2009â2010) ran for only two seasons (like Firefly before it, Fox canceled it, marking the last time to date that Whedon would work with the network). Despite its abbreviated run, fans and academics alike are still working through the dynamic narrative, which includes a six-issue comic book arc, Dollhouse : Epitaphs (2011), to help fill in some of the gaps.1
Not all of Whedonâs works are as richly transmedial, however, as those noted above. Whedonâs initial foray into web-based episodic narratives, Dr. Horribleâs Sing-Along Blog (2008), offers not only a lovely illustration of what writers/creators do during strikes, but it also provides a story rich in Whedonesque affect that is sustained through the intertextual reference and hyperdiegetic casting. Whedon more recently has turned to working on texts that are more overtly collaborations or transmedial adaptations. The film Cabin in the Woods (2012), directed and co-written by Drew Goddard, offers a meta-horror story driven by intertextual references. In that same year, Whedon helmed two very different projects whose storyworlds were already well established. As a break from his work on the major franchise, The Avengers , he directed and self-funded a contemporary take on Shakespeareâs Much Ado About Nothing (2012). He then returned once more to the Marvel storyworld in 2015 with Avengers: Age of Ultron . The two Avengers films have not been his only mark on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or MCU); he is also the lead creator for Agents of S.H.I. E.L.D (2013â), which serves not only as an adaptive story, but also as a continuation of the MCU and key characters found within it.
To narrowcast these works as solely a singular storyworld, âthe Whedonverse,â limits their individual agency as self-contained narratives, but to articulate the narratives as âthe Whedonversesâ minimizes their interrelational connectivity. Certainly neither of these descriptors is incorrect, but equally important is that neither offers what this collection specifically calls to focusâthe dynamism of each narrative or storyworld to function both as its own metatext and as a paratext within the broadest understanding of âthe Whedonverse.â To signify this polyvalence, we settled upon âWhedonverse(s)â in order to highlight the cohesive plurality throughout these various worlds offered via the transmediation. In her book J.J. Abrams Vs Joss Whedon: Dual for Media Master of the Universe, Wendy Sterba explores this dynamic interaction between texts, albeit using different terminology. Accounting for Whedonâs move from a major franchiseâ The Avengers âto a micro-budget Shakespeare film, she makes a case for thinking of Shakespeare as a sort of franchise or at least a part of one: âOf course Shakespeare is not exactly a franchise. There are no corporately held rights to product licensing across a variety of media, yet as might be expected there were videos, soundtracks, and even a screenplay book available, so it is not exactly not a franchise either.â2 Sterbaâs use of franchising terminology limits the discussion (it becomes necessarily industry-focused) at the expense of both the texts themselves and the fans who consume and then tinker with those texts in creative and productive ways. Theorizing the texts outside of that frameworkâspecifically thinking of the storyworlds as simultaneously singular entities and interconnected paratexts with a larger metatextâbrings into sharper focus the ways in which industry, audience, and text interact.
For his exemplar storyworlds, not only as transmediated texts but also as sociocultural commentary, Whedon is one of the most studied auteurs of our time. The Whedon Studies Association hosts a continuing bibliography of the work scholars have published and presented on the Whedonverse, as well as two journals devoted to scholarly inquiry of Whedonâs work , Slayage: The Journal of Whedon Studies and Watcher Junior: The Undergraduate Journal of Whedon Studies , and a biennial conference dedicated to Whedonâs oeuvre and its continued scholarship.3 Shifting into a more popularly driven crowd, the annual WhedonCon dedicates two days to all things Joss and sing-alongs to both the Buffy musical episode, âOnce More With Feeling,â and Dr. Horrible are staples at a variety of cons.4 Scholars love Whedonverses because they are complicated and challenging. Also, the prolific nature of his work affords scholars ample material, which is one of the primary catalysts for this collection. To better understand why Whedon and the Whedonverse(s) matter, we look to the many ways in which his texts are built, disseminated, and consumed. This collection, then, explores how the narratives within the various storyworlds are not isolated, but rather expansive. Most Whedon storyworlds are composed collaboratively, not simply among a host of writers, directors, and artists, but also among media platforms and, arguably, fans. His texts push against media limitations and encourage audiences to dive deeply into each âverse as its own organizing metatext, as well as singular paratexts within the larger Whedonverse. That is, we are positioned as consumers to think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as television, Buffy the Vampire Slayer as comics, and also Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Buffyverse, which can include the show, the books, the games, the podcasts and web content, the scholarship, and so on. In other words, itâs up to us to determine how we define what constitutes the storyworld.
Even as auteurs like Whedon were beginning to create transmedia texts, media scholars were theorizing the process. In 2006, Henry Jenkins offered the tenets of contemporary transmedia storytelling in Convergence Culture. We can dig a bit deeper and find that the idea stretches back nearly as far as narrative itself, but thatâs another story for another time. Jenkins explains that a transmedial narrative is one that has multiple pieces, individually disseminated but collectively interpreted. Each narrative piece is autonomous (i.e., a paratext); however, when combined with other narrative components, it creates a rich storyworld (i.e., a metatext).5 Itâs not unlike the Wonder Twinsâthey function separately as powerful beings, but when they activate their Wonder Twin powers, their abilities are amplified to become something other, a unified force that is somehow greater than the sum of its parts. Jenkins used The Matrix to explain the concept of transmedia, and the Wachowskisâ work certainly provides a strong foundation for understanding how transmedia works, particularly in relation to Whedonâs texts.6
Jenkins notes that the Wachowskis provided a template for the storyworld we know as The Matrix .7 They produced three films, an animated bridge meant to be viewed between the films to âfill inâ the story line and commissioned various artists to create additional storyworld texts that were featured in diverse locations and multiple media. Their work was arguably the breakthrough transmedia text that twenty-first-century...