Joss Whedon is planning a return to the world of comics with a new series that the Buffy creator promised would deal “with the most personal question that can be put to us, which is why isn’t there a Victorian female Batman?”
Whedon’s planned six-issue series Twist, to be published by Dark Horse Comics, was announced at Comic-Con in San Diego at the weekend. He told Entertainment Weekly that the series would be “a Victorian thriller about a meek chambermaid who is fed to a dark horror – but instead of dying, she returns, with knowledge, power, and rage she can neither deny nor control”. The magazine predicted that the comics would have “a strong steampunk aesthetic, some dark knight thematics, and Whedon’s typically imaginative, provocative approach to political, social, and feminist concerns”.
Concept art for the series was provided by the artist Julian Totino Tedesco, but EW said he wasn’t expected to draw Twist, with an artist yet to be announced. Whedon gave away few other details, but revealed to Comic Book Resources that the character would be “super badass”, adding that it had been “too long” since he worked in comics.
The writer and director of Marvel’s The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron films has written a range of comics in the past, from Marvel’s Astonishing X-Men series to Dark Horse’s Fray, set in the far future of the Buffy universe, and the Buffy series of comics continuing the story after the television series’ end.
“How can I not say Buffy?” he told a fan asking about his favourite character at Comic-Con, Comic Book Resources reported. “She’s everything that I am not, and everything I want to be around.”
