Erin Giannini

With contributions from professors, scholars, bloggers, playwrights, and novelists from Australia, the Netherlands, Canada, and Great Britain, as well as the US, this collection explores recent additions to the multifaceted Whedonverse. But it doesn't stop there. Above all comes the question "What's Next?" How will Whedon adapt other Shakespeares like Hamlet and Twelfth Night, seeing that he hates to make the same project twice? Will he offer a female Horatio, a stronger Ophelia, a play set on a spaceship or S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters? Who will star? Other creators have signed on for the Wonder Woman film, but can they surpass his unpublished script? What will come after Avengers: Age of Ultron – Star Wars?

In today's world of Netflix shows, comic continuations, and web releases, Whedon has far more options than he did in the '90s Meanwhile, fans across the world are devouring his Buffy motion comics even as American creators pay homage to his works in their own shows, from Husbands and The Guild to How I Met Your Mother. All of this combines to build a glittering future for Whedon's fans and for the creator himself as the Whedonverse swells larger with each passing year.

Contents
Presenting the Collection
Presenting the Classic Shows
Buffy’s Successors: How Both The Guild and How I Met Your Mother Spring from Buffy
Calvin Peat
The Vampire Family Plot: Naming, Siring, and Identity
Janet Brennan Croft
A Whedonite’s Guide to Characterization
Kate Johnson and J.T. Bock
The Future of Scholarship: Interview with Professor Rhonda V. Wilcox
Francesca Maria Stefanachi
Presenting The Cabin in the Woods
Watching the Whore: The Treatment of Jules in Cabin in the Woods
Carrie Sessarego
Something Nightmares Are From: Corporate Culture and Externalized Consequences
Erin Giannini
Presenting The Avengers
“That Man’s Playing Galaga” /Dis/ownership, Democratization and Demographics
Dr. Shathley Q
Collateral Damage: How The Avengers is a Superhero Film, Not an Action Flick
James Orbesen
Fun with Fandom in Avengers: Age of Ultron
Valerie Estelle Frankel
Presenting Much Ado About Nothing
The Whole Assembly: Much Ado About Superheroes, Shakespeare, and Shawarma
B. Mitchell
Sigh No More, Ladies: Much Ado Tackles Gender and Modern Judgment
Navya Dasari
Of Whedonverse Canon and “Someone Else’s Sandbox:” Marvel, Much Ado, and the Great Auteur Debate
Mary Ellen Iatropoulos
Presenting In Your Eyes
The Mad Girl Weds the Evil Doctor: Whedonisms in In Your Eyes
Valerie Estelle Frankel
Presenting Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Deployment Patterns: How Joss Whedon Leverages Transmedia to Force a Rethink of Old Media
Dr. Shathley Q
“I’m Every Bit the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent That You Are”: Exploring Opposing Masculinities
Scott Interrante
Whedon’s Women: Melinda May and Maria Hill as Transgressive Superheroines
Leanne McRae
Presenting the Buffy Comics
From the Small Screen to the Panel: Buffy in Comic Form
J.M. Suarez
Big in Japan: A Cross Cultural Look at the Whedonverse
J. Malcolm Stewart
Presenting the Angel & Faith Comics
No Future For You? Faith and the Future of the Dark Slayer
Siobhan Lyons
Journey into the Heart of Darkness: Intertextuality, Redemption, and Rewriting (Neo)colonial Discourses in Angel & Faith’s Lost and Found
Jessica Hautsch
Presenting the Serenity Comics
The Browncoats Return! The New Rebellion in Leaves on the Wind
Eugena McCrann
Presenting Future Shakespeares
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t”: Speculating on Adaptations of Shakespeare.
Carl Wilson
Much Ado About Whedon and the Hamlet Hypothesis
Stephanie Garrison
Joss Whedon’s Hamlet: The Problems of Ophelia and Representation
Joel Hawkes
Presenting the Future
Violence, Strong Language, and Adult Content: Whedon’s Return to Television
Sebastiaan Gorissen
How to Make a Wonder Woman Movie
Valerie Estelle Frankel
Cleaning the Slate with the Force: Star Wars, Joss Whedon, and the Mind-Body Problem
Dominic Nardi, Jr.
Contributors
Works Cited