Joss Whedon: A to Z of Awesome

J-K-L

J is for... Jed Whedon

Joss comes from a family of screenwriters... both his grandfather John Whedon and his father Tom Whedon were writers for television. Two of his brothers, one of whom is Jed (we will get to the other later... I need his initial badly) also write for TV (he has four brother by the way). Along with his brothers, Jed and his then fiancee but now wife Maurissa Tancharoen co-created and co-wrote Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. Both he and his wife were also staff writers on Whedon's show Dollhouse as well as Spartacus and Drop Dead Diva and were said to have also helped Joss write the screenplay for The Avengers. Both he and his wife are also going to be heavily involved (likely co-writing the pilot with Whedon and many other episodes) in the writing of the TV show SHIELD... so expect their fame to rise dramatically. Jed and his wife wrote the two best episodes of Dollhouse, Epitaph One and Epitaph Two... and believe me, they were two of the greatest episodes ever seen on TV. This guy can write. One talented family.

K is for... Kitty Pryde

Whedon is a huge fan of the X-Men. As previously mentioned he wrote the great Astonishing X-Men series and even wrote an uncredited treatment and screenplay for the X-Men movie... a few lines of his still remain in the film, though he likes to distance himself from the finished article. Kitty Pryde is probably Whedon's favorite X-Man and is the fictional character he credits for inspiring the creation of Buffy Summers. She was also pretty much the central character in his X-Men comic series, and reintroduced her into the X-Men so that the emotional arc of the story can mostly be hers. If you read the X-Men comics you can really see Kitty's influence in a lot of Whedon's shows ( a teenager struggling to deal with super-powers, but being a strong and very capable young woman), so for influencing Whedon's best work, and for perhaps even helping to start his career, Kitty deserves her place on this list.

L is for... Lost Projects

Whedon has created many successful TV shows and helped create many, many successful movies (including co-writing Toy Story), but he has also had many many projects failed to make it past preproduction. Such shows include an animated Buffy The Vampire TV show, which there is a preview of somewhere online... having seen it, it looked like it would have been a lot of fun. There was serious talk about a Faith spin-off and a separate Giles spin-off set in the past in England, featuring his life as a teenager which apparently is still a project which isn't completely dead. The development process for the TV series called Ripper, which was set to be made for the UK's own BBC channel, was to begin in 2008, but problems to do with character rights stopped the show from production. If you know anything about how cool Giles' teenage self Ripper was, then you'd know the awesome potential this show had and even still has. There was also talk of a TV movie focusing on both the character of Willow and Spike set after the TV series, but these are both very unlikely to see the light of day now (although they both currently star in their own comic spin-0ffs- so that is something). As stated previously, Whedon was also involved in creating a Wonder Woman film, and also heavily discussed his plans for a dark version of Batman before Nolan brought out Batman Begins. He also made a not so serious bid for the Terminator film franchise rights in 2009, sighting James Cameron as one of his greatest influences (another director whose films feature strong women), however only willing to pay $10,000 dollars, he was obviously unsuccessful- I'd even happily pay that amount.
Contributor

I am a recent Screenwriting for Film and Television graduate from the UK. I am an unashamed geek who loves everything Marvel, and anything Joss Whedon has ever touched (except for maybe Alien Resurrection and Titan A.E). My current favorite TV shows are Breaking Bad, Family Guy, House of Cards, Game of Thrones, American Horror Story, Homeland and Glee. I look forward to debating things with all of you in the future. (As of January 2013 I have had over 1 million views since joining WhatCulture in September 2012. You can reach me at danieljamesbowen@hotmail.co.uk)