Dark Horse Comics announced today that Buffy The Vampire Slayer #35, which is due out in July, initiates a storyline that ties in directly with the Buffy The Vampire Slayer television series season finale.  The shocking final episode in which Buffy plunged to her 'death' in order to save her sister (and the world) has generated enormous interest, especially since the WB network, which is losing Buffy to UPN (see 'Buffy Flees The Frog') promoted the show as a 'series finale' rather than a 'season finale.'  The popular Buffy series was the most searched network drama series for the year 2000, but never had enough searches during a seven-day period to make it into the Lycos Top 50 for any individual week.  However, with Buffy apparently six feet under, the series rocketed to #9 on the Lycos list following the shocking season finale.  But don't worry, Buffy creator Joss Whedon has assured us all that Buffy will be back on Tuesday nights next year, albeit on UPN rather than on the Frog.

 

Speaking of Joss Whedon, he has garnered a lot of publicity for his first attempt at comic book writing, Fray, which hits the streets in less than two weeks (see 'Dark Horse Flogs Fray in Major Pubs').  In addition to his work on Fray, Dark Horse has just announced that Whedon will be contributing to two more Buffy-related projects that are scheduled to ship in November, an original graphic novel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales of the Slayer, and an all-new Angel miniseries.  Having Whedon pen Buffy comics is akin to having Chris Carter write for the X-Files comic.  Whedon is the creator and chief writer on what many critics consider (with the possible exception of The Sopranos) the best-written series on American television.