Vintage Interview: Amber Benson
Aug 17
Time to reanimate the corpses of dusty interviews past in order to make way for interviews…of the future!
Well. That…didn’t sound so appealing, did it?
But, look, I promise it is appealing on many levels, because today I’m posting a circa 2000 chat with Ms. Amber Benson, a geek multi-hyphenate who seriously does it all. She makes movies. She writes books. She plays iconic characters on wildly popular nerd television series, spawning fankid passion, fanfic opuses, and rare variant action figures.
I’m posting this now because I recently conducted an all-new, all-awesome interview with Amber about her amazing new urban fantasy book Death’s Daughter, which is the first of a full-on series. That’ll be gracing Alert Nerd later this week.
But for now, let’s flash back to 2000, when Amber was just entering the collective nerd consciousness as shy, witchy Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And one fine day — before there was an Amber action figure, before Tara and Willow officially became Twillow — she talked to me about the whole Buffy shebang. Please note that I was 23 and apparently thought the enduring legacy of New Kids on the Block made for scintillating questions.
Read on, and check back later this week for the new interview, which contains lots of hyphens and little-to-no boy band content — I promise.
A Really Bad Idea: BSG “Threeboot”
Aug 17
Do we even need to talk about this? Maybe we do.
Word cruised down the Information Superhighway on Friday that Bryan Singer was on tap to produce and direct a big-screen version of Battlestar Galactica.
You may have had the same thought I did, roughly translated as “Whagahuh?” After all, the four season reimagining of BSG spearheaded by Ronald Moore and David Eick only just wrapped up its brilliant run in March. Singer and producer Tom DeSanto were in the running to helm that very reboot series back in 2001 before everything fell apart. (Drew McWeeney’s blog at HitFix broke the story on Singer’s new project, and has great background on the director’s turbulent history with the franchise.) Now Singer and DeSanto are returning to the well that they were themselves going to empty before two very talented TV creators came along and emptied it for them.
Stuff We Like This Week: August 14 Edition
Aug 14
In an effort to combat our occasional…okay, okay, near-constant negativity, we give you a regular feature full of nothing but love — Stuff We Like This Week. Appearing every Friday, SWLTW will recap the things that have set our little nerdly hearts aflame within the past seven days.
Letters From Marvel
Aug 13As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on Mark Gruenwald, here’s a few pics of the package I received from Marvel Comics back in 1992 to thank me for writing a letter to Quasar.
The envelope in which it arrived, featuring an awesome Spidey address label.
Remembering Mark Gruenwald
Aug 12Tom Brevoort has a great blog post up in memory of Mark Gruenwald and Mike Wieringo, two terrific comic book talents who passed away on this day. Tom shares a terrific piece Mark wrote for Marvel Age in which he shared 168 observations about himself and life.
I miss Ringo every time I see his artwork; he had already executed legendary runs on Flash and Fantastic Four, and it aches to think of the legendary runs-to-come that we’ll never get to see. Plus, he seemed like an awesome guy and so I mourn for those who knew him well and miss him.
Whether directly or indirectly, Mark Gruenwald played a small role in the early growth of my comics fandom, so I miss him even more.
