Grant Kempster checks out the fantastic
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Buffy Gets Animated • Slayer to go retro!

Buffy is leaving The WB! But don’t worry, despite her departure from her founding network you won’t lose her altogether, as the rather accommodating UPN folks have offered her a place to stay for the next two years. As the Buff drew towards the end of her latest season, rumors were flying left, right and center about how The WB’s final year would end. There were some very interesting and, to be honest, pretty devastating claims made, both about the mortality of some of our favorite Scooby members and the Slayer herself. But, you know, we’re not going to tell you, because if they’re true, then it’s going to be a hell of a shock for everyone, and that’s the way it should be.

What we can tell you is that a planned animated series is in the works over at the Fox Network (you see, they finally got Buffy!), under the watchful eye of writer Jeph Loeb and, of course, creator Joss Whedon. ‘Buffy fans should be very pleased with what [Joss] has in mind,’ Loeb told the Comics Continuum. ‘What is so exciting is that animation allows Joss’ imagination to go in even more extraordinary directions. We’re currently writing episode one, putting together the bible and coming up with stories for other fantastic new episodes.’ The series will take place during Buffy and the Scoobies’ high school years, and will apparently maintain continuity with the live-action series. The new show may be up and running as early as February 2002.

I-Man Goes Postal

As the unexpected hit show of last year kicks off its second season, two of the show’s stars have been talking about what we can expect from The Invisible Man’s second year, which features a new regular agent in the tempting shape of Brandy Ledford as Alex Monroe.

“‘Grisly’ is really the operative word,” actor Paul Ben-Victor (Hobbes) says of the season’s opening episode Legends, while talking to Xposé’s own Ian Spelling. “I don’t want to give it all away, but the episode is about Bigfoot. It was a fun one to shoot. We were in the wilderness for a week, freezing our butts off, trying to stay away from all the poison ivy...

“We’ve just finished another episode called Going Postal,” Ben-Victor continued, “in which Hobbes goes postal and you get three different interpretations – mine, Darien [Fawkes] and Alexandra’s – of what happened in the post office. None of those interpretations is played straight. Mine is done as film noir – it goes into black and white and I become like Bogart. Alex’s bit is shot on video like a reality cop show, and in Darien’s I’m his lackey and he’s a suave Clint Eastwood type.”

‘One thing we can expect in the second season was something I thought we put on the back-burner for too long,’ series star Vincent Ventresca told Scifi.com, ‘and that is that at its core the show is a morality tale, about a guy who can do good or do bad with this gift that he has in his head.’ Expect some bad-ass Darien coming your way.

Mutant X-It?

Just months before Marvel’s TV series Mutant X was due to go before cameras in Vancouver, they have been halted by a lawsuit from 20th Century Fox. The suit claims that an agreement was made with the corporation during the legal wrangling over the X-Men movie that any TV series relating to the project had to be run past them first. Fox are also concerned that Marvel’s series, which is almost identical in plot, will harm their proposed ongoing X-Men movie franchise. Not to be outdone, Marvel immediately counter-sued, and are making the argument that while Mutant X is indeed an off-shoot of X-Men, the story and characters are entirely different, thus the series doesn’t fall under Fox’s ruling. The fight rages on as the shooting deadline of June 4 grows near.

The cast is also starting to shape up, with four of the leads confirmed. Brennan (played by Victor Webster, Days of Our Lives), Emma (Lauren Lee Smith, 2gether), Jesse (Forbes March, All My Children) and Shalimar (Victoria Pratt, Cleopatra 2525 and Xena) are all going to be plying their mutant trade over the next few months.

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