Comic-Con ‘08: Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible Panel

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is a three act internet flick about a lovelorn wannabe-supervillain who tends to break out into song.

As the panel started and Joss Whedon was introduced, a complete standing ovation erupted from the audience.  The crowd truly appreciates the work he has done, presently does and I suspect, will do in the future.

He was also joined on-stage by Dr. Horrible writers Jed and Zach Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen, and the cast – Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day and Simon Helberg. Neil Patrick Harris brought weaponry in the form of the freeze ray gun used in the short series, maybe in case the questions got out of hand.

They went immediately to audience questions and some of the highlights from the panel were:

We’ll be seeing more Serenity Comics.

Sugar shock will be available in print on the Dark Horse MySpace collection.

His project with Drew Goddard, Cabin in the Woods is a go, but Screen Rant readers already knew that because we touched on that earlier.

He was asked if he’d ever have a happy ending in any of his creations and Harris piped in that he does seem to “kill off a lot of chicks.” Felicia piped in that she liked the ending of Dr. Horrible and Whedon tried to weakly defend himself by saying he does like happy endings…  But later he said he basically has two tricks -  He either kills characters or outs them!

A sobering question was asked by a person who claimed she had a deteriorating brain condition and asked what they do to stay focused on being happy.  Fillion replied that his brain is deteriorating and he’s pretty happy!  And there’s a whole bunch of coined Zen phrases that will tell you how to get happy.  Whedon added a nice touch of reality by saying that surrounding himself with family / loved ones does the trick.

Someone mistakenly noted that “… in Doctor Who“  … Which got raised eyebrows from the panel and jeers from the crowd, and one of the panel stoically said:  You do mean Dr Horrible, right?  The questioner replied: Isn’t that what I said?

The question was that it was noticed that Dr. Horrible wasn’t wearing his costume in the final scene and wondered if that meant something, or did Dr. Horrible just forget to do his laundry?  Harris said there are many ways to interpret that scene…  and left it at that.

When the panel was asked about their favorite episode, they pretty much said “This?”

Joss was asked what is his most memorable moment in the “Joss-Verse“.  His reply:  “The whole Verse?”

A funny moment in the panel was when Felicia Days was asked what her favorite scene was in ‘Horrible‘ and she was sitting there with her hands under the table and looked up and said… “What was the question?  I was Twittering“  The panel gave her the funniest look.  It seems not everyone on the panel knows about Twitter, and Felicia put her hands back on the table top and more or less implied that “it’s not what it looks like!”

There will be more Dr. Horrible coming at us, but no details were granted to our ever keen ears.

Whedon was asked how he gets past all his shows being horribly canceled and he replied by taking it one episode at a time – and the power of the internet puts the power more in his hands.  He said that the future is rolling on in and you can’t ignore it.  There’s a new way to put out media that involves all of us, the fans and not so much some ‘other people’.

He wanted to point out that he’s not trying to bring down the studios but things are changing and they need to look at that evolution and not ignore it.

If anyone was curious, the Shoulder Dance in Dr. Horrible was Harris’s creation.  After having been in the laundromat filming all day, Harris just wanted to do something odd.  It will make it’s way to the DVD as an extra.

Oh, did I say DVD?  Yep, there will be a Dr. Horrible DVD and soundtrack coming soon.  Whedon is putting out an online contest where fans can enter short video clips and the ten best will be featured on the DVD.

There was one moment where Whedon was asked what he saw in Nathan Fillion’s personality to cast him as Captain Hammer and he replied:

“Nathan is a superhero kind of dick who’s the swarmiest Mother-F’r”.  To quote Whedon:  “He brings it best… Shatner, your time is done!”

At the close of the panel Neil Patrick Harris said in a humorous overtone that “I just realized I’m at Comic-Con… I might have thrice uttered the f-word.. I’m sorry!” Earlier he recounted his trying to learn his song and he sing the first few words, forget the rest, “f”, then he’d do it again with a few more words, then “f”!

That was it as far as some of the fun stuff I took away from the Dr. Horrible panel.