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Writer Extraordinaire Jeph Loeb at WonderCon

By Great White Snark | March 6, 2007

Like any true geek, I put Joss Whedon up on a pedestal, for the enjoyment he brings as a writer and content-creator.

And then I got to know Jeph Loeb during his guest speaker session at WonderCon. Even when I was peripherally aware of this guy when I was growing up, mostly thanks to his landmark comic book work on X-Men (Age of Apocalypse, anyone?) and Batman, I had no idea what kind of writing prowess and geek cred this guy had in several entertainment mediums, including film and TV.

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Jeph Loeb. If you look very closely, I think you’ll see that he’s about to do something brilliant.

Forget that he’s worked with the best artists in all of the Comic Book Kingdom to produce really solid, memorable work for most of the major titles. They even teach a class on Batman at Berkeley that focuses on Jeph’s work. He also co-scripted most of Teen Wolf and Commando. (Own the 1980s, much?) He was a writer on Smallville for seasons two, three, and four… back when you didn’t wish that Clark would accidentally burn off most of Lana Lang’s angst-ridden, sanctimonious scalp with his heat vision. He was a supervising producer (a.k.a., fancy writer) for Lost before it really started to suck, at which point he moved over to the writing staff at Heroes, which had one of its sweetest episodes yet last week.

(My lips hurt from all this puckering. And I’ve got a funny taste in my mouth…)

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Please, Jeph. I need the words that will be for the coming out of my mouth. Aaaaauuurrr!

Nirvana will be reached sometime within the next year or so when he collaborates on Joss Whedon’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Eight comic book series. Don’t talk to me during that month. I’ll be weeping uncontrollably. (As if I weep in any other fashion.)

Jeph told us at WonderCon that the first idea he pitched on Lost was for the castaways to find a car with beer in the trunk. Sound familiar? Except, his proposed ending was much better than slow-motion Kumbayah ending we got last week that’s become so trite on Lost; in Jeph’s version, Sawyer gets drunk and drives the truck into the ocean.

Winner.

Final note: Jeph’s session also happened to be the scene of one of the nerdiest moments I witnessed at WonderCon.

During the Q&A, a guy from the audience had a question about working with Christopher Reeve on Smallville. Jeph starts talking about “an episode called ‘Legacy’ I wrote for the end of season four.”

…at which point, the guy interrupts him to say, “It was season three.” Imagine the voice of the stapler guy from Office Space.

The rest of the audience starts laughing uncomfortably, as if to say, “Holy crap, this guy is a true nerd among nerds.” Quite a marvel to see those guys eating one of their own. Even bottom-feeders need to eat, I guess.

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(Insert heaving mouth breathing and drooling here.)

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    • Topics: Batman, Comics, Conventions and Events, Geeks, Movies, TV | No Comments »

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