Hee. Remember when Nicky Brendon did that interview with Will-from-Alias for Kitchen Confidential and admitted that Joss Whedon told him sometime around Season 4 or 5 of Buffy that "Xander was done," there was "no more" to tell about him? And the hardcore Whedonites bent over backwards trying to convince themselves that what NB actually meant was the exact opposite of what he actually said, because what NB actually said might have cast a less-than-positive light on Joss.

Now, I admit I've been reading the Season Eight comics (and the Angel: After the Fall comics from that other company even though I still won't buy or read any of their Spike stuff), in part because Whedon finally seems to be giving Xander a plotline again (well, for Whedon, heaping tragedy and misery onto a character is the same thing as giving them a plotline), even though I'm not sure where he's going with it. But while I will admit Nick Brendon's not the absolute greatest actor in the world, I'm still a little suspicious of the fact that it took doing it in comic-book form -- y'know, without those pesky actors getting in the way -- for Joss to do it. (Given Joss's statements about how, if he had to, he'd ignore the comics as "canon" to make a Buffy live-action project, I suspect that the first step he would take would be to politely disinvite Nick Brendon and possibly Michelle Trachtenburg from participating, or at least limit them to cameos.)