Whenever I get to hang out with Joss (he says casually), I always end up awkwardly rambling about how I feel like I'm living one of the delusional fantasies of Rupert Pupkin from King of Comedy, and that I actually have the real Joss tied up in my hotel room. Then Joss laughs nervously, and tells me that I've been using my chopsticks backwards all night.
It's horrible.
But to say that the dude was a massive influence on my life wouldn't even begin to cover it. Buffy, Angel and especially Firefly all made me want to be a better writer and a better human being. Joss's shows taught an entire generation of young typists that genre isn't something to be transcended, but to be embraced, that it's more important for dialogue to be true than "realistic," and that it's always better to tell a story that a few of us will cherish than one that everyone will kinda like.
Three or four San Diego cons ago, I sheepishly floated a copy of the first Y: The Last Man collection to Joss with a note telling him how much I dug his work, and he was unbelievably cool enough to write back and say that he was already aware of my stuff from Runaways, which he was compelled to pick up because of Jo Chen's amazing first cover (nice one, Jo!).
At a time when I was pretty sure NO ONE was reading Runaways, Joss would always dash off insanely nice emails to tell me how much he liked a stupid line of Chase's dialogue or whatever. Those little messages were enough to keep my furnaces pumping (eww), and Joss' support behind the scenes doubtlessly played a big part in Marvel's decision to keep the book alive.
From day one, he's been the Runaways' shadowy benefactor, keeping the kids safe from all the evil adults who wanted them dead.
Depressingly, now that he's taking over, I find out that Joss's ideas for the book are all infinitely better than mine. Seriously, he wrote this one sentence in his overview that was so good, I had to wake my wife and tell her that I was going to kill myself. And when I told Ruth the idea, she AGREED THAT I SHOULD.
As for how long Joss is going to stay, I told him the Sacred Order of Runaways Writers has only one rule, that an author is not allowed to leave until he or she has found a bigger, better replacement. So until JK Rowling starts returning his calls, I think we'll be able to get a few issues out of the old boy. (And yes, the book will still be monthly, whiners! Numfar is a demon of speed.)
