Golden is obviously the glass-half-full type, because the post-Doyle reappearance of Wesley Wyndham-Price, Buffy's prissy former Watcher and a self-styled Rogue Demon Hunter, has delighted him. "Some people have been complaining about Wesley," he says needlessly, "but I've read two or three scripts subsequent to the most recently aired episode ("Parting Gifts"), and they're wonderful. They're wonderful, and Wesley is wonderful.

"We're bringing Wesley into the comic as of Issue 8," he continues, "we" being Golden himself and his friend, and frequent collaborator, Tom Sniegoski. "Tom and I finished writing, Angel #8 yesterday, and I have to say that we had so much fun writing Wesley -- 'cause the dynamic between Angel and Wesley is so cool. There are a couple of things that I'm not sure that they're gonna let us use. A couple of Wesley and Angel exchanges. But, you know, we were sitting here, writing, laughing to ourselves as we did it...

"One of my favourites is: Wesley is fighting this big demon and he's trying to be brave, 'cause he just got knocked on his ass, and he says 'You don't know who you're dealing with. I once fought off a Kylagh demon with nothing but a pocket-knife. And I had a heck of a head cold at the time!'" Golden laughs. "Or 'I had a nasty head cold to boot,' or something like that. And that's Wesley, you know?"

Certainly sounds like the same old Wesley.

Golden's extensive background in comics made him the ideal choice to head up the Angel line. He has also done a lot of work on the sadly inconsistent Buffy comic -- of which he will, mercifully, be doing issues 21 through 25 -- and he also collaborated with The 11th Hour's beloved James Marsters on the first Spike and Dru comic, "Paint the Town Red."

Dare we look forward to a repeat performance from Mr. Marsters?

"No," Golden dashes our hopes, "James will definitely not be back - at least, not in the foreseeable future." He then relents a little. "There is some hope that, at some point during the break, he might be able to do something. And I hope to work with him again in the future, 'cause it was really a pleasure, and he's really a great guy. But, to my knowledge," he goes on, crushing dawning optimism anew, "I don't think that he will be back on the Spike and Dru comic. I have to say also," he adds quickly, "that anybody who would like to badger him, endlessly, to collaborate with me on a Spike and Dru comic, is more than welcome to do so."

So get to it, people.

Golden's previous comic work has included issues of Spiderman, Wolverine, Shi and Vampirella the later of which Tom Sniegoski is often credited as resurrecting. Talk of Vampi inevitably turns to her attire. Sure, she's a mysterious avenging vampiress babe -- but the girl needs more clothes!

"I agree with you completely," Golden says on a laugh, "and, in fact, so would Tom. I think that he tried to do things with the character as often as he could that were about the character -- despite the outfit."

"I think that the testament to that is that after we left, they did nothing but T&A stories. From then until now. They have done nothing, really, but how many crotch shots and tit shots can you show? Literally, they called us down and they said: 'Could you re-write this issue? So that we could have more Vampirella? Maybe if you wanna do, like, for instance, in this scene where she goes to take a shower, well, instead of cutting to the next scene, couldn't we have a couple of pages of her, sort of, thinking... in the shower?' I swear to you."

This is a comic book character, boys! But it is fairly telling when the live-action movie made from a comic (and starring Talisa Soto) has the character wearing less revealing clothing. Christopher Golden has not seen that movie. He has, now, however, seen the 1992 movie version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

"I'm glad I didn't see it before-hand," he says, "because I really don't like the movie."

But... but... Luke Perry!

"Well, actually, you know, I think Luke Perry gets a bad rap. I think he's better than people give him credit for. And, I mean, it has a good cast -- man, it has Rutger Hauer, and Donald Sutherland, and even Paul Reubens is pretty good."

Reubens plays Hauer's vamp henchman, Amilyn, who takes a good -- very good -- ten minutes to die. "His death scene is great!" Golden agrees. "But, once you've seen the TV series, and you see that death scene, it's that death scene that's everything that is wrong with the movie. It made me laugh, but they put in too much silliness. That's why, when we did The Origin comic mini-series, we went back to Joss' original script."