Fans used to wear the shirt unironically. “Joss Whedon Is My Master Now,” screen-printed on black cotton, sold by the thousands at conventions across the country. People lined up to get it signed. Whedon, for his part, did not discourage it.
That is where the story of his fall begins, not in a closed-door meeting with a pregnant actress, not in a Warner Bros. investigation, but in the years before any of that, when an entire subculture decided a television writer was a god.
Joss Whedon was and is talented. That part deserves to be said plainly. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” rewrote what genre television could do. “Firefly,” canceled too soon and mourned ever since, showed a writer who understood character the way few in Hollywood do. His run on “The Avengers” delivered the most difficult ensemble superhero film anyone had attempted, and he pulled it off. The talent was real.
So was the fan worship.
