Boom! Studios reboot In 2019, Buffy was reinvented by Boom! Studios in their ongoing comic Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This series is a complete reboot and has no continuity with any previous stories; Buffy is depicted as a teenager in 2019 rather than the 1990s. She is already aware of her destiny as the Slayer and has been living in Sunnydale for only three weeks when the series begins. She befriends Willow and Xander after saving them from a vampire outside Tunaverse, the fast food restaurant where she works. Concept and creation An early influence for Buffy was Kelli Maroney's character in the 1984 science-fiction horror film Night of the Comet. The character of Buffy was conceived by Joss Whedon as a way of subverting the cliché of "the little blonde girl who goes into a dark alley and gets killed in every horror film". Whedon stated "Rhonda the Immortal Waitress" was the first incarnation of Buffy in his head, "the idea of a seemingly insignificant female who in fact turns out to be extraordinary." When asked how he came up with the name of "Buffy," Whedon states "It was the name that I could think of that I could take the least seriously. There is no way you could hear the name Buffy and think, 'This is an important person.' To juxtapose that with Vampire Slayer, just felt like that kind of thing—a B movie. But a B movie that had something more going on. That was my dream." Whedon claims the title was criticized for being too silly, and the television network begged him to change it. He refused, insisting "You don't understand. It has to be this. This is what it is." Jason Middleton feels that Buffy avoids the "final girl" character trope seen in horror films, where the androgynous and celibate heroine gets to outlive her friends and exact revenge on their killer; in Middleton's words, "she... gets to have sex with boys and still kill the monster". Whedon always intended for the character to become an icon, claiming "I wanted her to be a hero that existed in people's minds the way Wonder Woman or Spider-Man does, you know? I wanted her to be a doll or an action figure. I wanted Barbie with Kung Fu grip! I wanted her to enter the mass consciousness and the imaginations of growing kids because I think she's