Buffy The High School Years Announced At NYCC

10/09/2015 12:01 pm EDT

At the Dark Horse Classifed panel fro New York Comic Con, Dark Horse announced Buffy the High School Years, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer graphic novel from writer Faith Erin Hicks and artist Yishan Li that will bring Buffy back to school. Buffy's creator, Joss Whedon, will work on the comic in an "executive producer role," as he does on the ongoing Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel & Faith series.

On Twitter, Hick revealed that she has been a fan of Buffy since she was a teenager, and that her very first web comic was a "BTVS rip-off." Hicks met with Whedon about the comic back in 2013, as seen below.

Hicks says the story will be set during Buffy's high years, and that fans should think of it as a "lost episode from season 1 of the show."

While she couldn't confirm an exact date, Hicks said Buffy the High School Years should debut around summer of 2016.

You can see some of Li's character sketches in the gallery below.

A Buffy the Vampire Slayer animated series with a similar premise was planned at one point, but never made it out of the pre-production phase. Character designs from that series were used in a one-shot comic in which Buffy dreamed of her high school days. Fans should be excited to see the concept more fully realized in Buffy the High School Years.

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