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I’ve been hinting (via twitter) for the last few days at a recent high-profile interview I was able to arrange, and part of the interview is now live on ComicMix.

On Friday, I was given a few minutes to chat with Joss Whedon about his new Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog project, as well as his thoughts on various comic book series he’s had a hand in developing. The Doctor Horrible portion of our conversation is on ComicMix now, as the project debuts today on the ‘Tubes.

As always, here’s an excerpt from the interview, with a link to the full transcript at the end of the post.

Creator Joss Whedon is no stranger to innovation and odds-defying creative success, having launched a massively popular television series out of a panned film, reinvented and reinvigorated various comic book properties, and transitioned a cancelled television project into a well-received feature film. With this week’s debut of his three-part musicial series Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, he looks to break new ground once again, as the project he conceived during the recent Writers Guild strike and created with "friends and family" hits the Internet and looks to test a new model for online distribution of creative projects.

Starting on Tuesday, July 15, the first 10-minute episode of Doctor Horrible, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day, will be posted on drhorrible.com. Subsequent episodes will be posted on July 17 and July 19, and remain free to view until midnight on July 20. At that time, all of the episodes will be taken down until the DVD of the series is released at a later date. Whedon promises to let fans know more about the DVD release and his grand experiment in distribution during the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con convention, during which he’ll screen the complete series one more time for attendees.

I was recently given the chance to have a short conversation with Whedon about Doctor Horrible, the impetus for this new project and his experience working with one of my favorite actors, Neil Patrick Harris.

COMICMIX: The genesis of this project occurred during the Writers Guild strike, and you’ve mentioned that there’s a reason for that. Can you elaborate on how this project fit into the greater discussion with creator unions and members’ rights?

JOSS WHEDON: It’s a concept I had come up with before, but when the strike happened it sort of morphed into this idea of doing this thing for the Internet with my brothers and my sister-in-law and friends, and just trying to put something out there that was more than just "what can we shoot in our living room" but not part of a giant scheme. But when I say "scheme," I don’t just mean in the sense of a giant scheme with the studios, but also like the Internet people who were like, "Let’s go out to Silicon Valley and get $100 million and make TV shows that are just like the ones we make on TV."

My feeling was, if we’re going to try and create a new paradigm, let’s actually create a new one. Everybody is still talking about those millions of dollars and still waiting on them to create these Internet TV shows. I tried to make some of those slightly bigger deals, but they were just not happening with any kind of speed. I eventually just said, "If this is going to happen, it has to come from me. It has to be me."

The idea was, we’ll do it for fun, and if our fun for some reason causes other people to have fun, and they end up paying for that, then I will actually have the opportunity to create a different paradigm of payment and profit-sharing for writers and artists involved in the project.

It was a pie-in-the-sky thing that I didn’t think would actually happen, but I very much prepared for the idea that it would, just in case.

Head over to ComicMix for the rest of the Joss Whedon interview.