Joss Whedon just confirmed here on his Comic-Con panel that he plans to do at least another episode of Dr. Horrible. His relevant quotes after the jump; more details once the panel wraps.

Updates: Below the jump, details on the Dr. Horrible DVD…

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Behold the latest episode of The Dr. Steel Show, about an evil doctor bent on taking over the world. Sound familiar? Apparently it’s been ripped off by the new Joss Whedon project, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which Karina commented on yesterday. And as early as Adam’s praise last week when Whedon’s series launched, SpoutBlog has been receiving comments from followers (known as the Army of Toy Soldiers) of the allegedly real-life Dr. Steel. Every other online acknowledgment of Whedon’s project also seems to be getting hit with similar allegations that Dr. Horrible is a copycat.

Personally, I can’t figure out the deal with Dr. Steel or his faithful subjects. It’s one of the many viral things on the web that confuse me and make me glad that I actually spend much of my non-blogging time away from a computer. Funny enough, in the past I’ve had the same issue with Browncoats (followers of Whedon’s series Firefly), who seem to be forever monitoring the internet for reasons to defend their beloved franchise. So far, I’ve only watched a few clips of Dr. Steel-related stuff and only some musical clips from Dr. Horrible. Just to be fair, I think I’ll avoid both, though I have to admit that I’m far more interested in a singing Doogie Howser.

Anyway, I await the flames from fans on both sides. I won’t mind the attacks if someone at least clues me into the stuff so I don’t have to spend my evening playing catch up.

Having missed the launch whilst on vacation, I finally sat down last night and watched all three episodes of Joss Whedon’s musical web miniseries Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog back-to-back-to-back. I had two major notes:

1. When did Joss Whedon and Michael Mann become the same guy? Dr. Horrible is a lone wolf anti-hero whose single-minded devotion to his professional obligation to save a small corner of the world (in this case, by way of organized evil) makes the very concept of romance inconvenient. Sound familiar?

“Why did she talk to me now?” Billy/Dr. Horrible laments, after prospective love interest Penny makes contact right as he’s about to jump start an evil mission. This segues directly into a song with the refrain, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” What Whedon does is the self-mocking, defeatist, loveable loser version of what Mann does, in terms of love as a blight on the record of men who should be above it.

This leads me to my second though, regarding Dr. Horrible’s controversial ending:

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Choices, choices. Download the three-part web series Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog over the next few days, or wait for the DVD release? Maybe both.

Dr. Horrible is Joss “man with the Midas touch” Whedon’s experimental comedy/sci-fi musical. If the trailer above doesn’t lie, the whole shoestring production will shine like B-grade gold.

The story: Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, MD) is Dr. Horrible, too shy to talk to his crush (Felicia Day from The Guild) and struggling to prove himself to the Evil Group of Evil. The doctor’s arch-enemy Captain Hammer is played by Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Slither), the coolest poor man’s action star around.

Dr. Horrible is like an awkward, flamboyant grandson of Vincent Price’s character in The Abominable Dr. Phibes. (By the way, that demented, carnival-esque revenge tragedy must have inspired Max Fisher to do a copycat crime in Rushmore. Remember the bees released into Mr. Bloom’s hotel room?)

A guy like Joss Whedon doesn’t need to experiment to get people to watch his stuff, which only increases my respect for him and my excitement for this project. I hope Dr. Horrible is a success mostly because it looks really, really cool, but also because it’ll show other bigwigs there’s a fanbase for freewheeling, unashamed, genre fun.

At the time of this writing the location of the first installment was switching servers, but hopefully it’ll start streaming for free again.