San Diego Comic Con... Save the Cheerleader, Save the World...

[fajrdrako]

I would have given a lot to be at San Diego Comic Con this year, or any year. I've attended several times, though not recently, and each time it was a wonderful, wonderful experience.

And if I had been there, I would have attended the Heroes panel, where the MC was Jeph Loeb, and both Tim Kring (the creator and producer and head writer) and Tim Sale (the comic books artist who drew a lot of the comic book pictures in the show). Along with Masi Oka (Hiro), Hayden Panettiere (Claire), Noah Gray-Cabey (Micah), Adrian Pasdar (Nathan Petrelli), Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli), Greg Grunberg (Matt), Sendhil Ramamurthy (Mohinder), Ali Larter (Niki and Jessica), Jack Colman (Mr Bennet), Zachary Quinto (Sylar),James Kyson Lee (Ando Masahashi), and the woman who is going to play Mia next season. Is that it? It really was an amazing line-up of guests.

And their comments were quite fascinating. How do I know? I watched it on their website. I am not able to watch the episodes on their website due to copyright restrictions (drat! I want to hear those commentaries!) but I could watch the SDCC footage. I am happy. Next best thing to being there - thought they didn't show the spoilers on the website.

The first thing that relieved me was the impression given that all the above characters whom we came to know and love in Season One will reappear in Season Two. I was afraid they'd be doing a different storyline with mostly-different characters. Apparently not so.

In general: they all seemed rather high on their love of the show and their appreciation of their audience. The first public exposure of any kind that Heroes got was a screening at San Diego Comic Con in 2006, so they had reason to be happy with the experience, with the success of Heroes. They announced the graphic novel, coming out in the fall with covers by Jim Lee and Alex Ross. They talked about the spin-off show, "Heroes Origins" - and Kevin Smith appeared to say he'd be writing one episode. He said he hoped it wouldn't be the kiss of death for the show; he seemed to think his appearance on Veronica Mars might have been its downfall. Tim Kring seemed to think they'd survive.

Interesting points:


Milo Ventimiglia cut his hair. We all knew he'd wanted to. Too bad!

Adrian Pasdar has never been my favourite on the show, and I was blaming the acting, not the role. But I really liked Adrian Pasdar as himself. What's with that? Why do I react so negatively to Nathan Petrelli? Okay, so he's a politician and maybe not always an honest one, but there are other characters I've liked on TV who were politicians. Or, now I think of it, maybe not. Hmm. I dislike Roslin in Battlestar Galactica. I never watched West Wing. That must be it. Television politicians squick me!

Greg Grunberg was delightful, and funny. He kept joking and flirting with the gorgeous Sendhil Ramamurthy, and at one point even gave him a big sexy dramatic kiss. He wore a T-shirt that said MILO IS MY HERO. (Masi Oka's shirt read, "Hayden IS MY HERO".) he said that the best part of season one for him was when he got to be a bad-ass in the future.

Sendhil Ramamurthy said the best thing about season one was that his character was alive at the end of the season, since it wasn't a sure thing. "We all thought we were on a show called Heroes, turned out it was Survivor."

Hayden Panettiere said he favourite moment of season one was when she got to jump out of the window. She's about to turn eighteen and she is amazingly beautiful. Seems very much older than Claire.

Jack Colman's shirt said, "I'm just a paper salesman." He joked that he was wearing "horn-rimmed contact lenses" and for him the best part of season one was when he went from 'guest star' to regular character. He said that the part of his private life that he takes to the role of Mr Bennet is the experience of being father to a daughter.

Noah Gray-Cabey (who is twelve years old) was both articulate and idealistic. He talked about how sometimes the acting is hard and he doesn't always know what to do, but he always tries to do the very best he can.

Ali Larter seemed to me very like Niki, and not terribly interesting, though more beautiful in person. She answered one of the more interesting questions from the audience. A woman asked why all the female characters in Heroes were strippers (or a cheerleader) or killers or housewives. She might have added, "or dead". Obviously no one had a good answer for it. Ali Larter said that she liked the way Niki's character had developed, and she was a single mother taking good care of her kid. I thought that rather missed the point: I think that (possibly with the exception of Claire and Mama Petrelli) the female characters are treated differently from the male. I'm almost tempted to check how many women wrote for the show. This isn't really a complaint; I didn't like Niki/Jessica much, but Claire was so good I forgive everything.

That being said, there are a lot of significant characters in this show, and almost all of them are male.

There were a bunch of jokes and comments about gay themes, odd for a show that doesn't actually have any gay themes, and should. Jeph Loeb made a joke right off about "Sylinder" and "fans making music vids featuring Nathan and Peter and love songs, for some reason".

Kevin Smith had the most to say on this. He said that when he first got the phone call from Tim Kring to ask if he'd be interested in writing for them, he thought he meant Heroes, not Heroes Origins. "I said I'd love to write or direct an episode about the two gay heroes. He was like, 'What are you talking about?' I said, 'The two Japanese guys, they're gay, right?'" Smith said it was about time to feature gay heroes. "It you can do an autopsy on a cheerleader, you can show two guys making out."

Nobody brought up the issue of whether Zak was, or ever had been, gay. I do remember that one of the first bits of publicity I heard about Heroes was that there would be "several gay characters". Not so. Maybe once Kevin Smith is writing?

I was sorry Christopher Eccleston wasn't there - and understand why he wasn't.