COMIC CON: 'Heroes' Preview Panel

Eleven members of the cast and season two footage

By: Laremy Legel
Published: Sunday, July 29th 2007 at 3:50 PM

The "Heroes" panel began with the uber-horrible Comic-Con moderator accidentally spiking the microphone feed so that it sent high pitched feedback into the audience which caused an audible "aaaaaahhh." Bloody ears aside, we weren't going to be kept away from our heroes (comprised of the cast of "Heroes")!

First up, plugging the seven disc DVD set; set to release August 28th. The set will include 50 deleted scenes and the original 72 minute premiere episode (shown at Comic-Con last year). Then they got into the crazy marketing happening over at NBC.com/heroes where over the summer people have submitted theories, music videos, and comic book renderings to NBC. To say "Heroes" has a rabid fanbase would be insulting; the true believers would take a bullet for creator Tim Kring.

Speaking of Tim, he rolled on to stage with illustrator Tim Sale and then they started bringing out the cast members one by one. Who was there? Everyone. Well, okay, not everyone but eleven of them including:

• Noah Bennett(Jack Coleman)
• Micah (Noah Gray-Cabey)
• Jessica/Niki (Ali Larter)
• Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg)
• Ando (James Kyson Lee)
• Hiro (Masi Oka)
• Sylar(Zachary Quintos, the new Mr. Spock!)
• Claire (Hayden Panettiere)
• Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar)
• Peter Peterlli (Milo Ventimiglia)
• Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy)
• Maya (Dania Ramirez, a new recurring actor)

Whew. That's exhausting to even think about. But they were all there. The next piece of news concerns "Heroes": The Video Game which will be developed by Ubisoft. They're the guys behind Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, and TMNT.

Then the Q&A started. One of the funnier moments occurred when a fan was gushing over how great Parkman was so he proceeded to take off his shirt (to give it to the fan) which read "Milo is my hero" only to reveal another shirt underneath that said "Milo is my hero" too. Someone asked each cast member what their favorite moment of the season was and a few of the cast members had interesting responses:

Hayden: "Jumping out of window in 4 inch heels and doing a flip before landing."

Milo: "Being covered head to toe in blood"

Bennett "Episode 11, where I went from guest star to series regular."

In what's becoming a Comic-Con tradition a few bad questions followed with the doozy being: "What's the best part of working on Heroes?"

Here's some big news, Kevin Smith will direct one of the episodes of Heroes: Origins which will debut in April. It's a six episode external season, with more directors to be announced later. One of the cast members joked that he had J.J. Abrams number handy (now wouldn't that be nice?).

The Heroes: Origins series, from what I've heard, will feature a completely distinct writing and producing crew – it will be about six new heroes discovering their powers. Creator Tim Kring said that each of the stories will stand alone and will probably involve a morality angle or cautionary tale. I know one of the ideas thrown around previously was that the fans would vote on which (of the six) heroes would transition to the actual show. The Origins show will premiere in April, but the primary franchise, "Heroes" will come back for season two on September 24th with 11 straight episodes.

one great quote from Kevin Smith:

When (creator) Tim Kring called me and said "Hey do you want to direct an episode of "Heroes"?" I was like "Totally, I'll do one with the gay heroes! (referring to Hiro and Ando) Tim told me he wasn't sure if I had any idea what the show was about.

Don't worry though, since that conversation Kevin has downloaded all the episodes from Itunes and I'd bet he'll do the Origins series right.

Other quick hit facts and happenings: Danny Bonaduce asked a question from the audience regarding the "Heroes" mortality rate. Basically, do the actors dread getting shooting scripts every week? The actors all pretty much ducked the question but Danny ended the question with a great line; "Just so you guys know… when you're on a great show… and it gets canceled… well, that screws you up for a few years." Obviously that line brought down the house.

A female in the audience asked "Will there being any strong female characters who aren't a stripper or a cheerleader this year?" which brought some catcalls but Kring was quick to defend himself saying that his females were strong women, and his new character Maya will be too.

General info: The show is back September 24th with eleven episodes out of the gates.

Finally, as the clock ticked down on the panel's alloted time they showed us a teaser for season two.

As has been widely reported, "Generations" seems to be the title of the first new episode. Hiro stands in an ancient Japanese field (I've seen this footage before somewhere already too). Then Mohinder in India searching for something in a marketplace. Quick flash of George Takei, then of Greg Grunberg, so it looks like both are back (at least for flashbacks). Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) was shown with an extremly long and haggard beard, and the psychic little girl is back too. Claire is then shown cutting her own toe off, and then a final shot of Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) in some sort of cell, as the door is opened and light shines on him.

And then it was all over. They told us not to talk about anything, but c'mon, this is "Heroes", this is Comic Con and the fans want to know everything they can. Thus we provide it.