For one thing, you can support Heroes' Milo Ventimiglia, whose new comic Milo Ventimiglia Presents Berserker gets its very own preview #0 this week. The new series - created by screenwriter Rick Loverd and "produced" by Ventimiglia, which presumably means he wants to play the lead if they make it into a movie - centers around people discovering that they're sleeper Norse Gods with all the powers that brings with it. My fingers are crossed for a Hayden Panatierre-a-like cameo by issue three.

If the television episodes of Battlestar Galactica aren't enough dystopian sci-fi for you, then you can bone up on the history of everyone's favorite messiah figure in Battlestar Galactica: Baltar, which explores the backstory that led one man to be self-centered, comedic and somewhat tragic, in his own way. Yes, it tries to add some pathos, but don't hold that against it.

But really, this is the week of the Bat. DC's pushing out the hardcover collection of uneven-but-much-better-on-second-read Batman RIP (which, to be honest, may be worth it if only for the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh and his colorful costume). But more excitingly, they're also releasing Batman #686, the first half of Neil Gaiman's Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader? send-off to Bruce Wayne. Illustrated by Andy Kubert, it looks beautiful from the previews that we've seen - and a more than worthwhile memorial to a character who isn't even pretending to be dead right now.

Even if you're not in the mood for Gaiman Gotham, you can check out the complete list of this week's new comic releases to find all the other men in tights (and other stories) available tomorrow, and then the Comic Shop Locator Service will help you find just where you should go to indulge yourself... If you're up to it after NYCC, of course.

Moore explained the more corporate origins of the strong spiritual undertones to the show:

When I was writing the miniseries, there was a scene in the miniseries between one of the Cylons that we call number six and a character called Baltar. And he was talking with her about something insane and, as I was writing it, I just had her say "God is love." And I, I literally stopped because it was an interesting thing for a robot to say. And I didn't know what it meant, and I didn't really have an understanding of what larger place this could go, but I really liked it, because it wasn't something that I was used to seeing in science fiction when you're dealing with androids and robots. So I kept it. But it was just a small reference in the show.

I turned in the first draft to the studio and the network and I got back a note from a network executive at the time named Michael Jackson - no relation - who fixed on that line. He said, "Well, that's a really interesting thing for a robot to say," and said that, you know, there were a lot of parallels and allegories in the script already to the war against terrorism and Al Quaeda and the 9/11 event and said, what if you took that further and made the cylons, gave them more of a religious fanaticism, gave them a fundamentalism as driving their reason to wipe out humanity. And I grabbed that, because you're not used to getting that kind of note from a network executive and said, sure, I can do that. And so, from that point on, the show took a fundamental turn where that became part of our myth.

Ron Moore Lecture [Galactica Sitrep]

Wondering how to last the next six months (at least) until Battlestar Galactica returns to our screens? You could do worse that spend some time over at Battlestar Revealed, a site that attempts to piece together various sources to work out the remaining mysteries created by Ron Moore and crew.

While the site may be guilty of being perhaps too literal in dealing with the show - Does anyone else really think that the scenes in the Opera House are meant to be flashbacks to when the actual Opera House existed, rather than metaphorical dreams or visions? - there's a lot of food for thought in the arguments that it constructs around the identity of the Final Cylon, the importance of the Lords of Kobol and, maybe most interestingly, the way that the show's been constructed by the writers:

Now when you analyse the scene in which D’Anna gets off the Raptor and requests the four from the fleet, it makes perfect sense that this is a scene in which the writers have had to “dig themselves out of a hole”. At first glance it appears as though D’Anna does indeed recognize the Final Five but its clear that it was filmed in such a way as to continue the charade that the Final Five humans are the same five that the cylons call the Final Five.

It’s never conclusive that she recognizes any of the other four. She did recognize Baltar, he was the only one connected via his head character at that time. He was already on the baseship which is why she only requested the four from the fleet. She simply used a mind trick to fool the colonials into thinking she knew the other four. When she starts speaking, both Tory and Tigh are looking extremely worried which is why she appears to focus her attention on them - leading you to think she already knows who they are. Tory then effectively gives herself up and in a scene that we don’t see, she tells D’Anna who the other three are. This is how she appears to know the identity of the other three when Lee tells her that he has them in the launch tube.

Another piece of clever production, designed to dig themselves out of a hole and at the same time maintain the illusion that the Opera House figures and the Final Five humans are one and the same!

[Battlestar Revealed]

Talking about the Final Four, he says:

We came up with the idea for the Final Four at the end of the last season, and talked about revealing them and the first questions that were asked in the writers' room was, well, "Where do you go from here? How do you play them? Are they going to be sleeper agents, are they going to be working against us, are they totally different people?" And, in all truth, that was like the actors' biggest concern, every one of the actors in that room asked me "Am I playing something completely different now? I've been playing this, I've known this character and I've gotten inside this character's head and, do I have to change all that, am I somebody else?" And I said, no no no, and I never wanted to do that. The notion of discovering that these are the four Cylons was never to make them completely different people. It would now inform who they are. It would now give them a deeper understanding of who they are, but I really didn't have any interest in flipping a switch and having Saul Tigh becoming a completely different human being.

Technical difficulties not withstanding, new commentaries appear to accompany each episode's transmission, and make fine commute listening each morning after.

Battlestar Galactica Season 4 Podcast [Sci Fi.com]

Razor Flashbacks: The Sci Fi Channel has been airing original "flashbacks" in a desperate bid to get people to watch Flash Gordon. Er, we mean a thinly veiled marketing ploy to see what you'll get if you buy the DVD. Frak, actually we mean in an effort to bring the fans a little backstory about the First Cylon War. These short episodes can be seen on the Sci Fi website, and will also be part of the longer Razor which goes on sale December 4th. So what do these six clips tell us?

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• Day 4,571: Young rookie "Husker" Adama gets some action in his rack, and we find out that the familiar "What do you hear? Nothing but the rain" exchange came from his own commander. He fears that with rumors of a Cylon surrender on the horizon, he won't get to see any action in this war. Movie watching veterans know that's usually when the roof caves in.
• The Hangar: Husker's wish comes true as he prepares to launch out on his first combat mission. However, he spies his girlfriend on the floor of the flight deck, having just returned from her own patrol with half of her face blown off. He growls out "Let's do this" while waiting in the launch tube.
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• Operation Raptor Talon: One of the best battle scenes ever on BSG, webisode or not. Husker and his wingman shoot down several old school (yep, they look just like the ones from the old TV show) Cylon Raiders before witnessing the destruction of the Battlestar Columbia. An angry Husker chases two Raiders into the atmosphere of a nearby planet, which results in a catastrophic collision and his Viper plummets to the surface.
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• Free Fall: In a bit of a ridiculous scene, Husker bails out and goes toe-to-toe with a Cylon (old school too!) in mid-air while they both free fall. Remember the scene in Moonraker where Roger Moore's James Bond and Jaws fight in mid-air? You get the picture. Adama and his toaster-buddy crash through the ceiling of a building on the planet's surface and Adama goes medieval on the Cylon's ass (well, his face really) with an iron rod and "kills" it. Then he realizes he's in some sort of a Saw-like torture chamber and grabs the Cylon's gun.
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• The Lab: With gruesome Cylon/Human body parts hanging all over the place like a perverted flesh fair, Adama tries to figure out what he's stumbled into. He sticks his arm into some murky water in what looks like a Cylon birthing chamber, and of course something grabs him from underneath. A creepy looking man floats to the surface and looks at Adama before vanishing. Was he really there? A disembodied voice tells Adama "All of this has happened before, and will happen again.
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• Survivors: Adama struggles to free a group of humans from Gemenon locked inside the Cylon laboratory, but only succeeds in opening the door a few inches. As the room starts to come apart around him, they urge him to save himself and to remember them. He flees the collapsing laboratory, leaving the humans trapped behind.
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• Escape: Stumbling out of what turns out to be a Cylon ship, Adama watches as it takes off into the atmosphere with the humans still aboard. He tries to call in support, only to hear that the war is over: the Cylons have surrendered. Cut to an older Commander Adama on the flight deck of the Galactica, two days before the decommissioning ceremony. He surveys the museum-ready ship and reflects, standing in front of an old-school Cylon encased in lucite, not knowing that he's about to revisit the past in a big way.
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While these clips show us some cool scenes from the First Cylon War, they unfortunately show very little. Plus, isn't it a little coincidental that Adama just happens to be the one who discovered the first hybrid Cylon/Human and didn't see fit to mention it until now? But, there are a lot of coincidences in the BSG universe, so we'll take it in stride.

One thing to note: all of these flashbacks take place 41 years in the past, which means that Adama has to be about 60 years old or so by now, which sounds about right. Kudos to Nico Cortez, who plays a fairly convincing (and relatively smooth-cheeked) young Adama. He even gets the raspy voice right.

• Midway through Season Two, the Galactica encountered another Battlestar that survived the Cylon attack: the Battlestar Pegasus. It's a much newer ship than the Galactica, is twice as big, has a ship-building facility onboard, and superior firepower.
• Pegasus is commanded by Admiral Helena Cain, an iron-fisted woman who defines the term "hardass." She's skeptical of everyone and everything, and doesn't tolerate anything less than perfection.
• Cain's Executive Officer is Colonel Fisk, who serves as the whip for Admiral Cain. He drunkenly tells the Galactica's Colonel Tigh that Cain killed her previous XO for not following orders. It's unclear if he's joking or telling the truth.
• The Pegasus has a Cylon Number Six model in captivity in their brig. This model is later freed by Baltar, and she executes Cain with a point-blank shot to the forehead.
• Colonel Fisk assumes control of the Pegasus after Cain's death, but is later killed by a man running a large black market in the Colonial fleet. After he dies, Chief Engineer Barry Garner assumes control, although he quickly proves that while he's a whiz at solving engineering problems, he's not much of a commander. He dies saving the ship, after which Admiral Adama promotes his son Lee to commander, and gives him the Pegasus as his first command.
• Commander Lee Adama sacrifices the Pegasus in order to save the Galactica and the Colonists fleeing from New Caprica. The ship is destroyed in a massive firefight, although the crew is able to abandon ship.
• Razor takes places between seasons Two and Three: Lee Adama is the commander of the ship, but through a series of flashbacks we're told how the Pegasus evaded destruction during the initial Cylon attack, and what happened to them up until their encounter with the Galactica.