V's success last week must feel confusing for the alphabet network; on the one hand, it was the second-highest rated series premiere of the season, and the most-watched 8pm premiere for ABC since Lost, but on the other, they'd already put the show on production hiatus and retooled things behind the scenes in a way that not only means they're unlikely to be able to bring the show back before the announced March 2010 return - thereby potentially losing whatever momentum the show will have at the end of this four episode mini-season - but also means that they've replaced many of the folk responsible for the show's success in the first place (Then again, who knows how many people liked what they saw last week and will return tomorrow?). Ever eager to help television networks out of a jam, we've come up with some possible ways to keep the V-mentum going while viewers wait for more Visitors:

Re-Edit Other, Little-Seen, Shows To Tie In With V
Got any police procedurals lying around? Just add an extra scene at the end where the perp turns out to get a cut on his hand and WTF HE'S A LIZARD MAN. Then you can cut to Elizabeth Mitchell getting a phone call and saying "Another one? Oh my God, they're everywhere." Cue dramatic music and cut to black. Pretend that it's an effort to show just how widespread the alien invasion actually is.

Re-Edit Episodes Of The Original V
Start each episode with Morena Baccarin talking to some minion Visitor and saying "You know, this reminds me of that time we invaded an Earth in a parallel dimension, and I had that long hair and 1980s evil bitch mask" before cutting to the original episode. Then, at the end, cap each episode off with Baccarin laughing and saying "Now, that was a sticky situation!"

Run Trailers For Lost Promising That It'll End With The Visitors Arriving On Earth
It's not like we have any better idea how Lost is going to end, let's face it. And, let's face it; like you can't already imagine the serious voiceover going "It started with a planecrash... But once they've solved the riddle of the island... They'll have to face the visitors." And then use Party of Five footage of Matthew Fox and Scott Wolf and pretend it's a flashback. Alternately...

Run Trailers Reminding People That They Could Just Watch Lost Instead
Again, cue the serious voiceover: "Waiting to find out what happens in V? Why? Lost is back on and it's much, much better. We promise that we'll throw Alan Tudyk in if it'll make a difference. Come on! It's the last season!"

Just Rename FlashForward
Am I the only person who thinks that FlashForward and V are long-lost brother shows? Both of them have worldwide events that shock humanity that are linked to terrorism and some believe prove the existence of God, both have FBI agents as central characters working to uncover the truth about said events, and both feature attractive people from as many different demographics as possible drawn into the web of slowly uncovering storylines. Considering that FlashForward's ratings are slipping, why not just edit in a new subplot that explains that the FlashForwards are really the result of Visitor experiments, show Dominic Monaghan peeling off his face to show that he's a lizard, and just call the show V from December onwards? Would anyone really care that much?

"Every hero becomes a bore at last." – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Yes. I'm opening with a quote. But it's a quote by a guy named Waldo, so you can picture him in a striped shirt if you find that pretentious.

There. Does that make it go down smoother? Good.

Besides, it's true. After a certain amount of time, heroes lose their luster. Ethical missteps accumulate, continuity drags, and personality quirks that were once fun are either watered down to blandness or begin to grate on a fan's nerves. Nothing gold can stay, Ponyboy, and that's the truth. (I am piling on the literary allusions today.) The movies, tv shows, books and comics that strip down and re-examine the traditional superhero trope are beginning to outsell the trope itself.

As a reactionary, I say that you will pry my traditional superhero comics out of my cold, dead hands. As a capitulationist, I say please let me offer a few suggestions.

Murders Are Always, Always, Always, Entertaining:
What can you get if you like a good, old-fashioned murder mystery but aren't willing to listen to the legal jargon and watch extended crime scene technician montages? Not a damn thing, which is why the first two characters I'm suggesting would be a success. Slam Bradley is a hard-drinking, rough-living, tough-talking old-timer. Jason Bard is a guy who is basically stuck together with masking tape, both because he's the kind of honorable man who faces danger and the kind of idiot who was shown in at least one comic scratching his own head with the barrel of his loaded gun. Naked. No, I'm not kidding.

They're both private detectives, and neither has much regard for either technology or legality. Together they would star in a comic that's all breaking down doors and inappropriate relations with clients and absolutely no talk about residual heat signatures or torts.

Isn't it time that we, as consumers, stopped anticipating legal complications in our crime investigation and started anticipating good, old-fashioned sleaze? Isn't it time we just heard about the people at the lab doing tests on evidence instead of seeing it done set to a song by The Who? Isn't it time we brought back the old guy in a trench coat saying ‘Oh, one more thing,' before nailing the suspect to the wall? And then hitting him with another suspect?

I think so, my friends. I think so.

My Name Is Andy:
The old saying ‘tragedy is when I cut my finger and comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die,' really comes into play here. When last we saw Marvel Comics' Awesome Andy, the Android, he was feeling like this:

Hilarious, right?

Andy had a bad week, and decided to go off into the world to find himself. He's an android who can absorb the abilities of anyone around him, so finding himself could be a complicated issue. I think of it as more of a marketing opportunity. Emo Andy, Punk Andy, Country-Western Andy, Ironic Jerkbag Andy; this is something that anyone can relate to. This comic would be a mash-up of Dollhouse, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, and My Name Is Earl.

I'm sure some of you are saying, ‘What in the name of god could save such a terrible concept?' This: The main character can do anything, anything at all, except talk. Except talk.

This doesn't just save the comic. This turns it into a potential TV show. Think of all the shows I just mentioned. Now imagine the leads can't talk. I can see the smiles on your faces from here. They're beautiful.

Sex and the Desperate Cougar Housewives Done Right:
If there is one flaw in the current crop of shows marketed to women, and there aren't, there are many, but if there were one, it would be that despite all evidence to the contrary, the characters are still treated as if they are decent human beings.

This new potential comic doesn't have that problem. What it has instead is fantastic crossover potential. Over the years, most of the heroes have picked up their share of floozies. From the banal to the murderous, said floozies have tried to lure the heroes away from their significant others too many times to count. Such stories tend to be uninteresting when told from the point of view of the protagonists. What we need is them told from the POV of the temptresses.

Put Cat Grant, Lana Lang (Would-be Mrs. Kent-Els, both of them.) on a team with Marianne (the ex-homeless, romance-novel-writing, flower-shop-attendant and Green Arrow lover), with Madame Masque (The Tony Terrorizer) and you'd have a pretty dull comic. You need something to spice it up, and I have just the person.

Namor. Admit it, an egomaniacal fish man really puts the spice in that team. The comic would still be irresistible. It would be like a sashimi cupcake. Everyone would know it was bad, but they wouldn't be able to resist. Go ahead. Try not to read. You will fail. This, I promise you.

The Best Office Ever:
Comics can't just be romance and murder. We need some substance to go with all of that flash. And where does America usually get substance? Why, we borrow it from Great Britain, of course. We've ripped off Jane Austen novels and Shakespeare plays, but when even those proved too much for us we moved down the culture ladder to television shows. The Office was a smash hit on two continents, but it lacked something comics could provide: sociopaths. Which brings us to the comic that absolutely, unquestionably, urgently, must be made: Wayne Enterprises Human Resources Department.

There are many rants on the internet saying that Bruce Wayne's money could prevent crime more effectively than Batman's reign of terror. Those ranters clearly choose to ignore what Bruce Wayne does with his money.

By night Batman passes out cards for Wayne Enterprises to prostitutes, junkies, and petty criminals caught in the middle of a suitably sympathetic crime. By day Bruce Wayne roams the halls of the Wayne sky-scraper, handing out college scholarships to anyone who looks like they might have the talent or ambition to contribute meaningfully to the company. But that's just day-to-day stuff for the long-suffering staff of the Wayne Enterprises HR Department.

In both comics and cartoons, Wayne Enterprises has been shown to have a Hire-A-Felon policy in place. These felons can be anything from reformed armed robbers to the guy who likes to carve a puppet out of the nearest available piece of wood, pretend it's his boss, and have it plan diabolical crimes. That's right. The characters in the HR division spend their time throwing going away parties for bright-eyed innocent employees going off to highly marketable places like art school, finding jobs for hookers whose marketable skills include being able to talk, and explaining the sexual harassment policy to a guy who is basically the villain from the Saw movies.

Add Steve Carell to this bunch:

And it's gold. Gold.

We noted earlier this month that the mummy, once one of Universal's favorite movie monsters, has been absent from the screen of late. And there are plenty of other creatures from fiction and folklore that have been popular in fiction, but haven't quite ascended to the level of favorite movie monsters. For example:

Dybbuk
Where you've seen it: S. Ansky's play The Dybbuk (and its film adaptation) and this year's horror film The Unborn. It has also been mentioned in the Coen brothers' film A Serious Man and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.
What it is: A spirit from Jewish folklore, a dybbuk is the spirit of a dead person who possesses a living person. There are numerous reasons a dybbuk may do this to escape punishment for some transgression it committed while alive, or to seek revenge for some evil committed against it, or because it is lost and needs to find its way to the afterlife.
Why it deserves a shot at the big time: The Unborn may not have done dybbuks justice, but any story about a dybbuk has the opportunity to tap into the rich tapestry of Jewish mysticism. Plus, possession stories tend to be dominated by Catholic traditions; it's always nice to get a different flavor.

Incubus/Succubus
Where you've see it: Numerous stories and books including the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, The Dresden Files, The Dark Tower, Balzac's "The Succubus," and Richard Matheson's "The Likeness of Julie." Also, an episode of South Park.
What it is: Incubi and succubi are sex demons that bed (often sleeping, often unwilling) humans, either to feed on their sexual energy or produce a child. Sometimes the humans die in the process.
Why they deserve a shot at the big time: After enduring four movies featuring the largely chaste Edward Cullen, it would be a relief to see a type of vampire who require sex to live (although I hate to think what would go into being a "vegetarian" succubus). Plus, sexing someone to death could make for some nice body horror (to say nothing of the possibility of demonic genitalia). Despite their popularity in fiction, these sex demons are curiously absent from film — although a few years before Star Trek, William Shatner starred in Incubus, a succubus-filled horror film written entirely in Esperanto.

Lich
Where you've see it: Dungeons & Dragons, World of Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy.
What it is: Sort of like zombies with brains (and not the eating kind), liches are undead creatures who retain their intellect but whose bodies keep on rotting. They've generally chosen this way of non-life as a sort of perverse immortality.
Why it deserves a shot at the big time: Liches have been a staple of high fantasy, and it's time to drag them into the modern era. Egomaniacal scholars, wizards, and business men could all seek to preserve their consciousness for future generations, with terrifying (and fairly gross) results. There's a definite supervillainous quality to liches; they may not jump out and shout "boo," but they're likely to have a horde of horrifying minions. And when you finally see their faces, liches can be pretty frightening themselves.

Ghouls
Where you've see them: Pretty much everywhere, from the works of HP Lovecraft to Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.
What they are: Although in recent years, the word "ghoul" has become synonymous with any undead thing, ghouls are actually monsters from Arabian folklore. Like zombies, they feed on human flesh (living or dead), but they are also intelligent and able to shapeshift.
Why they deserve a shot at the big time: Ghouls may not have the elegant simplicity of zombies, there is still room for ghouls in the realm of flesh-eating beasts. Lovecraft played with the ghoul mythology quite a bit, and even wrote ghoulish characters who would aid the protagonist (though one imagines that a clever ghoul would lead said protagonist to their tasty demise). Ghouls could be comical horror sidekicks (always trying to eat you), or they could be formidable foes. The Supernatural episode "Jump the Shark" had the Winchesters fending off some vengeful ghouls who would take the form of the last person they ate.

Wendigo
Where you've see it: The Wendigo is the Bruce Campbell of B-list monsters; it pops up everywhere. Sam and Dean Winchester encounter a Wendigo in the second episode of Supernatural, and the creature has turned up in Charmed, Blood Ties, and Pet Sematary.
What it is: Coming from Algonquian mythology, the Wendigo is a cannibalistic monster associated with famine and long winters. Humans can become Wendigo by eating human flesh, and once they have the demon in them, they are perpetually hungry, growing larger and hungrier with each kill.
Why it deserves a shot at the big time: Wendigo are already playing in the horror minor leagues, and it's time for them to step up. And, in areas where the Wendigo legend thrives, it has certainly captured the imagination in much the way werewolves have. Canada has recorded incidents of Wendigo trials, where people thought to be Wendigo were put on trial for consuming human flesh. A guilty verdict could mean death and subsequent burning.

What other neglected monsters would you like to see on screen?

Sectaurs
The Set-Up: A toyline that only lasted one year - perhaps because the world was as grossed-out by the idea of half-insect half-humans as I was when I was ten years old (Nonetheless, props to whoever decided that the character's giant-insect pets/horse-like-equivalents would be gloves, so you could make their legs move) - Sectaurs followed a He-Man-esque model of quasi-mystical good guys ("The Shining Realm of Prosperon," led by the heroic Prince Dargon) versus equally-quasi-mystical bad guys ("The Dark Domain of Synax," led by General Spidrax) on a planet called Symbion.
Was There A Franchise? Comics books, cartoons and kids storybooks.
The Movie: Embrace the alien, and CGI everything to make it look weird and wonderful. Play up the mythical aspects and turn it into a kids franchise with teeth.

Centurions
The Set-Up: In the "near future," three (later five, but no-one remembers the last two) men fight terrorists (led by the aptly-named Doc Terror) by wearing weirdly weaponized robotic suits that give them something approaching superpowers. Despite being the product of the mid-80s, their tagline of "PowerXtreme!" was curiously a decade ahead of its time.
Was There A Franchise? Cartoons and comic books.
The Movie: It's GI Joe with added technology. Seriously, how can this fail? Just remember to rename the bad guy.

Adventures of The Galaxy Rangers
The Set-Up: The Old West becomes the New West as mankind moves off-planet and colonizes the universe, reverting to cowboy style in the process. The concept behind Galaxy Rangers offered a chance to mix-and-match moments of American history as the Rangers themselves - essentially cyborg versions of Western lawmen, riding robotic horses - fight against a "vast and crumbling Empire" ruled by The Queen of the Crown. Oh, and they're against slavery, as well.
Was There A Franchise? Just a cartoon.
The Movie: Pull back on the sleekness of the technology, and give us a steampunk revisionary version that's more Firefly than Wild Wild West.

MASK
The Set-Up: Pretty much "What if Transformers weren't robots but could still transform," MASK - which stood for Mobile Armored Strike Kommand, proving that even the US Government aren't above bad spelling when a good acronym's at stake - was a GI Joe-esque anti-terrorist squad who used vehicles that had alternate combat modes against VENOM (Vicious Evil Network Of Mayhem). Both sides also had helmets that gave them special powers, which may have been a concept too far, really.
Was There A Franchise? Cartoons, comic books, and video games.
The Movie: Oddly enough, MASK was brought into the GI Joe franchise last year in the toys, so maybe this perfect mix of Joe and Transformers is already taken care of, in terms of Hollywood.

Power Lords
The Set-Up: Another failed toyline that ripped off Masters of The Universe, Power Lords saw Adam Power use the Cosmic Power Jewel to become Lord Power, fighting evil dictator Arkus. Much more amusing were the henchmen, who had names like Bakatak, Disguyzor and Drrench, demonstrating how desperate toymakers could get when deadlines loomed.
Was There A Franchise? Comic books and video games.
The Movie: Actually, maybe they should just make the Masters of The Universe movie instead, as this is so clearly stolen from those toys.

Spiral Zone
The Set-Up: Ignore characters with names like Dirk Courage and Benjamin Davis Franklin, and concentrate on the admittedly-awesome concept: A mad scientist hijacks a space shuttle to turn half the planet into an altered state called the Spiral Zone, where everyone within becomes a mind-controlled zombie. Five soldiers with specially-constructed suits to combat the Zone's effects are sent inside to destroy the Zone Generators and save the world.
Was There A Franchise? Cartoons and comic books.
The Movie: Drop everything other than the basic idea, and make it into a dark action movie with Christian Bale working off his Terminator karma. This is one child dystopia that deserves to be brought back meaner and more hardcore than before.

Zoids
The Set-Up: Robotic dinosaurs and ancient creatures trapped in permanently-ongoing wars on alien planets, although if you read the British tie-in comic, you'd know there was much more - and much, much ripped off of popular movies of a few years previously - going on.
Was There A Franchise? Internationally, comic books and cartoons, but not in the US.
The Movie: Is it too much to ask for Jurassic Park: The Robots? Other than simply adapting the UK comic story (Spaceship full of humans crashlands on Zoid planet, characters act out Alien and Terminator cliches), I can't think of any other way to do it.

Crystar
The Set-Up: Another fantasy toyline, but one that wasn't, surprisingly, ripped off from He-Man, Crystar started life as a pitch from Marvel Comics to various toy companies before Remco bit the crystal bullet and manufactured Crystar and his crystaline brothers and Moltar and his fire-themed minions. Despite offering dragons, castles and personifications of a metaphysical battle between order and chaos, the line only lasted one year.
Was There A Franchise? Only comics.
The Movie: Tone down the Chaos/Order subtext, ramp up the "warring brothers" aspect and go all-out on the fantasy - Give us a full-on Lord Of The Rings set on another planet, with the kind of scope and scale that only Peter Jackson or James Cameron could think of.

Rom The Space-Knight

The Set-Up: Sure, the toy - manufactured by Parker Brothers, and originally called COBOL - may have flopped spectacularly in the US, but the cyborg space warrior lived on for years afterwards in his Marvel Comics series, and even longer in our hearts.
Was There A Franchise? Only comics.
The Movie: Redesign Rom to be slightly less... boxy, and pull in The Invaders paranoia from the comic book, and you've got something with an obvious enough hero to play well in multiplexes but with the potential for something much more subtle and sneaky for those who want to look at it that way.

Micronauts
The Set-Up: If ever there was a toyline that deserved a movie, it's this space opera line adapted from various Japanese figures, especially considering that it's the line that indirectly gave birth to Transformers and the 1980s revival of GI Joe that made that franchise what it is today.
Was There A Franchise? Only comics.
The Movie: With "Time Travelers", Mega Cities, Space Gliders and villains who look like Darth Vader, there's surely only one option: Try to create the next Star Wars, complete with new cultures, new danger and derring-do, and an empire that could support Baron Karzas and Acroyears... whatever an Acroyear turns out to be.

We've seen a lot of stellar shorts here; some are simply wonderful as brief visits with strange beings and strange worlds, and some are already being adapted as feature films (like Sundance-winning Tomo and possibly Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog). These are just a few of the short films that could make for wonderful, fun, or strange feature films:

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello
Notes: Jasper Morello proved a film festival darling, taking top prizes at the Australian Film Institute Awards, Flickerfest, and Dragon Con, and received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Film.

Synopsis: Jasper Morello, a disgraced airman, lives in a city plagued by a terrible and incurable sickness. He is called to be a navigator on a mission carrying an unusual passenger, the eccentric physician Claude Belgon, who is studying airmen in hopes of devising a cure. During the voyage, his wife back home, a nurse, develops the sickness, but the crew finds a strange beast whose flesh can cure the sickness. Unfortunately, the creature has a taste for human blood.

How it could be expanded: Already 26 minutes long, Jasper Morello wouldn't need much expanding once we get a bit more into Jasper's background and the personalities of the crew. But in an expanded Jasper Morello, Claude Belgon could commission an air mission on behalf of the Royal Academy to find a mysterious treasure long rumored by airmen to exist on a far off island, one closely guarded by air pirates. Belgon is fully aware of the treasure's true nature: it is a deadly monster that could potentially cure the sickness. When the airship reaches the island, they are nearly thwarted by the air pirates, but they manage to defeat them, taking one unconscious pirate hostage. They find several of the monster cocoons and take them aboard, but then crew members start disappearing. It is not until the air pirate wakes that it is revealed that Belgon has been feeding the crewmen to the growing monsters. From there, the remaining crew would have to evade Belgon and the monsters (and keep the ship afloat). In the final confrontation, it would be revealed that Belgon chose Morello specifically for this mission because he knew of Morello's disgrace and his wife's likelihood of contracting the sickness, and believed it would make him easy to manipulate. The film ends not with Morello trapped in a cavern feeding the beast, but him steering the monster-filled airship home after killing Belgon, knowing full well that, in trying to save his wife, he could be condemning the entire city.

What could kill it: Much of the short's charm comes from its silhouette animation, which might not translate well to a feature-length film. A live action, or perhaps stop motion, film would have to stay close to the look and feel of the original.

You can pitch us an all-new idea, a spin-off of an existing series or concept, or whatever you want... as long as it's something more interesting than "All of Grace Park's scenes from Battlestar Galactica in long, lingering, slow-motion with a soundtrack by popular 1990s European dance act 2Unlimited" - We've seen that kind of thing before, thanks to the wonders of personal video editing software.* Use the comments section below to hit us with your best shot, as Pat Benitar once so poignantly sang, and we'll announce our arbitrarily-chosen favorite this time next week.

(* - This is, of course, a joke. We'd never go with 2Unlimited following their disappointing reunion gig. It's Technotronic all the way.)

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles/Thor writer Ashley Edward Miller was tweeting about showing his newborn son "both Star Wars movies," and teaching his son — just a few days old — the importance of knowing that Han shot first. This started us thinking, once again: What would have happened if Greedo had shot first instead?

With all the thousands of comics and books and cartoons related to Star Wars lately, there really should be a miniseries set in the alternate universe where Greedo shot first. And killed Han Solo, before Han could ever embark on his awesomely redemptive journey with Luke and Obi-Wan, leading to him becoming a General in the final battle against the Empire.

So what would have happened if Greedo had shot Han? Shot him DEAD? This is the sort of question to which we give far too much consideration, until we realize we have failed to leave the house for three days straight. Clearly this is an alternate universe story that must be told.

So everyone who has seen Star Wars: the colon-less movie will know that Greedo makes a profound impression in his few moments on screen. His latex face is more expressive than all the other masked aliens in the Cantina, and he radiates a peevish self-respect. Our favorite Rodian is a master thug and the son of the legendary hustler Greedo the Elder, who kicked Anakin's ass in a Phantom Menace deleted scene:

Okay, so Anakin is on top for a while there, but watch the clip again — Greedo flips him over and is just about to bring the rain of pain, when Qui-Gonn Jinn shows up and breaks it up. Anakin was three seconds away from being unable to eat anything but blue Bantha milk, through a straw.

Anyway, we're confident that if Greedo shot first, he would have been the only one to get off a shot. We've always had a soft spot for Greedo, ever since he had the kick-ass action figure. So what happens if Greedo kills Han?

At this point, Han has already made his deal to give Luke, Obi-Wan and those pesky droids passage to Alderaan on the Millennium Falcon, and Chewbacca has gone off to prep the ship. So there's Greedo, standing over Han's messy corpse, and he needs to take Han's head back to Jabba to collect his bounty. That means going to the spaceport, where Chewbacca's tending the Falcon, and Wookiees don't take kindly to seeing their friends' heads dangling from a bounty hunter's scaly hand. So Greedo has to get rid of the Wookiee somehow — he's never heard of the "Let the Wookiee win" principle.

Luckily, if you go by the remastered edition of the original Star Wars, Greedo knows Boba Fett is hanging around the spaceport, along with Jabba. So all Greedo has to do is maneuver the Wookiee and the Mandalorian into each other's crossfire, and the problem takes care of itself. Good thing he's got the severed head of Han Solo. Turns out Cameron Diaz isn't the only one who can make a crowded room stop with a mere toss of the head — only it's Han Solo's head that Greedo tosses, to Chewy, who catches it with an anguished growl. Chewy pulls his bowcaster, but he's still holding the head of his beloved captain in one paw, making his reaction time considerably slower. Chewy does get off one shot, but Greedo ducks behind Boba Fett, who catches it square in his unprotected neck area. Greedo shoots Chewbacca before he can get off a second shot, and it's all over.

All in all, it's been a good day for Greedo so far. He's got the reward money for killing Solo, he's got the money Obi-Wan paid for passage to Alderaan, and I'm guessing Jabba lets Greedo keep the Millennium Falcon. There's just the matter of what to do about those annoying passengers.

Obi-Wan and Luke show up, droids in tow, for their passage to Alderaan. Greedo informs them the ship's had a change of captain, and he'll be taking them to Alderaan instead. Once they're aboard and on their way, Greedo seriously considers keeping his end of the deal — after all, an additional 15,000 once they get to Alderaan seems pretty sweet. But the longer he spends on board with the perky kid and the skeevy old guy and their holo-chess, and their weird, unsavory blindfold games, the less he likes it. And then he figures out that these guys don't really have any money: They're bringing something to Alderaan, which they'll get paid for. The droids, maybe?

If there's one thing Greedo believes in, it's cutting out the middlemen.

Luckily, the Millennium Falcon has a button to depressurize the rear passenger areas, while keeping air on the flight deck. (Although Greedo keeps a helmet on, just in case.) One press of a button later, and the young hero and his mentor are floating in space, turning a nasty shade of cyan. The droids are fine, they can hang on when the air all gets sucked out, and they don't need to breathe anyway. Sure, the droids aren't happy, but what are they going to do?

With the humans out of the way, the Rodian rogue has time to tinker with those droids and find out what's so valuable about them. The gold humanoid one, he quickly realizes is worthless, so he disassembles him and uses bits of him as bling on his favorite vest. But the dome-shaped one? A different story. Soon, Greedo's watching the "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi" video, and thinking maybe Greedo is her only hope. At least, for 15,000, he can be anybody's only hope.

But of course, Greedo doesn't quite make it to Alderaan. The planet gets wiped out before he reaches it, and soon he's being yanked by something that's not a moon, it's... something different. The Falcon goes flying into the Death Star, and Greedo sees all his dreams of insane profit in danger of being incinerated just like Alderaan. Time to lose the C-3PO bling, and go ninja on these Imperials. Greedo slips out of the Falcon and starts exploring the massive Death Star, his head buzzing with how much that tractor beam would be worth if he could disassemble it. Not to mention the reactor.

And then Greedo finds the lady in white, from the robot's holo-recording. He got her message! And he's here to rescue her, he tells her in Huttese. The other guy couldn't make it, sorry. She's both lippy and suspicious. So when she and Greedo get trapped in a trash compactor, he slithers out, nimble as a gecko, and leaves her there to get squashed like a ripe muja fruit. No real loss, since he's still got the R2 unit with all the secrets on it.

But then... Greedo runs face to face with Darth Vader, the Dark Lord Of The Sith. The hulking, asthmatic figure that nobody ever talks back to and lives. Greedo freezes, in total panic, ninja mode failing him completely.

And then Darth Vader looks at Greedo and howls, "Noooooo!"

For a moment, Vader is once again the young Anakin, the little boy whom Greedo (the elder) tormented and punished. Vader is face to face with the one man (other than Watto) who haunts his childhood dreams, the person whose mistreatment helped start him on the path to the Dark Side. Unable to tell the difference between Greedo the Elder and Greedo the Younger, Vader forgets all his Jedi training, all his Sith lore, and for a moment he's just a scared little boy once again. "I didn't cheat in that pod race!" Vader howls.

Greedo doesn't know what's going on here, but he knows he only has one chance. And if there's one thing Greedo's good at, it's taking chances. He jumps the Dark Lord, aiming to put a blaster bolt in his breathing apparatus before Vader can crush his throat or use Force Lightning on him. And in Anakin's twisted mind, for just a second, they're two little kids scrapping in the dirt. Then Vader gets a grip on himself and pulls his light saber, just as Greedo lands on his stomach. The light saber goes just slightly wrong, slicing off Vader's own arm and plunging into his chest. Greedo jumps off the Sith Lord and lands on his feet like a cat, barely believing that he's standing over the dead body of the most feared man in the galaxy.

There has to be some way Greedo can make a profit off this.

Stripping the armor off Darth Vader's dismembered corpse is a messy, painstaking job, and the armor's big enough to fit three Greedos inside. But he knows a guy in Cloud City who would pay a small fortune for the Sith Lord's real armor, just to have propped up in his vestibule... maybe with a drinks tray. There's no way to carry the armor, so Greedo has to figure out how to wear it. He stuffs the light saber (carefully deactivated) and some junk into the boots, so he can stand up in it.

Greedo can just about walk around in Vader's suit, but he constantly looks like he needs to pee really bad, and the arms just sort of flop around like Vader's having an embolism. And forget talking, not that anyone would understand why Vader's suddenly speaking Huttese anyway.

Good thing the Stormtroopers aren't paid to ask questions. They ask if Lord Vader needs an escort, and Greedo tries to shake the big black helmet — no, no escort required! — but he makes Vader nod instead, by mistake. Soon, the shambling Dark Lord has a dozen Troopers following him around, and Greedo really does feel like pissing himself. That light saber in the right boot keeps digging into Greedo's foot, and Greedo's paranoid that it'll switch on by accident.

Still, you don't get to be one of Jabba's hand-picked (flipper-picked?) bounty hunters by lacking brio. So Greedo marches all of his entourage to the home of the tractor beam, and leads them to that bridge thingy that leads to the control panel. With a series of spasmodic twitches to that herculean black torso, black-gloved arms flopping around, Greedo conveys that he wants them to extend the bridge to the tractor beam. Then it's just a matter of stumbling across the bridge without falling into the bottomless pit. None of the stormtroopers notices when a tiny green hand snakes out of Vader's armor to fiddle with the tractor beam controls — stormtroopers aren't paid to notice stuff — and anyway, Greedo wraps his big black cloak around himself as best he can.

Greedo almost gets away with it, too — except the Emperor has felt a disturbance in the Dark Side. His counterpart, the only other Sith lord and the most promising apprentice of them all, has died. Darth Sidious knows this as well as he knows that Force Lighting stings. Greedo doesn't even get back to the Millennium Falcon before the Emperor appears, surrounded by his red-helmeted Royal Guard. "That's not Vader!" the Emperor cries. "Stop him!"

Greedo stops dead still, arms flopping. What to do? What to do?

Greedo tries to raise his hands, but he can't. The Royal Guard surrounds him, and they grab his arms to lead him away. And the arms come off. So does the helmet. The Emperor is standing, aghast, staring at the headless, armless shell of Darth Vader. Was this merely Vader's armor come to life? A ghost animating the Sith lord's armor? One of those Death Trooper thingies? For the first time in many years, the Emperor does not know what to think.

So he's even more surprised when a green head pops out of Vader's neck, and a green arm flies out of the shoulder socket, blaster clutched in a green fist. Greedo spies the Emperor and does what Greedo does best.

Greedo shoots first.

We'll spare you the details of Greedo's coronation as Emperor — it goes on for weeks, and the Cantina Band gets flown in, and there are whole planets flooded with namana liquor for Greedo to drink from. He actually quite likes the big robe thing, and having the red helmet guys following him around is actually quite cool. The most important thing is, the galaxy enters into decades of peace and prosperity. Greedo turns out to be surprisingly good at keeping the hyperspace lanes open, and letting people go about their business. All hail Emperor Greedo!

After the game-changing events of last season's finale, fans that campaigned so hard to save their beloved geek idol fear that the show is selling out to Subway, that Chuck's new superpowers will rob him of his everyman appeal, and worst of all that we may have seen the last of the Buy More and the Nerd Herd.

Listen up, Chuck; I may just be able to save you. Just stay in the car.

The zesty tang of corporate whoredom was all over last season. Fans who cried "sellout!" when they heard about the show's dirty dealings with Subway obviously were not paying attention for the past two seasons. Chuck has always been the television-show equivalent of a NASCAR driver's jacket, and we've loved the show all the more for it. iPhones and foot–long subs have always served to bring us into Chuck's reality, not out of it. In a culture as logo-laden as our own, product placement merely gives the impression that these could be our lives, and we too may one day be tapped to be super spies.

When we last left our hero, he had upgraded to Intersect 2.0, the scene itself rife with subliminal and not-so-subliminal advertising. Did anyone else feel like they were watching a giant Hulu ad? After the upgrade, Chuck is new and improved, and now comes with Kung Fu grip. What other goodies does Chuck's new cerebral software come with? The possibilities are endless. But with great power comes great responsibility; not just for Chuck, but for co-creators Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedek not to fall into the Heroes trap of giving human protagonists superpowers and thereby removing all traces of humanity. Hopefully, Chuck's new powers will serve to trip him up in more hilarious and endearing ways, while allowing him to still save the day.

With Chuck and Morgan's departure from the Buy More, it's questionable how much we'll be seeing of the motley crew of Green shirts in the third season. While the antics of Jeffster have lost some of their appeal, I fear for the show if it departs completely from the land of discount electronics and fast computer repair. The show's sweet and simple premise, namely Chuck's perilous tango between his real-world dead-end job and the fantastical world of espionage and intrigue, is what keeps us watching.

It'll take more than following these guidelines to save Bartowski. He'll need help. We saw last season that the ratings of the show took a quantum leap with the arrival of several guest stars, from Dominic Monaghan to Scott Bakula and Chevy Chase. I propose that the best way to make the most of Chuck's second chance is to give us even more star power to fuel the third season. Here are a few suggestions:

Kristen Bell
Bell's comic timing is perfect for this show. We're all a little tired of the Sarah & Chuck sub-plot, and no cliché is more satisfying than a third party coming between our ambivalent lovers. As a clumsy and perky Buy More employee, Kristen Bell would not only look great in a green polo shirt, but would also steal the show and hopefully Chuck's heart. Half-way through the season Bell would be revealed to be a CIA agent working undercover, and could flex her Veronica Mars spy-girl muscles while stealing secrets and doing improbable stunts.

Alec Baldwin
Both Bell and Baldwin have most recently been working for NBC, so they wouldn't have to go very far for to spend some quality time with the network's pet project. Alec Baldwin would be brilliant as Agent Casey's West Point / CIA mentor, who returns to head up a delicate case and makes Casey jealous when his mentor takes a shine to Chuck.

Neil Patrick Harris
We all love NPH. He could appear to ward off the dreaded mid-season slump, save the ratings and re-invigorate the show. NPH would play a computer-genius / entrepreneur who has designed the world's newest AI search engine. The CIA hires NPH to design a special Intersect search feature, so that Chuck can access all those Government secrets on command.

Jonathan Pryce
We saw last season with Chevy Chase's character that putting a face to FULCRUM and having an identifiable super villain made the show that much more enjoyable. This time around, we need a new big bad, and I propose Jonathan Pryce. Pryce proved himself a worthy adversary as the Bond villain in Tomorrow Never Dies, has endless desk-jockey geek-cred thanks to Brazil, and no one wears a condescending smirk quite the same way.

It's also time for new blood at the Buy More. I volunteer Napoleon Dynamite's Tina Majorino, Freaks&Geeks' Samm Levine, and Nick & Norah's Aaron Yoo to be some new scruffy Nerd Herders.

Dear Heroes,

What happened? Villains marked an all time low in your ratings, and lost you a significant portion of your core audience (myself included). You broke my heart, Heroes. Fugitives won me back in much the same way your ex does when he or she promises to reform, to be better and try harder. But the make-up sex just wasn't that great; the second half of the third season was just too little too late, with the writers and network executives over-compensating furiously with its Con Air plot line and conspiracy theories pieced together with duct tape and hurried exposition. Heroes, if you really want to win me back, here's what you have to do.

New Talent. With Bryan Fuller off to pursue new projects, there are some pretty big shoes to fill. If Fuller's replacement generates the same buzz you did around Fuller's return to the show, and then deliver on it, you may just win many of us back. Carlton Cuse, who is wrapping up his epic run with Lost, might just be the hero you need. Other people capable of filling the void could be Adam Horowitz (the Lost scribe, not the Beastie Boy) or David Fury, the uber-talented Joss Whedon alum. I'll even put in a plug for Rob Thomas (creator of Veronica Mars), who has an amazing gift for crafting characters we love - and love to hate.

"You know how this works; one of us, one of them." Heroes is at its best when pairing up a hero with a human. For the first two seasons, and well into the third, Hiro and Ando formed the beating heart of the show for just this reason... and then you had to go and give Ando super powers. Why? The show is at its peak when specials and non-specials are grappling to understand one another and find common ground (Yes, I would even use Claire and her relationship with the Bennetts, overplayed as it is, as an example here). Continuing to team up specials and non-specials is a sure fire win.

We need a new geek. Look, I'll be honest; The moment you lost me in Villains was when you gave Mohinder powers. Dr. Suresh was originally conceived as a fifty-something scientist, until hunky hero Sendhil Ramamurthy was cast in the role. You never quite reconciled the fact that the geeky scientist who was there to serve as an anchoring point to the show and deliver much needed exposition was also part of its beefcake buffet. We need a scientist whose theories we believe, and who can deliver lines like "The virus is breaking down her DNA and turning her into something altogether... different" with a straight face. Perhaps a long-lost protege of Mohinder's father, or a government-funded geneticist can turn up to espouse the comic book science we've been missing (Someone like much underrated and underused character actor Ian Hart would be a perfect fit). Heroes, you need to find your Daniel Faraday.

Focus. The cast has gotten wildly out of control. Too many specials, too many superpowers, and an endless supply of shape-shifting characters, twins, and future selves is just mucking up the works. Slim down the cast and find your focus - the core group of characters we care about. Kill off the characters who only annoy us. Ali Larter's character comebacks have gotten ridiculous. Besides, we only tolerated her in the first place so we could have Micah. He, along with his super-mimic cousin, and human GPS Molly almost disappeared entirely from the show, with Micah just making a recent comeback. These kids are now perfectly poised, as they hit their 'tweens, to be the subjects of mutation-as-puberty-metaphor story arcs. You are already mining every good X-Men device ever conceived, why not just steal that one as well?

Everybody loves bad girls. I miss your sexy villains; I loved Elle, and I howled in horror when she got killed off last season. Madeline Zima is joining the show next season, and could very well fill the sexy female villain role, with the storyline in the hands of the right writers. Summer Glau is also looking for work in Tinseltown these days, and playing a full-on femme fatale would be a challenge we'd all love to see her take. Ray Park, the sexiest Sith, also joins the cast next season, reportedly as an evil carny character. I'm keeping my fingers crossed you match him up with some equally amazing female character.

Kill the cheerleader, Save the show. Hayden Panettiere has a film career now, and it's time to let her go. Between her bad acting and on-set temper tantrums, she is completely destroying the show. Besides, killing Claire off would give many of the characters, HRG especially, some great motivation.

One last thing...9th Wonders needs to come back in a big way. Please?

Geoff Manaugh, creator of BLDG BLOG (and occasional contributor to io9), is known for his spellbinding, science fictional interpretations of architecture. Inspired by the building that housed the old Ghostbusters headquarters (pictured), as well as the forbidding New York telephone exchange building, he's come up with an idea for the movie that involves a haunted telephone system and angelic neurobiology.

It's worth quoting at length from his post:

It's 1997. NYNEX is on the verge of being purchased by Bell Atlantic, after which point it will be dissolved in all but name.
But all hell starts breaking loose. Pay phones ring for no reason, and they don't stop. Dead relatives call their families in the middle of the night. People, horrifically, even call themselves – but it's the person they used to be, phoning out of the blue, warning them about future misdirection.
Every once in a while, though, something genuinely bad happens: someone answers the phone... and they go a little crazy.
Thing is – spoiler alert – halfway through the film, the Ghostbusters realize that NYNEX isn't a phone system at all: it's the embedded nervous system of an angel – a fallen angel – and all those phone calls and dial-up modems in college dorm rooms and public pay phones are actually connected into the fiber-optic anatomy of a vast, ethereal organism that preceded the architectural build-up of Manhattan.
Manhattan came afterwards, that is: NYNEX was here first.
It's worth recalling, in fact, that NYNEX – at least according to Wikipedia – actually stood for New York/New England, "with the X representing the unknown future (or 'the uneXpected')." It's like Malcolm X's telephonically inclined, wiry cousin.
So the phone system of Manhattan – all those voices! all those connections! leading one life to another – starts to act up, provoked by its dissolution into Bell Atlantic... and the Ghostbusters are called in to fix it.
Fixing it involves rapid drives from telephone substation to telephone substation, from library to library, all while Dan Ackroyd's character keeps receiving phone calls about a family crisis... his ex-wife is calling... his dad is calling... they're urging him to stop this whole, crazy Ghostbusters business... He starts acting funny. The voices on the phone say strange things. They call at strange hours. He feels kinship with public pay phones; they sometimes ring as he walks past. He tries to call his family back – but they're not answering.
Harold Ramis starts to suspect something.
In the background there are shadowy figures called out to fix transmission lines – but they are actually wiring something up... something big...
The whole movie then leads up to the granddaddy of them all: an electromagnetic confrontation inside the windowless, Brutalist telephone switching tower at 33 Thomas Street (rumored haunt of the ghost of Aleister Crowley).

You can read the rest here, where he goes into more detail that makes the idea sound even more fascinating. I love the idea of the telephone system being haunted, because at this point telephone systems are so ancient that they have begun to seem spooky. That is, they are as ancient and spooky as the NY subway system, which as you'll recall had a role in previous Ghostbusters movies.

I'd love to see a movie like this get made, but I'm dubious about whether it could fly in Hollywood. I could, however, imagine it as a plot arc in Supernatural - if it were the phone exchange in Lawrence, Kansas.

via BLDG BLOGhttp://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/nynex-embedded-angel-of-new-york-city.html

First off, let's remember that Marvel doesn't have access to all of their own characters when it comes to movies; Fox have the rights to the X-Men characters, the Fantastic Four and certain related characters, and the Daredevil franchise, while Sony will doubtless do everything it can to keep hold of the hugely-successful Spider-Man license. So where does that leave Marvel? Well, with plenty of other characters, it seems... Here are our suggestions, complete with high concept pitches to sell them to the execs, and split out into genres:

Action
Comedy
Fantasy
Thriller
Trippy SF

You're welcome, Marvel.

The Eternals
The Pitch: "Learn the true history of humanity!"
The Explanation: Forget Neil Gaiman's recent attempt to restart this franchise and go back to Jack Kirby's original, which said that humanity was just one of three races created by giant, godlike robots called the Celestials, who have come back to Earth to judge us. Oh, and those two other races? They're the idealized Eternals and the evil Deviants, and they're at war over humanity's survival. Imagine a story this epic (and, admittedly, dumb) being given to JJ Abrams and prepare for box office success.
Must Read: The Eternals by Jack Kirby volumes 1 and 2.

Star Brand
The Pitch: "Man has discovered the ultimate weapon. Watch out, Pittsburgh."
The Explanation: Marvel's 1980s attempt at "realism", the New Universe, contained one particular classic, the story of a man who gains the universe's ultimate weapon - a brand that gives its owner unlimited power - and, well, loses his mind in the process, accidentally destroying his home town of Pittsburgh and launching the world into a nuclear winter as a result. We want to see what Charlie Kaufman could do with this, to be honest.
Must Read: Star Brand Classic volume 1 starts the story, but things get more interesting - and more weird - in the not-yet-reprinted later issues.

Machine Man
The Pitch: "What does it mean to be human, when you're not?"
The Explanation: Jack Kirby - yes, him again - created this character, an android just trying to make it in a world of fleshy humans, as part of his continuation of 2001: A Space Odyssey, so you could almost say that he's fated to be a movie star. Downplay the character's various attempts to be a superhero and cut to the core of the character: Kirby's lonely, melancholic outsider wondering what the human condition actually is. Add Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers, and let rise, slowly.
Must Read: Currently out of print, you'd be best served by looking for Kirby's short-lived run on the original, 1970s, version of the Machine Man series.

The Winter Soldier
The Pitch: "It's The Manchurian Candidate with cyborgs!"
The Explanation: Ignore the comic version's association with Captain America - He was originally Cap's WWII sidekick Bucky, and took over as Cap after Steve Rogers' assassination a couple of years ago - and focus on the character's origin story: An American soldier, saved from near death by Russians only to be brainwashed and given cyborg implants before being used as an assassin during the Cold War, struggling to break free of his programming. How could that fail? Just get rid of the long hair he had in the comic.
Must Read: Captain America: The Winter Soldier volumes 1 and 2.

SHIELD
The Pitch: "Everything you've ever wanted James Bond movies to be... but better."
The Explanation: It's Marvel's premiere spy agency, made up of grizzled veterans of wars both Cold and World, keeping the world safe with gadgets that would make James Bond jealous: Flying cars? Artificial intelligence decoys? A floating helicopter city headquarters? Even their terrorist nemesis organizations have cool-sounding names: AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics)! Hydra! You'd have to try to mess this one up. Or, you know, cast David Hasselhoff.
Must Read: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD by Jim Steranko.

Agents of Atlas
The Pitch: "The A-Team does Mission Impossible on a much larger scale."
The Explanation: A resurrected FBI agent inherits a terrorist organization and decides to use it to save the world from itself. Oh, and his best friends include a talking gorilla, a siren, a robot and a nice Jewish boy for Uranus. Jeff Parker's wonderful series repurposing old characters from Marvel's pre-Fantastic Four days is funny, smart and, while it may not seem like it at first glance, exactly the kind of thing to make a movie out of. Give it to the Coen brothers and see what happens.
Must Read: The collection of the original 2007 Agents of Atlas series. Although you wouldn't go wrong with the current monthly series, either.

Black Knight
The Pitch: "What if Martin Lawrence's Black Knight movie wasn't played for laughs and didn't suck?"
The Explanation: Simplify this Avenger's backstory considerably, and you've got the plot for a movie: The ancestor of a famous soldier during the time of King Arthur ends up, through magical process, back in that era and creating the legend that his ancestor was supposed to have personified. Yes, it's Hiro's plot from the second season of Heroes, but Black Knight did it first. And, let's face it, better.
Must Read: Essential Defenders volume 1 gives you some of the character's time traveling history.

Killraven
The Pitch: "War Of The Worlds by way of Planet of the Apes."
The Explanation: Set in an alternate world so far out that it may as well be Middle-Earth, Killraven is the story of War of The Worlds Round 2: The Martians from HG Wells' original story have come back and enslaved humanity, forcing breeding so that they can eat babies (Subtle, this isn't) and otherwise just using and abusing humanity as they see fit. Only one man - Jonathan Raven, apparently called "Kill" to his friends - can save the human race in what can only be described as Battleground Earth done right.
Must Read: Essential Killraven volume 1.

Hellcat
The Pitch: "Buffy for the The Devil Wears Prada audience."
The Explanation: Patsy Walker had it all - Life as a teen superstar, the perfect boyfriend, and her future ahead of her - but somehow, she ended up as a superhero with unexplained magic powers, a former demon as an ex-husband and at least one post-death experience. If someone in Hollywood can't work out how to turn that into a series of allegories for the modern woman, they should just ask writer Kathryn Immonen, whose recent takes on the character's comic incarnation have been quirky, fun and the kind of thing we want to see more of.
Must-Read: The collection of Immonen's Patsy Walker: Hellcat stories comes out a week on Wednesday. You'll want to buy it.

Prime
The Pitch: "Big with superpowers."
The Explanation: 13 year old Kevin Green can turn into an adult superhero anytime he wants... except that he's still the same boy inside, and his adult body reacts to how he's feeling at the time. Which is great when he's feeling invincible and superhuman, but when he's feeling embarrassed or afraid...? Look out. This Captain Marvel (The one with "Shazam," this time) homage adds a layer of self-consciousness and comedy that's perfect for a family comedy... and one that's apparently been in the works for more than five years. So where is it?
Must-Read: All of Prime's appearances are out of print, but hunt the back issue bins for his early 1990s series.

Ka-Zar
The Pitch: "Tarzan meets The Incredibles."
The Explanation: There's little to recommend Marvel's shameless rip-off of Edgar Rice Burroughs' famous Tarzan, with the one exception of the little-remembered late 1990s series by Kingdom Come and Flash writer Mark Waid that brought the character and his family to New York to escape the dangers of his usual prehistoric jungle world, only for those dangers to follow him (and turn out to be something very out of his league). The mix of action, sitcom (especially Ka-Zar discovering his love of gadgets) and drama marks it out as something that could easily work for a mainstream audience, especially if some CGI dinosaurs made an appearance.
Must-Read: Again, nothing in print, but go looking for the 20 issue Ka-Zar series that launched in 1997.

Death's Head
The Pitch: "The Terminator meets Doctor Who."
The Explanation: Everyone's familiar with the concept of the unstoppable killing machine. In fact, everyone's familiar with the concept of the unstoppable killing machine that can travel through time. But what happens when said unstoppable, time-traveling killing machine happens to be a bounty hunter from the future with a strange personal code of ethics and peculiarly English sensibilities, and he's become stranded in our time? Hint: Michael Bay's explosion-filled wet dreams.
Must Read: Death's Head volumes 1 and 2.

Starjammers
The Pitch: "Pirates Of The Carribean in space!"
The Explanation: If Marvel could manage to get these X-Men characters away from Fox (The leader of the Starjammers is Cyclops' dad in the comics), then just imagine the movie that could be made from following a group of intergalactic smugglers-turned-freedom fighters around for awhile. All the fun of Star Wars with none of the Jedi stuff? Surely this is a no-brainer.
Must Read: Essential X-Men volume 3 has a good chunk of Starjammer action.

Vance Astro/The Guardians Of The Galaxy
The Pitch: "Buck Rogers with super-powers and mild insanity!"
The Explanation: The first man sent on a long-term intergalactic mission, Astro wakes up after ten centuries of suspended animation with telekinetic powers and the discovery that the universe is being enslaved by an alien race. Stealing a space ship and gathering together an intergalactic A-Team, Astro dedicates his life to freeing the human race... Or, at least, changing his name to something less dated. I mean, "Astro"? Really?
Must Read: Guardians of the Galaxy: Earth Shall Overcome.

Captain Marvel
The Pitch: "What if Earth's mightiest hero was actually here as an alien spy?"
The Explanation: Firstly, no, he's not the "Shazam" guy. This Captain Marvel is an alien sent to Earth to spy on humanity who ends up empathizing with us a little too much... and pays the price, when his race declare him a traitor for daring to defend Earth. Interstellar politics and a superstrong flying guy who likes to punch things, this is Superman updated for the cynical age. I'm saying, give it to Paul Greengrass and see what happens.
Must Read: Essential Captain Marvel volume 1.

There's already precedent for science fiction shows living on past cancellation on Saturday mornings - Lost in Space, and more famously, Star Trek both had stints as cartoons, after all, and Happy Days even became a science fiction show when it became a cartoon:


It wasn't just television shows, of course; why could forget The Real Ghostbusters or Robocop keeping the flame alive for the failed movie franchises?



With all that in mind, can you blame us for thinking of these five dearly beloved - well, and Knight Rider - shows that could perfectly translate into the animated format so that they could stick around for a few more years (and hopefully get the Futurama treatment, coming back to life with a complete season order)?

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Why it'd work: Man versus machine, including time-traveling and ridiculous stunts? The biggest surprise is that the Terminator franchise hasn't made it to Saturday mornings already.
Why it may not be the best idea: Could the show's larger questions about the nature of identity and predestination thrive in an animated series? And, even if they could, would the audience be even smaller without Summer Glau, Brian Austen Green and Lena Hedley to make it look pretty (admittedly, in bruised and bloody way) each week?
Verdict: There could definitely be a Terminator cartoon... But a Sarah Connor Chronicles cartoon...? We're not convinced.

Pushing Daisies
Why it'd work: Quirky, filled with color and with four detectives solving weird mysteries on a weekly basis, it's a less-annoying Scooby Doo with Ned's magic finger replacing the comedic titular dog.
Why it may not be the best idea: Would network standards and practices have a problem with a cartoon with such a high body count every episode? Would the show's tendency towards the saccharine seem even more pronounced with animated actors?
Verdict: If it could keep the level of writing as the original - and Chi McBride and Kirsten Chenowith as voice actors - we'd happily tune into an animated Daisies every week.

Knight Rider
Why it'd work: It's a man fighting crime with the help of his talking car. Let's face it; this should've been a cartoon to begin with. Maybe the scripts would've been better than this recent go-around, if it had.
Why it may not be the best idea: Without the real-life car porn, is there any point to Knight Rider at all? Also, could the show's creators resist the lure of turning KITT into a Transformer now that CGI budget constraints would be gone?
Verdict: Thanks to the thoroughly generic nature of the original, there's nothing worth tuning up for a Knight Rider cartoon model.

Firefly
Why it'd work: High adventure on the space waves with a band of colorful characters risking life and limb as they try to survive? It's like Dungeons and Dragons grown up and transplanted into orbit.
Why it may not be the best idea: Would it hurt too much? Perhaps - or maybe we just wouldn't be interested if we couldn't see Jewel Staite on a regular basis. But Whedon's series work in large part because of the actors as much as the writing, and it just wouldn't be the same without them.
Verdict: Sadly, we're saying that the Serenity should stay grounded.

The Middleman
Why it'd work: From its origins as a comic book to its broad cartoony comedy as a television show, this is another series that has always felt like a cartoon despite its flesh and blood stars. Plus, as a cartoon, imagine everything it could get away with but couldn't afford on an ABC Family budget!
Why it may not be the best idea: We have no reasons why. Seriously, this is a no-brainer.
Verdict: Did you miss the part where we called it a no-brainer above?

So, did we forget a show that would be perfect for the animated treatment? Do you think that we're insane for arguing that a cartoon Firefly wouldn't work? And, most importantly, who do we have to beg for a Middleman animated series?

So wait, why reboot Star Wars? I'm sick of the reboots. Movies are getting as crash-happy as my Macbook.

Oh, whine whine whine. Too many remakes, sequels and reboots. "Poor me, the entertainment industry is trying to pander to me by recreating the entertainments of my childhood, or in some cases my grandparents' childhoods." I know, it sucks to be you. But look at it this way: a lot of these entertainment franchises need the occasional reboot, because they've been running for decades and are struggling to run the latest firmware. "Women's lib" made Wonder Woman go BSOD several times in the 1960s, and more recently she's been as crash-prone as a J.J. Abrams airplane.

Actually, Star Wars is the perfect example of what happens to a long-running franchise that doesn't get rebooted. You keep adding more and more trendy stuff to the mix, piling on extra chunks of mythos and bits of backstory, and inflating the importance of minor characters until they overwhelm the narrative. (Jango Fett?) It's not the creators' fault, necessarily. It's just what happens when you try to keep a complex universe running for decades without restarting.

Eventually, your once-shiny universe gets to the point where you have to shut it down forever, or do a hard restart. And there's too much money in these old juggernauts to shut them down.

But... But... George Lucas will never go for it!

He will, once he runs out of money. It's just a matter of time. Those life-size solid-gold Yoda bidets don't pay for themselves, you know. (With the proximity activation, and the voice that says, "Wash your bottom, you will." That's expensive stuff.) All it'll take is another few insane Star Wars projects, like another big-screen Clone Wars movie and another three Star Wars TV shows that he's financing out-of-pocket. Chances are, he's already completed a few thousand scripts for his live-action Star Wars show, which takes place between the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy and probably includes a whole set of episodes about Jar Jar Binks visiting the Ewoks.

Eventually, Lucas will need some walking-around money, and the studios will put pressure on him, and someone will come up with an offer he can't refuse. It'll probably allow him to keep his original version of the galaxy far, far away chugging along. It'll be like the Ultimate Marvel Universe, or Smallville: a new reimagined version of the franchise, even as the original version keeps trundling. Call it Star Wars: Extreme. Or Star Wars: Ultraspace. Or maybe Star Wars: Even Farther Away.

Okay, so the Star Wars reboot is inevitable, if not imminent. What makes you think it could possibly be a good thing?

It could be horrendous, sure. But it doesn't have to be, and that's what this primer is about. A few years from now, when Lucas and the suits are having meetings about creating Star Wars 2.0, there are a few simple rules for how to avoid a painful Stepford Wives or Planet Of The Apes boondoggle. (Probably not including Nicole Kidman is a good place to start.)

The good news is, Star Wars has a good solid structure underneath all the crud that's been layered on top of it in recent years. At heart, it's a strong adventure story with a very simple Joseph Campbell-inspired throughline. The original Star Wars is the movie that reinvented entertainment, and forced all of those other franchises to add new features, or reboot altogether. To this day, when people reboot other franchises, they're aiming to make them more like Star Wars — blatantly so, in the case of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek.

So if some Hollywood exec is reading this, and contemplating rebooting Star Wars, the best advice we can give you is: make it more like Star Wars. With a new lick of paint, and less baggage.

Here's the longer version of that advice, in the form of eight simple rules for reinventing our beloved saga:

1) Keep it simple. Just keep reminding yourself that the purpose of a reboot is to jettison dead weight, and don't feel obliged to bring in all the extra crud about Trade Federations and midichlorians. There's the Empire, and the Rebellion, and the Force has two sides: light and dark. Stay within the lines, and give us a cool story about good versus evil, and trusting your feelings, and relying on your friends. Batman Begins scored because it gave us the essence of Bruce Wayne: the tragedy, the grief and powerless rage, and then the quest to become something bad enough to counter the darkness.

2) Keep the sense of joy and dread. Okay, I've dissed both the "hero's journey" and science fiction's obsession with "sense of wonder" before, but there is something to be said for a story where a young person starts out in a small world, and then comes out into a gigantic universe, full of moon-sized battle stations, princesses, space fights and massive ice planets. Of all the stuff that goes into "coming of age" stories, it's perhaps the most universal, since it's about leaving home. And then you find out that you're actually way more connected to this deep history that went on before you were born, because your dad was a Jedi knight. There's plenty of great stuff there.

3) Get back to the characters we care about. It sounds basic, but that's how J.J. Abrams revitalized Star Trek. Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader. The classic characters. And here's a suggestion: Anakin Skywalker's dismal progression, where he starts out as a promising young Jedi only to be seduced to the Dark Side? That is what flashbacks or prologues are made for. You could even intersperse Anakin's journey with Luke's, as Luke learns more about his father while he grows into his powers. And speaking of heroes...

4) Admit that Han Solo is the hero as much as Luke. That's the other thing J.J. Abrams' Star Trek did right: It treated Spock as the hero, just as much as Kirk. We all knew, all along, that Spock belonged in the top spot alongside Kirk, but the series had never quite admitted it before. (Probably due to Shatner's ego, among other things.) Han Solo deserves a similar elevation. Like Kirk and Spock, Han and Luke are the yin and yang, except that they go in opposite directions. Han Solo regains his altruism and optimism, just as Luke is shedding his innocence and becoming more of a hard-ass. Bring Han Solo's journey to the fore, and don't be afraid to make him more of a jerky antihero at the beginning, so it'll feel like a real arc. (And yes, that means Han shoots first.)

5) Don't be afraid to make some changes, to bring it up to date. So you're inevitably going to make some changes to the storyline, like maybe making Obi-Wan less of a lying prick. Or maybe you'll want to add more depth to the early scenes of Luke on Tattooine, to show what he's leaving behind, and flesh out his dreams of joining Biggs and Wedge in space. Other changes I might make to the first film might involve having Leia pilot an X-wing in the final Death Star attack, and elminating all the incest-vibes with Leia and Luke. (Not to mention the scene where Vader is menacing Leia, and there's some definite sexual tension. Eww.)

6) A truckload of fanservice makes the revisionism go down. But you're worried, inevitably, about getting bags of bantha poodoo on your doorstep if you make any alterations to the sacrosanct franchise. Fans can be unforgiving murglaks. But they're also very susceptible to bribery. If you throw in lots of references and nods to old stories, then you can do anything. You can blow up Vulcan. You can even make Spock's mom Winona Ryder. You can have an evil assassin cult train Batman. It's all good. You just have to throw in the Kobayashi Maru, Henri Ducard and all the stuff that fans salivate over, and they'll run with whatever changes you want to make. (Having a decent story doesn't hurt either.) Have Spock quote the best lines from Wrath Of Khan, and fans won't care that the Enterprise looks like the bar at the W Hotel.

7) Restrain your video-game impulses. Any new Star Wars will have to be Imax and 3-D and CG and huge, sure. That's just a given, unless those fads have been replaced by something even bigger and more eyeball-gouging by then. But it doesn't have to feel like a video game. The original Star Wars inspired a million video games — because it felt so real and got your adrenaline pumping. It wasn't just the special effects, it was the crazy you-are-there feeling of the Millenium Falcon's gun turrent swinging around, and the stars whizzing past as Luke shot at tie fighters. Try to keep that sense of realness, and actual peril, and genuine thrills. Not so much with the fakey rollercoaster shit.

8) Get a real writer. Please. In addition to feeling invested in the characters, we have to buy into their conflicts and quote their snappy dialog. Seek out one of the legion of Joss Whedon apprentices and press-gang him or her. I'm thinking Drew Goddard, who moved on from Buffy to write Cloverfield, and is now directing Whedon's Cabin In The Woods. Or Jane Espenson. Get someone who can do characters and banter and insane high-stakes drama, and turn him/her loose on the saga of Luke, Leia and their crazy aging biker dad. And may the Force be with all of us if you fail.

Top image from Carlos Number Two on Worth 1000.

This weekend at Fangoria's Weekend of Horror, director and writer Guillermo del Toro sat down with co-author Chuck Hogan to talk about their new book series The Strain. After yet again calling today's sparkle-vamps lame and praising classic Eastern European vampiric lore, he divulged how The Strain could have been the most amazing TV show ever.

"We started collaborating on it about three yeas ago," GDT explained to the crowd. "Originally I wrote an extended [series] bible for Fox TV. It was a long-form narrative, because I was completely addicted to The Wire. And I thought what if we bring that kind of reality into a vampiric pandemic. I went to Fox with a 12-page proposal. And they said, "We like it. Can you turn it into a comedy?" And I fucking grabbed my ticket and went away."

"I couldn't find any other format. I didn't want to do it as a movie, because then I would have to shorten the character arcs. It would be the same set of problems. I knew there was some violence and brutality in the proposal that I wanted to try out. And cable may have allowed me to do it. I find cable these days to actually be much more free than the movies. And [when you're making a movie] they're always trying to do everything PG-13, so fuck that shit."

"I talked to my literary agent.... I wanted to find a partner who was heavy into procedural stuff. Because when I wrote Mimic, and I could write fucking Mimic and I wasn't being ass-raped, I found that my New York looked anything but New York. I read a lot of bad books and then this man [The Strain co-author Chuck Hogan] came out like a fucking prince charming and I read his books and my hair floated and music came. I was hooked. He's a sick bastard. We ended up collaborating in more ways... some of the sickest shit in the book. Some of it is his fault. When you get to the passage that includes to anal blood worms, this [i.e., Hogan] is the man who made it. You'll get to it."

Also interesting (apart from the anal blood worms) is the fact that the beginning of GDT's The Strain reads a lot like the beginning of Fox's new TV show Fringe. Now the director was not personally making any claims of copy-catting, BUT comparisons have been made by others. Guillermo del Toro merely said:

"I pitched it to Fox four plus years ago, so if you see anything to do with Fringe, either it's a coincidence, or blame Fox. Because the [Strain] pitch opens with a 747 stopping dead in the middle of the runway. The CVC comes in and opens the door, and everyone is dead. So call Fox if you have any complaints, I myself don't think twice about it."