• Robert Townsend (Hollywood Shuffle) both wrote and directed this movie, although he faded from the limelight once it tanked. He went on to direct a Disney Channel movie called Up, Up and Away, which was also about superheroes.
• The plot follows a fairly straightforward comic book route, having mild mannered Jefferson Reed Jefferson Reed gain powers after he gets hit by a meteor. However, they went a bit overboard with his powers.
• The meteor gave Jefferson the following powers: super strength, super speed, the ability to fly, telekinesis, laser vision, x-ray vision, freezing breath, the ability to heal quickly, the power to talk to animals, and the power to make plants grow quickly. Oh, and he can also absorb everything in a book by touching it, but only for 30 seconds, which is probably one of the lamest powers ever created.
• There's actually a scene where Meteor Man clears out a vacant lot, plants grass seeds, using his meteor powers to make it rain, and grows a field of giant vegetables and tomatoes. All to the tunes of cool, light jazz. Ouch.
• There's also a scene where the lead villain and the Meteor Man both absorb a book about "ladies modeling" and they have a vogue-off. Yes, you can't make this stuff up.
• This was Don Cheadle's fifth movie, and isn't usually listed in his filmographies or bios. He sports a blond hairdo throughout the film, and chews up a fair amount of scenery.
• James Earl Jones stars as Earnest Moses, and is dressed in an oversized baseball jersey for the whole movie, and check out his high fade haircut. It's pretty embarrassing to watch the voice of Darth Vader try and imitate Radio Raheem from Do The Right Thing.
• Not that Bill Cosby was the greatest actor to grace the silver screen, but in this film he stars as a mostly mute homeless man (he barks at dogs near the end) who gets the same powers as Meteor Man, and comes to the triumphant rescue at the end of the flick.
• Robert Guillaume of Benson fame also stars as Jefferson's dad Ted, and Marla Gibbs, better known as Florence from The Jeffersons stars as his mom. In Up, Up, and Away, Marla stars again as his mom, and Sherman Helmsley (Mr. Jefferson) stars as his dad.
• Even LaWanda Page, better known as Aunt Esther from Sanford & Son makes an appearance as a sassy nurse. Townsend really enjoyed mining older TV shows to fill the roles in his projects.
• Eddie Griffin plays Jefferson's best friend Michael, although he actually chews up less scenery than usual. Since it was only his fifth film, he hadn't hit his wisecracking stride yet.
• Frank Gorshin, who played The Riddler on the old Batman tv show and Bele on Star Trek: The Original Series, portrays big baddie Byers, in probably one of the worst roles of his life. Sometimes, there is shame in taking a job for the paycheck.
• Sinbad and Luther Vandross both have small roles in the film, and you can imagine what the combined box office power of a comedian and a classic singer would have done, if only it had been marketed properly.
• Marvel Comics produced a six-issue limited series based on the movie, where Meteor Man encounter Spider-Man. Seriously, Meteor Man meets Spidey.
• Meteor Man could see through walls with his X-Ray vision, but for some reason when he looked at people, he could see through their clothes, but not their underwear. Behold the power of a PG rating! In the scene below, you can watch as Meteor Man battles a crackhouse full of underwear clad workers, unites the Crips and the Bloods, and grows the magic field. Endure it if you can.

For example, if you buy this book, you'll learn things like how to run faster and how to keep wounds from reopening (wait, is Wolverine reading this?). And you'll get secret tips on even stranger things, such as how to make a tiny piece of soap big again and how to revive a dying ballpoint pen. I think somebody on Heroes actually had that soap power.

Every chapter is arranged into a series of dilemmas, accompanied by the urawaza solution. Want to cure your runny nose? Lisa has the answer:

Simply cut the top fronts off two green onions, stick the remaining thick white root sections into your nostrils, and let your new nose plugs do their thing. Your sinuses will magically clear up — plus, you don't have to deal with drippy boogers.

Urawaza [Amazon]

According to the authors of the study, which comes out this week in the Journal of Labor Economics:

While natural daylight patterns have some effect on people's life patterns, the demands of global business—market openings, etc—and regular television schedule demarcate the boundaries of most Americans' lives . . . Individuals in early television zones (Central and Mountain) are 6.4 percentage points less likely to be watching television between 11 and 11:15 p.m. than those in later zones, but if the sunset is pushed back by an hour the probability of watching TV at 11pm only increases by about one percentage point. The implications for people who want to change their sleep patterns — to get up earlier, say, or go to bed at a regular time — are enormous. If you are somebody who watches TV, you can simply turn the TV off earlier and give your body a cue that it's time to sleep.

If you are in the "professional service" sector (finance, information, business services), you are more likely to follow the time zone cue, while you are in other services sector (education, health, leisure, and hospitality), you are probably more responsive to television cues.

I love it when science actually backs up common sense. Though the idea that our circadian rhythms have been replaced by late-night TV rhythms is sort of creepy.

Early to Bed and Early to Rise . . . Depends on the TV Schedule in Your Time Zone [Eurekalert]

According to an article in the most recent issue of Physics World:

The "stealthiest" ship that currently exists is Sweden's Visby Corvette. Apart from being painted in grey dazzle camouflage and made of low-radar reflectivity materials, it also does not use propellers, which are the noisiest part of a ship. The vessel also has the lowest "magnetic signature" of any current warship.

But the next generation of warships could be truly invisible by exploiting "metamaterials" - artificially engineered structures first dreamt up by physicist John Pendry at Imperial College, London. Metamaterials are tailored to have specific electromagnetic properties not found in nature. In particular, they can bend light around an object, making it appear to an observer as though the waves have passed through empty space.

About the research, Chris Lavers writes, "If optical and radar metamaterials could be developed, they might provide a way to make a ship invisible to both human observers and radar systems, although the challenges of building a cloak big enough to hide an entire ship are huge."

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David Zucker has been producing and directing comedy movies sporadically since Airplane!, and most recently directed Scary Movie 3, 4, and 5. I suppose if you're on a roll, why not stick with what you know... but do people care anymore? I seriously kept waiting for something funny to happen in this trailer, thinking it would elicit at least one laugh. Well, I was wrong. It devolves quickly into tired jokes and a superhero getting partially pantsed. Whoa! You can see his skivvies! Haw haw. The trailer for Hancock had more laughs than this did. In fact, remember Will Smith talking to the mannequins in I Am Legend? That was comedy gold in comparison.

We don't want to see Leslie Nielsen brought to this. But at least now you know what Brent "Data" Spiner has been up to. Please tell us their next project isn't Science Fiction Movie.

A release describing the new microfiber explains:

Taking a cue from the millions of hairs covering a gecko's toes, researchers squeezed 42 million hard plastic microfibers onto each square centimeter of material and loaded it with various weights. They found that on a smooth, clean, vertical surface, two square centimeters of the synthetic adhesive could hold 400 grams (0.88 pounds). At the same time, the adhesive easily lifts off with minimal force and no residue . . . Previous research on gecko-like adhesives has focused on the strength of the adhesion . . . However, that the ease of attachment and detachment are equally important when developing a material that can practically be used for scaling vertical walls and ceilings.

What sets this new gecko-inspired adhesive apart from the others created thus far is that it is directional, only "sticking" when it slides along a smooth surface, not when it is pressed down. "This difference is critical because if you're climbing up vertical surfaces, you can't afford to use a lot of energy pressing down into the surface to stick," said [UC Berkeley EECS professor Ron] Fearing. "Using force to attach also requires force to detach. A gecko running uphill may be attaching and detaching its feet 20 times a second, so it'd get very tired if it had to work hard to pull its feet off at every step." The microfibers, made of polypropylene, are 20 microns long, or one-fifth the thickness of a sheet of paper, with a diameter of 0.6 microns, or one-hundredth the diameter of a human hair.

New Adhesive Mimics Gecko Toe Hairs [Eurekalert]

Amazon's "Unbox" program offers Heroes episodes but they don't work on the iPod. So you've got millions of people out there who want Heroes and Battlestar Galactica for their expensive little toys, and have to turn to BitTorrent to get it. Don't blame us, NBC. We're not going into the stores and stealing these off the shelves.

If they offered up formats that worked on iPods and other popular players at a nominal price (no one was really bitching that loudly about a buck ninety-nine), then the network would be able to reclaim some of this revenue stream. But if you keep using Windows-only video files and denying a large portion of your audience the goods, then yes, they'll find a way to get it.

'Heroes' tops the list of most pirated shows of 2007 [TV Squad]

I was going through some of the NBC press materials from just before the show launched, and you're not even listed in the cast bios.

Oh, it's crazy. There are still photos of the entire cast all over the place, and I'm not in them.

So your role was obviously meant to be minor, but has now grown to be one of the major characters on the show. At what stage during season one did you know that was happening?

Well, the funny thing is it was such a gradual progression. First of all, it was a guest spot on the pilot, that's it. There was never a promise of any episodes beyond that. It was a small part, but reading the script I thought, "This is a cool part, I don't care how small it is, people are going to notice this guy." I knew there was something creepy and dynamic about him, and when he turns out to be Claire's father in the end I remember thinking, "I don't know how they ignore that. I don't know how they don't deal with that."

As the episodes went on I think [show runner] Tim [Kring] and the writing staff just discovered this HRG guy was a good bridge between the characters and stories. They're all just discovering and coming into their abilities, and you need to have somebody who's further ahead in terms of knowing what they can do, and my character just fit the bill perfectly. Plus the creepy dynamic of having a guy who hunts "specials" who is actually stepfather to one of them is great. Is he really looking out for her or is he just harvesting? I think the moment when Tim decided HRG was going to be Claire's father, I thought it was too juicy an opportunity not to take advantage of it.

Was he always just HRG in the scripts, or did he have a name at one point before we found out what it was?

He was Man In The Horn-Rimmed Glasses in the pilot, and then just HRG from episode two on. It was just easier I guess. There was a scene in the middle of last season where they were going to reveal his name, actually I think it was in "Company Man" [episode 17 from season one]. But they just decided that it stopped everything cold and it took you out of the scene and they just decided it wasn't the time to do it.

So what do the scripts say now that we know your name is Noah?

HRG. And you know, people will refer to me by name on the show, but the scripts still say HRG.

Those glasses have become so iconic with your character, and it's kind of ironic that it's your "disguise" in a way, given the comic book roots with Clark Kent and Superman. They even had an episode where Claire was helping you pick out the glasses that become your basic costume.

That was actually my idea. There was a scene there where he was selecting glasses. But I just loved how you've seen how this guy has been "creating" her all season to a certain extent, and I liked the idea that she somehow created him as well. That's what is so great about our writing staff. Bryan Fuller wrote that episode, and I just emailed him about the idea and said "What if... " He said "God, I love it!" and the next day it was in the script, and of course he wrote it so much better than I would have. The good thing was that there were no egos in the room about it, like "What, the actor suggested that?!" It was just a case where the best idea wins, and I love the thought that she was complicit in the creation of this guy.

How influential have you been in his character as he's been evolving?

I haven't been. Truly, that was really the only idea I've pitched. I mean, there have been lines here and there where I've said, "How about this, how about that." Sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes no. I mean, I'm not out there pitching story. I just happened to see that scene and thought that it was a cool opportunity. Plus it turned out to be a really touching scene, but that's all because of the way Bryan wrote it.

So, you're not out there whispering in the director's ear?

*chucking* Well, the problem is, that's not the right ear! This is television, you gotta be whispering in the show runner's ear, or sometimes maybe the writer of that episode. They do listen to the actors if there's a good idea, but... if you're a squeaky wheel you don't necessarily get greased. You get squashed. And for good reason, I mean you don't want the inmates taking over the asylum.

Well, your character has changed a lot as the show has gone on. When it first started we thought, "Okay, he's the bad guy."

I was the face of evil!

But by the end of the season one, we're thinking "Oh, he's just a nice guy looking out for his daughter." However, when season two starts, you go to Russia and murder someone in cold blood, you almost murder Bob, the new face of the "Company," you have no qualms about torturing Kristen Bell's character and so forth. I know you've been ambiguous as to whether he's good or bad, but which one is it?

You know... I don't think it's ambiguous. I'm not being coy when people say is he good or is he bad and I say "yes." I say that because he is both at once. One of the reasons my character shot Ivan in Russia was to bring home the fact that this guy is not a good gut a lot of times. I don't think it's ambiguous, I think it's clear that he is both things, and that he has the capacity to be really good, and the capacity to be really bad. That's one of the reasons the character is so successful, and I think they realized that from the beginning.

I was concerned when I read the script where I shot Ivan, and you know we're setting him up to be a loving grandfather and the whole thing with his daughter and we're taking his memories... that was heartless. But, they wanted something like that, they wanted something shocking, they wanted to remind the audience that this guy can be nasty and heartless. But, there's always "Claire-Bear" if he needs to be rehabilitated.

Although, he was even ready to duct-tape her recently when she wouldn't listen to you.

Well, you know there's only so much lip you can take from your teenaged daughter.

You're a father yourself, and has being a dad had any bearing on how you approach the character?

Yeah it has, I mean it can't help but inform your choices, your reactions, to things. How you would feel in certain circumstances and situations.

So when your own daughter reaches the age where she's dating, do you think you'll be a little more calmer with her than HRG would?

Not a chance. No, the whole dating thing... I mean she's a pretty girl and already boys are interested in her, but I'm all no, no, no, no, no. I promise you, I will put the fear of god into the boy's that come around the house.

Maybe they'll already have seen the show and you won't have to!

I'll put together a little "greatest hits" video compilation of me and say, "Put this on your iPod, Skippy."

Were you worried initially that your character was too evil?

You mean early on? No, not really. I mean, I knew early on that I wasn't Sylar. That would have worried me a bit. Generally the sort of arch-villain, the guy who is clearly a villain, usually has a limited shelf life. Zach has been so spectacular that they've kept him on. I knew early on that HRG's affection for his daughter was real. I normally don't ask a lot of questions, but I wanted to know if I had killed Suresh's father, was I Sylar, and did I genuinely love my daughter. Once I got those answers, I knew how to play it. I mean, playing the bad guy is fine. You get most of the best lines, and it's usually very interesting to play.

So, how much of a pain is Mr. Muggles to work with?

He's a diva. There's only one Mr. Muggles, and his name is Lestat. They had a substitute Mr. Muggles at one point because Lestat left us for a movie, but he came back with his tail between his legs, as we knew he would. But he's brilliant, he's so well-trained. There was a dog they used when Lestat was off doing his movie, and he was just not a close match. I don't know, they put a sweater on him, they tried everything. Early on I remember people were saying that Mr. Muggles was Sylar, before his identity was revealed. It was great.

So the scene where we see you on the exam table after you've been shot through the eye... did you hit the gym a lot in order to get ready for that?

Well, it's probably been about ten years since I had to take my shirt off for a scene. Let's just say that when I saw the script I had about two weeks, and there were more pushups and curls done in those two weeks than in the previous two years combined. I keep myself in pretty decent shape but Milo [Ventimiglia, who plays Peter Petrelli] is 30 and ripped, and I'm almost 50 and not quite so ripped, so the bar has been set pretty high on our show. Talk about the fear of god when I saw that scene. I've had that happen twice on the show, once where I was given a two and a half page scene all in Japanese, and then where I found out I was going to be naked on the slab. I was like, couldn't they maybe combine those two scenes? Have me speaking Japanese while I'm naked? Then I'd have a complete nervous breakdown.

Did you have to wear prosthetics for that scene?

You mean for the eye? That was all CGI. I thought you were asking if I was wearing prosthetic muscles, like the Batman suit. The eye, that was all done in CGI, including the scene where I originally got shot, with the blood spray. Joe Potasky did such a good job writing that script, and Greg Yaitanes did such a good job directing it.

I can tell you, I loved the scene with Kristen Bell with her feet in Mr. Muggles' doggie bath. I saw something online somewhere where people were wondering how many takes it took to say that with a straight face. I can tell you it took a lot of takes to get through that. The great thing about that seen was that [HRG's wife] Sandra got to see him as HRG for the first time. She gets to see him in action and have some idea not just how he operates, but also what he's had to do to keep Claire from becoming that. That was a really well-conceived idea to have her be privy to that. It wasn't like that in the first draft, but I think they thought about it and went, "You know, she should be there."

It does seem like she's had much more of a presence on the show this season.

Mmm hmm. I mean, Ashley [Crow]'s so good and it's nice to see her get to have her moments where she gets to hold the gun on Bob and things like that. She's an amazing actress.

Have they given any thought to increasing [Claire's brother] Lyle's role? It seems like he'll have like one line every six episodes.

I have no idea! To be honest, I think it's almost a running joke where Lyle gets his one line, and Claire says, "Shut up, Lyle." *laughs* He's doing a great job, but he hasn't had a whole lot to work with.

So, we've heard that there is going to be a high body count on Monday's episode. Can you tell us who dies?

Well, I can't... but I'll give you good reason why I can't. I think it's left somewhat ambiguous as to whether or not those persons are dead. I'll say it looks really bad for certain people, but it might not end up that way. And it won't be a "brought back from the dead" kind of thing, but maybe what we're seeing didn't come to pass as we think it did.

Speaking of brought back from the dead, do you worry that they've painted themselves into a sort of "no death" corner? With Takezo Kensei/Adam's blood healing Nathan's disfigurement, and Claire's blood bringing you back to life, how can anyone actually "die" on the show now?

Well, that can go away as quickly as it came. I'm sure that's one of the things they'll be addressing, is the idea of rules. What's doable, what's not doable. With mutation and different viruses and different evolutionary processes, it could be that an infusion of Claire's blood won't do you anymore. People have been wondering if I might have the ability to regenerate now, and I don't. It was a one-time fix. But it's entirely possible that her antibodies might not work on anyone else.

On this show there's a tremendous amount of people lying in wait. You know what I mean? People who say "Wait a minute, that's not going to work out!" It's a completely different age now in terms of people willing to go along for the ride. The bad news with that is, that means you get hypercritical audiences, but the good news is that it tends to be in direct proportion to their devotion to the show. Certain people will complain and complain and complain, but they're still tuning in and watch, so it works both ways.

The initial reaction at Comic-Con in San Diego was very supportive. They showed a 73-minute version of the pilot there, and support just went out from there on the internet, and I think that was really important to the early success of the show. The good thing about coming into people's homes every week is that it gives you a chance to build your base. The funny thing is, we're getting numbers right now that are on par with our premiere, and all the trades then proclaimed us a hit. But, because our numbers have come down from our high point, the same trades are saying we're not doing so well. But these are the same trades that proclaimed us a hit at with those same numbers! It's a different time these days, you're just not going to get 45 million viewers in one night.

Earlier you mentioned evolution, and we were wondering if they employed an evolutionary scientist or a geneticist on the show.

Yes, Sendhil. He has to research everything and get back to us. *laughs* I'm not sure if anyone in particular is employed. I'm sure there are plenty of publications they consult but at the end of the day... they're kind of making it up.

What, you mean people don't really have superpowers?

Yeah, that is one of the things that you sort of want to say every now and then when people say "Oh my god, that's so unrealistic!" It's like, yeah, but not any more so than someone who can read minds or someone who can fly. I mean, it's one thing to be frustrated, but to expect a level of reality... this ain't no documentary, I don't know if you've noticed.

Recently during the writer's strike, creator Tim Kring came forward and basically apologized for the slow start season two has had. To that end, he said they would be fixing things, and the show did seem to improve. But we know it takes a long time to write and shoot these things. Did they actually change anything around to make episode 11 the "finale" of this first story arc?

No. People forget how far in advance these things are shot. By the time Tim did that interview, we were already shooting episodes 12 and 13, even though we didn't get them finished, so those aren't in the can. I don't know what people expect because it ain't shot live. It's months in advance. I thought it was a courageous thing of him to do. If you're a disgruntled fan of the show, I think it was nice to hear from the show's leader and creator that, "We hear you. We get what the problems are and we're going to address them."

Having said that, I also think it's not like this has been a disastrous season. Everybody seemed to be gearing up for either a) a letdown from season one in terms of how fans experience the show, or b) backlash. You know, they build you up so they can tear you down. I mean, that's a fact. I understand some of the frustrations, but it's not like all of the sudden it became a terrible show. There was just such high expectations. I also remember people having problems from the first season, and fans saying things like "Why aren't things moving faster?" and "Why are these storylines not connected?" You know, it wasn't like the first season was all perfection. It's a big show with a lot of moving parts, and nobody is going to like everything all the time. That's true of any show that is a big ensemble... there's a lot going on. But I think it's ending strongly, and assuming this writer's strike ever ends, when we go back to work it will be with a clearer mission in mind of what the fans want.

In talking about "fixing" the show, Tim said that he wasn't sure about the romance between Claire and West. Does that mean West isn't long for this world?

I don't know. I'm don't know if he was being specific about that, I think he just meant that maybe romance may not be a good fit for us. I do know that the character of West has been growing on the audience recently. At first, people found him annoying and stalker-like, but now they know he's not a stalker and doesn't mean her arm, they're starting to like him a lot more. I'm not sure what there plans are for him, I really don't know.

The studios are meeting with the writers right now. If the strike ended tomorrow, when do you think you all would be told to report back to work?

Probably late January. I mean, I don't think there's any way we'll be back on the air in January. I think the studios will start to feel the effects of this strike the most when people really get tired of all of the reality television.

How far have the scripts gone past Monday's mid-season finale?

Well, we were shooting episodes 12 and 13 when the strike shut us down, because rewrites were no longer possible. Once we go back and start shooting again, it's hard to tell if those will be rewritten, or reshot. It's all up in the air right now.

Do you think the show will sustain through the writer's strike?

Yes, I do. I mean, I don't know how long we're going to be off, but I think that when we come back on there will be people who have never seen it who want to tune in, and I think that the people who were disaffected will watch to see what we've changed. I was talking to someone who said there's no question that Heroes will come back very strong. I mean, Desperate Housewives, Lost... second years are difficult for a reason, and part of that is the exhaustion with getting a show up and running and going, and our show is just massive. Most shows shoot in eight days, but we're 12 to 14. We're shooting on a Sopranos-style schedule but doing twice the episodes. It's a really big undertaking.

Last season and this season have featured a future disaster that may or may not happen. Is Heroes saying that the future is a scary place, or is it simply a way to provide a ticking clock plot device?

I think mostly it's a ticking clock. Every show represents its place and time in some way, and one thing this show really represents is a very nervous world where people are fearful. People don't trust government, we don't trust corporations. What we all can get behind are ordinary individuals who rise up and become people who can save us from ourselves. I think it's really tapped into that. I don't think it's a political statement about the future.

You have had some veteran actors on the show, like Malcom McDowell, George Takei, and now Nichelle Nichols. Have you had scenes with any of them?

George. I had that scene with George where I did two and a half pages in Japanese with him, but I haven't worked with Malcolm or Nichelle, or Joanna Cassidy who was on recently and who I adore. I wish she would have been around longer. I haven't worked with Cristine (Rose, who plays Angela Petrelli) and I've barely worked with Adrian. I only had one scene with him where I'm chasing him through a parking lot, but that's been it. There's still a lot of people I haven't really worked with yet.

Plus with all the time travel on the show, it's hard to remember that certain characters haven't even met each in the present day storyline.

Right, I haven't worked with Masi in the "present," and so on. The worlds have been fairly circumscribed.

It's funny you mention Joanna Cassidy because she's obviously in the new Blade Runner DVD set that's coming out, but Warners went back and did some fixed to the set, and filmed her in the present day and then dropped her into some scenes digitally and it looks amazing. So when she turned up on Heroes, we had just seen that and she still looks great today.

Oh, she looks fantastic. I don't know how old she is, but she's still a sexy woman. Plus she was so great on Six Feet Under, just crazy and wonderful. I was really hoping to get to work with her.

A website recently featured a bunch of photos with Heroes actors posing with a cup of Slusho, which we know is some sort of Slurpee-like drink from J.J. Abrams' universe and from the upcoming Cloverfield film, but what does it all mean?

That's about all I know! I was basically handed the cup of Slusho, given that much information, and that was it. We were just goofing around, but some of those pictures are hysterical.

Whatever happened to the character who was introduced who could talk to computers? She seems to have vanished.

I think that literally what happened was that she got another series and we lost her. I think she lives on in all of the online things they've created for the show, they call her Wireless. I thought that was a brilliant idea and she was really good in the part, I don't know if they'll bring her back or now. I know there's been talk about bringing Christoper Eccleston back too.

So, tell us about your background. Most viewers are probably too young to recognize you from Dynasty.

I run into the occasional Heroes fan who is also a Dynasty fan, but they're not actually natural constituents. I mean, it'll be... almost 20 years since I was on Dynasty. 1988 was my last year on the show.

You did something like 150 episodes, right?

At least. That's a long run. Plus that's back in the day when it was 6 and 7 days per episode, and we'd do 30 episodes. It wasn't that brutal because it was an ensemble show. It didn't have a lot of special effects or stunts, it was basically a lot of yakkin'.

Cyanide kills by preventing cells from using oxygen — essentially asphyxiating you at the cellular level. Usually it causes death very quickly. But humans are naturally a bit immune to cyanide's effects, which is why we are able to eat pitted fruits like peaches which contain small traces of the toxin. Nagasawa's fast-acting cure for cyanide floods the body with the detoxifying substances that it would naturally use when helping you digest a peach.

Once this cyanide antidote hits the market, people can walk into a room full of cyanide gas without falling into a coma and dying. Combine this with the new cloaking material discovered a few days ago, and you've got an invisible, invincible human.

Fast-acting cyanide antidote [Eurekalert]

• Tim Kring and Jeph Loeb explained they'd literally pried the footage out of NBC's hands to bring it to us at the Jules Verne Festival. It's never been seen before, and might be the only new Heroes footage for weeks or months.


• The footage starts out by summing up the tail end of Volume Two. Nathan Petrelli gets shot, Noah Bennet (HRG) leaves his family to go back to work for Bob and the company, and Sylar gets his powers back.


• Then we move into the new stuff when Angela Petrelli says "There's going to be some changes around here." Based on what we can see, she's moved into a powerful role at the company.


• Sylar confronts Elle (Kristen Bell) and she tells him, "I'm not scared of you." To which Sylar says, "You should be. I'm a psychopathic killer." She retorts, "Takes one to know one."


• Angela explains that the prisoners kept on Level Five, one of The Company's prison areas, are "The most dangerous, the most powerful: rapists, arsonists, killers." And guess what: Level Five gets breached.


• There are shots of most of the major Heroes all dead. Peter as a corpse in a pool of blood, Hiro is pinned to the wall with his own sword, lifeless. Matt Parkman has his throat torn open.


• Noah Bennet says, "It's like twelve Sylars running free."


• While there might be a lot more villains, it's doubtful they've cast them all yet. There's one new African American bad guy running amok who seems to have the power of super-strength and speed, but it's not totally clear in the clips. Although he does rip one guy's heart out, which can't be good.


• Sylar is all over the place in this one. At one point, he's held captive in a room which looks like another Company cell and has tubes running up his nose. Maybe he has some sinus problems, who knows.


• At one point, Sylar puts his arm around Angela's shoulders, in a friendly way. So either they're working together now, or they both have some creepy dating habits.


• Several villains are walking towards the camera, Reservoir Dogs style, but they're all in shadow so we don't know who they are. Yet.

• Chloe's power is finally revealed: While we already knew Chloe was a meteor freak with some kind of magical healing tears, it wasn't really shown what she could actually do until this episode. She takes Jimmy's cut finger in her hand and makes the poor little boo-boo go all bye-bye with some sort of weird E.T. light-up hands. Her one tear could bring Lois back from the dead, but it takes a lot of effort just to seal up a one-inch cut? Give us a break.
• Grant Gabriel is a clone of Julian Luthor: We've also knew that Grant Gabriel was Lex's long-dead brother Julian for a few episodes, last Thursday was the first time it was revealed that he was actually a clone of Lex's brother, who died when he was 12 years old. Lex has been playing around in the cloning toybox and trying to bring his brother back. The first effort resulted in a clone who aged prematurely, but he seems to have it fine-tuned now. However, everyone seems to have forgotten about Lucas Luthor, Lex's other younger brother who he had hidden away several seasons ago. Counting last night's old clone, Julian, and Lucas, that gives Lex quite a family reunion to come home to. Of course, he put a bullet into old clone's chest, which will make it a bit awkward at future family meetings.
• Brainiac is on the way back: The last time we saw Milton Fine / Brainiac, he was reduced to a tiny bit of goo living in a glass vial. Last night Chloe told Clark that the fluid was evolving and getting smarter each time it tried to escape. It's liquid with a memory and a mission, but how the hell does Chloe come by this stuff? She can translate Kryptonian, hack military firewalls, and score top-secret lab reports. Too bad her talents are wasted in the basement of the Daily Planet. She could be a one-woman Geraldo.
• Clark is actually Bizarro: Clark returns from a two-week visit to the Fortress of Solitude and everything seems to be just hunky dory with the Young Adult of Steel. That is, until he hugs Lana near the end of the episode and we his shift turn angular and crystalline for the briefest of seconds, meaning he's the Bizarro version of Clark. Then we see what we imagine is the real Clark, trapped inside some kind of glass chamber back in the Fortress that looks like the device that took Supey's powers away in Superman II. So why the hell is Bizarro acting so nice and hugging folks? We'll have to wait until next year to find out.

• We were going to add "Clark finally flies!" to this list, but it turned out to be Bizarro-Clark shooting up that stairwell like a comet, so we'll still have to wait to see him take to the skies. At which point the show should instantly be canceled for violating its "No flights, no tights" rule. Then again, they should have put the brakes on this show back when it started to suck. Four seasons ago.

In Saving Charlie, fans will discover why Hiro has gotten more action on the show than the hormonal Peter Petrelli. The plot features Hiro's missing six month time-travel adventure with Charlie the cute waitress, when he went into the past to try and save her from Sylar. While he ultimately had to let her die in one of those "it was meant to be" moments, they did fall in love.

The novel is being put out by Del Rey Publishing, and is written by Aury Wellington, who seems to be best-known for her novelizations of teen angst drama The O.C. . It also features one of the dullest book covers we've ever seen. But we're trying not to judge. We need our Heroes fix.

When the Brotherhood comes calling, it forces potential members to undergo brutal tests and wear funky LED handcuffs to determine if they're worthy or not. The film has good-looking special effects and has a The Matrix meets The X-Men feel, with a dash of bondage thrown in. Looking forward to seeing this one when it hits stateside (it's variously listed under the English titles Brotherhood of Legio and Brotherhood of Legion).

[Quiet Earth]

The X-Men already have an upcoming spinoff with the lengthily-titled X-Men Origins: Wolverine coming out sometime in the next couple of years. However, Fox wants to prime the registers a bit early and start pumping out direct to DVD movies for the lesser characters, while top-tier mutants like Magneto get their own feature films.

Joe Carnahan, who directed last year's wankfest Smokin' Aces, is already working on a direct to DVD Smokin' Aces sequel (shoot us already), and possibly a direct to DVD X-Men Origins: Juggernaut movie. Last week he posted an image of Juggernaut on his blog, saying "I'll let you guys go nuts on this one." If by "go nuts" you mean "wail in despair," then no problem.

DVDX [Comic Book Resources]

Heroes

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• There's going to be a fairly high body count when Season Two: Volume Two ends next week, including one of the main characters. Although if we've learned anything, it's that no one stays dead on Heroes.
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• Looks like Naomi isn't dead, despite having a knife hurled into her back by Locke at the end of last season.
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• Remember that mysterious freighter we told you about? It'll be bringing in a slew of Naomi's friends, which she phoned up on her walkie talkie at the end of last season.
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• If you remember the end of last season, then you recall that the show had jumped forward in time a great deal. A heavily-bearded Jack was living a life of booze and oxycontin addiction, and had been off the island for some time. According to some insiders, we'll be jumping both forward and backwards in time not only all season, but until the series wraps.
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• The first ten episodes will be all about the newly discovered Cylons, there were a few hints about that during the season four preview at the end of Razor, including Colonel Tigh leveling a gun at Admiral Adama on the command deck.
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• There's going to be a new Six named Natalie, although it's unclear if that means she'll be another actress playing a replacement Six, or simply another Six. The problem is, everyone knows what that famous face looks like around the fleet, so that would make it hard to have Tricia Helfer in some new Six boots.
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• We'll see who the final Cylon is before the end of the season. Can we issue a collective "duh" on that one? If they didn't give that up, there would probably be some minor rioting, millions of angry internet threads, and Ronald Moore's house would probably be reduced to ashes.
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Spoiler Chat [E! Online]

• Telekinesis: This power is the most common among the three. While the X-Men had "Marvel Girl" Jean Grey who could move things just by thinking about them, The 4400 have Richard Tyler and his mega-powered daughter Isabelle, both of whom share telekinesis. Of course, the first ability that Sylar ever took from anyone on Heroes was also telekinesss, which he put to extreme use by opening up people's brain cavities.
• Healing: Woverine's enviable healing ability has spawned numerous knockoffs, including both Claire and Takezo Kensei on Heroes. On The 4400, Shawn can't heal himself, but he does have the ability to heal others, and in a clever twist he can reverse this ability and injure others as well. While it doesn't have the instant pizazz that Wolverine and Claire get when they grow their own face back, it's a nice adaptation of that ability.
  
• Telepathy: The ability to read minds and project thoughts has long been a mainstay in the X-Men books, and The 4400 seem to have most of their powers stem from the mind. Last year police officer Matt Parkman on Heroes was the only person who could read minds, but this season he seems to be able to project his thoughts outwards to others as well. Isabelle on The 4400 is something of a wunderkind among the 4400, and counts telepathy as just one of her many abilities.
• Precognition: The ability to tell the future always seems to be popular, but it also always seems to come with a price. On Heroes, Isaac Mendez could paint visions of the future, but he couldn't escape his own death at Sylar's hand, which he had painted previously. The 4400's young Maia can see visions of the future, which she records in diaries. This is similar to the X-Men character called Destiny who also recorded her visions in diaries. Although she is now dead, her diaries were one of the main plot points of the 2001 — 2004 series "Xtreme X-Men."
• Creating illusions: Creating illusions and different realities for people happens in the X-Men with Psylocke, Candice does it on Heroes (until Sylar bashes her head in) as does Matt's father, and Alana on The 4400shares this trait. Matt's father can actually trap people in that reality, leaving their body in a comatose state, making him particularly nasty.

• Until Claire pops some claws out of her hands, or Isabelle starts calling herself Marvel Girl, we'll consider them more as loving tributes instead of a direct knockoff. Although The 4400 needs to stir things up a bit and start handing out some alternate powers. Heroes has them beat in that area, with new powers popping up every week. Of course, with Heroes' "Volume Two" wrapping up very soon, we'll see who survives the cut.

They're going to let you pick and choose from an extremely limited set of flashcards and create your own hero! Visitors to their "Create A Hero" site will be able to choose the parameters for a new "hero," such as a "Drop Dead Gorgeous Female From Asia With A Medium Body Type." Since when was that a superpower? If your choice garners enough votes, they'll actually appear on the show the following week. That's right, they have plans to do this every week.

Whew. Show saved! No more plot holes or dragging storylines, thanks NBC! Seriously, if the writers are going to have to juggle things like working in a gimmicky new hero every week, how are they going to be able to get the show back to last season's heights of critical acclaim and viewer adoration? This just smells like a desperate bid to shoehorn in some advertising, since the whole "Create A Cameo" is sponsored by Sprint. Ditch those cell phones, pick up your pens (post-strike, of course) and give us back the show we loved.