My Name Is Hiro Nakamura. I Am From The Future. I Have A Message For You: Heroes To Return To NBC

So. Heroes is coming back. Yes, that Heroes. On NBC. Network television. That is a thing that is happening. A thing that is strange and unexpected enough that I don’t even have any jokes about it. Yet.

No, I am absolutely not kidding. Stop looking at me like that. What would I possibly have to gain by lying about such a thing? Jesus, we have little enough of a reputation for journalistic integrity as things are now.

No, fuck you. Go ahead and ask NBC:

NBC is bringing back its conquering “Heroes.”

An iconic series that still commands a rabid fan base, “Heroes” will return to the network in 2015 as an event miniseries with original creator and executive producer Tim Kring at the helm, it was announced today by NBC Entertainment President Jennifer Salke.

NBC has ordered 13 episodes for a new stand-alone story arc entitled “Heroes Reborn,” with all details of storylines and characters being kept under wraps.

What could possibly be your motivation, NBC?

Trudeau Puts Doonesbury On Hiatus, Except For Sundays. Thanks For Nothing, Alpha House!

Well, the good news is that Gary Trudeau has a home run in Alpha House, the Washington Beltway comedy series he created for Amazon for on-line distribution. The bad news is, because of Alpha House‘s success, he will be putting his long running comic strip, Doonesbury, on a long term, open-ended hiatus in order to focus on his new politically satiric property, according to The Washington Post.

Say it ain’t so, Gary!

“I’ve done the strip for 43 years — 45 if you include the college edition [at Yale] — and I’m ready for an extended break,” Trudeau, 65, tells Comic Riffs.

In making the move, the New York-based cartoonist takes nothing for granted: “A hiatus comes with uncertainty, of course: I can’t assume I’ll be welcomed back a year or two from now.”

Conan’s “The Walking Dead” Cold Open Parody

I missed this last Thursday, but the Conan show parodied The Walking Dead in a cold open to honor the cast of the show. They were guests for the night. There’s a lot to like about the clip. Conan’s zombie make-up is solid. Andy Richter is remarkably well put together, considering, well, zombie apocalypse. And, the Basic Cable Band seems particularly enthusiastic covering the theme to The Walking Dead. After all those year’s of playing Basic Cable Name That Tune, it must have been very exciting for them to play a song that had a licensed copyright. All in all, well done, Conan.

Now, I’m going to have to see if I have this recorded somewhere on the Tivo.

The Walking Dead returns to AMC tonight, February 9, 2014 at 9pm.

Via Kotaku.

Guess We Know What Banners Will Hang At SDCC: Preacher Greenlit For Production By AMC

Several months ago, in a halcyon time when Boston wasn’t buried under a foot and a half of wet snow and Parker the Kitten was gleeful to get dry cat food as opposed to crawling on the kitchen table trying to gobble my damn risotto, we reported that AMC, the network that brought you The Walking Dead and The Killing (which, ironically, stumbled around after it should have been dead long after any of Robert Kirkman’s walkers), had bought the rights to develop a television series out of Garth Ennis’s and Steve Dillon’s Preacher. This was good news, while the fact that the project was to be developed by Seth Rogen was, well, weird news.

Of course, a development deal is a long haul away from an actual greenlight – just ask any 80s stand-up comic who got a five-figure check from a TV network, only to discover that it was worth relative pocket change to NBC to make sure that they wouldn’t complete with Leno, just before having to head back home to Podunk to catch a straight job on the swing shift packing bananas – and even though the rumor was that AMC paid beaucoup delores for the rights to the comic, that doesn’t mean that they would be willing to chuck the bucks behind a story that requires producing sets of not only a massive compound in the Middle East, but of a massive gun and tank battle in the desert, not to mention fucking Heaven itself.

Well, it looks like AMC thinks a little more of Preacher and the production abilities of Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg, because after years of various movie, TV and HBO rumors, Preacher has been greenlit for development.

No Laundry On The TARDIS: Capaldi’s Doctor Who Costume Revealed

The BBC is trying like hell to keep fan interest in Doctor Who up now that the 50th Anniversary festivities are over, as if for some reason the idea of a brand new Doctor portrayed by an actor with a completely different look and style wasn’t enough to keep people intrigued. But then again, maybe they’ve got a point; after all, on some level the franchise has reached its current level of popularity partially on the back of a quirky pretty boy who’s made two companions and a large percentage of the viewing audience all twitchy in the shorts for him, so I imagine it takes a certain leap of faith to hand everything over to a late middle-aged dude best known for creative profanity.

Part of the mystery has been exactly what Capaldi’s new Doctor will be wearing. Many of the Doctors have distinctive costume elements – Tom Baker’s scarf, Matt Smith’s bowtie, Christopher Eccleston’s big, swinging dick (Yeah, Eccleston’s my Doctor. What’s your point?) – that define the character, since apparently “Time And Relative Dimension Through Space” leaves no room for a fucking washing machine or a closet, or the ability to groan itself into existence anywhere near an Urban Outfitters.

Well, that part of the mystery is over, as the BBC revealed Capaldi’s Doctor costume today. So you might be asking: what’s the gimmick? Purple socks? A pocket watch? Hipster douchebag fedora?

Nah. It’s dressing mostly like a fucking adult.

New Teaser Trailer For Guillermo Del Toro’s The Strain

You may remember this found footage teaser for The Strain, a television program slated for release later this year based on a trilogy of vampire novels by Chuck Hogan.

If you don’t, let me bring you up to speed: the CDC is investigating a viral outbreak that seems suspiciously like vampirism. Newsflash: it is. Fortunately, none of the vampires seem to sparkle or mope. Instead, this 13 episode run will focus on Dr. Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) and his medical investigators, as well as a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian (John Hurt!), who knows the real score about what is going down in New York City.

A new teaser for the show has been released. While it doesn’t really give us any more information about the program, it does at least narrow the release down to “Summer”. Thank god. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with myself once Dracula and The Vampire Diaries wrap for the season. Or Hulu shits the bed and I can’t watch reruns of Forever Knight, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, or Angel. Or my DVD player breaks and…well, you get my point. But, hey, it’s Del Toro. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He must have learned something since Blade 2.

Check out the new teaser, after the jump.

Imminent Doom: Arrow Mid-Season Premiere Promo Released

Here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, we literally have about five minutes to spare today – we’re running a lot of background operations to prepare for some Web site maintenance this weekend, plus it’s snowing again and we have an appointment with our Home Office property managers to test our walls to make sure that our neighbor’s unit, where the pipes burst on Saturday (the last time it went above freezing here), isn’t spewing black mold spores into this place. And while there was a time where I would have welcomed that concept, I then turned 12 years old, and learned that alien mold was less likely to give you superpowers than a little something I like to call emphysema.

So instead of my half-finished review of X-Factor #1, I will give you this extended promo for the mid-season premiere of Arrow, which has slowly turned into one of the best superhero television shows in recent memory (Sorry Smallville, but you should have taken the lesson from The Dukes of Hazzard and understood that when John Schnieder leaves? You cut your losses and pull the plug, Plus, you sucked).

The episode, which airs on The CW this coming Wednesday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, features the debut of supervillain Shrapnel and, just based on his name, means that stuff should get blowed up real good. And you can check the promo out after the jump.

Meanwhile, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to visit the common wall, breathe deeply, and see if I get superpowers. You know, beyond the powers of a Red Lantern: spitting up blood while my heart stops.

New From The Creator Of Cowboy Bebop: Space Dandy!

They call him Dandy, Space Dandy. He captures aliens for money, is obsessed with boobies, and hangs out with a talking cat. He is also the latest project from Shinichiro Watanabe, creator of Full Metal Alchemist, Cowboy Bebop, and The Animatrix. Space Dandy has the potential to be really awesome…or really goofy. I liked Cowboy Bebop specifically because it tended toward the dark and away from the goofy. Guess we’ll have to see.

Space Dandy debuts tonight on Adult Swim at 11:30pm. Set your DVRs accordingly.

Via io9.

Talking ‘Bout Regeneration: Deleted Scene, Bonus Footage From Time of The Doctor Released

The Time of The Doctor, where Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor got old, got his regenerations back (Hmm, that’s a promising title to a chick flick), and eventually sucked the pipe (and there goes my chick flick) and regenerated as Peter Capaldi aired on Christmas Day – go figure.

And while we were unable to find a way to watch and live Tweet the original American airing – we were visiting our respective parents on Christmas, who to a one responded to our request to watch the show with, “You mean that show with the cardboard spaceships and the plastic Artoo-Deetoo knockoffs that scream, ‘Terminate?’ Yeah, I think there’s another Christmas movie starring Dean Cain on Lifetime right now…” – But we have not only caught up with the episode on TiVo, but the BBC has released a deleted scene from the episode that has forced me to contemplate the genitals of an alien, who already as at least one set of doubled organs, more than I would like.

And not only that, but they have also released a communique from Strax, that bullet-headed Sontaran douchebag, with his opinion on The Doctor’s new regeneration. And you can check them both out after the jump.

Don’t Call Me TARDIS, Whitey: Time Of The Doctor Trailer Released

Okay, so here’s the tricky thing: Matt Smith’s final turn as The Doctor will be happening in The Time of The Doctor, which will be the annual Doctor Who Christmas Special because… well, because the British. Sure, there are American news organizations swearing up and down that there is an annual War on Christmas, but over in England, Christmas has been Blitzkrieging all comers for years. Here in the states some might claim that Santa is losing ground to multiculturalism (not that I give a shit; Santa could be a plaid Martian so long as he bring me my annual case of Stone Arrogant Bastard Ale), but in London, old Saint Nick annually marches to victory on a road of bones.

But the relative strength and / or armaments of Santa Clause aren’t the tricky part. The tricky part is that the Doctor Who special is airing on Christmas Day… and that means that the editorial staff of Crisis On Infinite Midlives will be scattered across the country, visiting family. Sure, my co-Editor Amanda will be holding down the fort (and making sure Parker, our new mascot kitten, doesn’t eat every network cable in the joint), but I will be in the southern United States visiting my family, Trebuchet and Pixiestyx will be somewhere in Massachusetts, and Lance Manion will be observing his annual tradition of visiting restaurants in Boston’s Chinatown, screaming for cold tea and trying to Roofie himself.

So the question as to how we will watch and report on the death of the Eleventh Doctor is still up in the air. For last month’s The Day of The Doctor special, most of the staff gathered at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office to watch and drink and live-Tweet the experience. We are considering setting up a Google Hangout to teleconference the viewing experience (and maybe wind up with a podcast in 2013)… but that will involve convincing my parents to voluntarily watch Doctor Who (“Why is this limey mincing across my new flat screen calling me a TARDIS?” “For God’s sake, Dad, we’ll put the NCIS reruns back on in an hour!”).

So whether we can even watch the thing in a way that will allow us to report on it is still up in the air… so it might be that the trailer is all we can address in somewhat real time. And thankfully, the BBC has released the latest trailer for the special, and we can all check it out together after the jump.