“DAD!” has been lettered and passed onto proof readers and editors. The game plan now is to get back corrections that need to be made to the art and lettering. Once that happens there will be several more rounds of proof reading before ARC (advance reading copies) will be printed for marketing purposes. So as of now, it looks like we are still on schedule for an October ’08 release!

Let the death speculations begin (beware spoilers)… (Read on …)

I was only going to watch the re-airing of last year’s season finale of “Lost” so I could have on some background noise, but once the episode started I was glued to my TV. Just like the old “pop up videos” from the 90’s the whole two hour episode of lost was stuffed with random facts. Sometimes they were jokes. Sometimes they were odd facts. Sometimes they were just weird. But I totally enjoyed it! For those of you who didn’t watch here is a nice example:

This episode is entitled “Through The Looking Glass” a reference to the book by Lewis Carroll, his sequel to “Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland” and a story that explores the theme of mirror opposites. Currently, Jack is in great despair, a mirror opposite of Jack, the leader on the island that we have come to know and love.

My only question about it was “Who wrote these?” Were these written pre-strike? Were they done by some marketing or PR person who isn’t a WGA member? I mean some of the pop-ups were so anal you’d think only a hardcore fan or writer of the show could have actually written them.

With all the discussions about the strike negations, I thought now would be the perfect time to check back in with the “Why We Write” blog. The except below was written by Jaime Paglia the co-creator and executive producer of “Eureka” (man I miss that show).

Plus, let’s be honest, it’s just a damn cool job. And fun. Okay, fun as in painful. Often, like getting root canal. Like writing this essay, which given that I’m on strike, is all I’ve written in over two months, and I’m convinced is pure crap. Honestly, I hate every word and will regret having written it the moment I send it out for public viewing. But that is the life I’ve chosen. I’m one of the few, incredibly fortunate, deeply pathological people who actually gets to make stuff up for a living.

I know. I know. It’s pathetic that I’m actually writing a post to bitch about “One Tree Hill” but the TV landscape has become so empty that I can’t help watching it. However, after seeing how they handle the publishing world… well it just pissed me off.

So Lucas, one of the main characters, who has no writing experience nor has he ever taken a writing class writes a novel. He submits it to a billion publishers and gets back a billion rejections, but then magically the only large publisher that hasn’t rejected him calls and says that they read his manuscript and want to publish it.

First off… you don’t submit to publishers. You submit to agents. Even then you don’t ever send a full manuscript you send a query letter (sometimes you send the first three chapters of a novel depending on the agency’s policies). If the agency liks your query letter they will ask for the first three chapters and if they like the first three chapters they will ask for the full manuscript. Then, once you have an agent, that agent is the one who submits to the publishers!

Since there are actual writers working on “One Tree Hill” (though seriously who gets paid to write this crap) you’d think at least ONE of them would know how things work in the “publishing” world as opposed to the film world. Idiots!

Just finished the most recent Cornelia Funke’s book, “Inkspell,” and I really enjoyed it. However she over uses the word “Incredulous” wayyyyyyyy too much. I mean the word shows up easily more than 50 times (at least once a chapter). This may not seem like a big deal but the word, which is too big for her target audience, is like a huge zit on someone’s face that is so huge you can’t help but looking at it. So whenever you come across the word it pulls you out of the story and you can’t help but think “DAMN she used it again!”

Oh and for those who don’t know, “Incredulous” means unwilling to admit or accept what is offered as true. Also the pic above is a screenshot from the movie adaptation of “Inkheart.”

Joe Quesada appeared on last night’s “Colbert Report” to hype the skrull invasion and to talk about Captain America’s return. There was no mention or hard pressing questions about Peter Parker’s and Mary Jane’s divorce, but Joe Q did announce that in the Marvel Universe Colbert is still running for president and is polling extremely high.

If you missed it, don’t worry. You didn’t miss anything, plus we all know that someone will eventually post it on You Tube. Besides the Conan/Jon Stewart bit was a billion times funnier and more interesting then Joe Quesada talking out of his butt.

Just got word that Th3rd World has half a booth for the NYC-Con. The convention, which was previously held in the winter, will be from April 18^th-20^th. As long as things align that should be the perfect time for some big announcements (damn you lawyers and legal paperwork).

This is freaky. “Portal” is an inventive and fun game that came out last year and the main villain in it is a psychotic robot named GLaDOS (pic on the left). GLaDOS is seriously creepy and constantly lies saying she won’t kill you and that instead she wants to give you cake. So imagine my surprise when I see that Weathernews HQ in Tokyo created Pollen Robots (pic on the right) that seriously resemble GLaDOS. Freaky!

E! has an interview with “Pushing Daisies’” creator Bryan Fuller who says that even if the strike ends this week we won’t get new episodes till next season.

Lots of talk has been going down this past week. Essentially, even if the strike is resolved in the next week or two, we wouldn’t be back until next season. There was a preliminary conversation that involved a plan to hit the ground running and try to get episodes on the air as soon as possible, but it no longer seems like that’s going to happen. It seems most likely that we will have a very short first season and then come back in the fall for a proper season two.

This sucks but don’t get too downhearted because not all shows are in the same situation as “Pushing Daises” and with most we could possibly get a good 4-6 episodes.

In a radio interview Ellen Muth, who played George on “Dead Like Me” says that a tele-movie has been filmed to wrap-up the show. The series ended two years ago and according to Muth, if the tv-movie does well then there is a good chance the show could come back.

This is so weird. Terry Goodkind’s twelve book “Sword of Truth” series is being adapted into a live action TV show entitled “Wizard.” The final book came out this fall (it sucked and was a massive let down). Even stranger is that Sam Rami is producing the show for ABC/Disney.

“Wizard” — a first-run, scripted, live-action weekly series — has been cleared on Tribune Broadcasting’s owned stations, representing 35% of the country, for its fall launch. Production is slated to begin on the 22 episodes in May.

“We are enormously pleased to be bringing a network-quality product back to the syndication marketplace that will reinvigorate the weekly scripted, one-hour genre,” Janice Marinelli, president of Disney-ABC Domestic Television, said Tuesday. “Tribune’s stations are the ideal home for this series, and we couldn’t have asked for a better launch partner.”

CBS has found a way around the writer’s strike. They just struck a deal with a Canadian company who will produce a TV show for them. Using a foreign production company and then buying the “American Distribution Rights” means they don’t have to worry about the WGA.

In another sign of how the WGA strike is reshaping network TV’s development process, CBS Paramount Network TV is planning to team with Canada’s CTV to produce at least 13 episodes of a police drama dubbed “Flashpoint.”

What the FUCK?! “Celebrity Apprentice” was renewed for another season. I’m not even joking. The ratings are horrible and the show is total crap, yet for some reason NBC is bringing it back. God damn you writer’s strike for making NBC renew it!

I watch “Torchwood” but I’m not really a fan of it. It’s “ok” but nothing great. In fact many of the plot lines just don’t make sense, which is why I busted out laughing when Neil Gaiman posted this on his blog:

Why The People in Torchwood Season One Are All Too Stupid To Live — including the astonishingly puzzling incident where someone in 1941 has written something down on paper with black ink (a medium that will last legibly for centuries if kept out of the sun), and, unaccountably worried that ink on paper will fade and become unreadable in time, first she takes a prototype Polaroid photo of it, and then writes some of it in blood and puts it in a coffee can in a damp cellar, because these media will still be readable seventy years later. Why she didn’t make a model of it out of chocolate as well, I will never know.