Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

PTG Episode 125 is brought to you once again by Florida Supercon. We’re just days away from the beginning of the fun down at the Doubletree Miami Mart, Airport Hotel and Exhibition Center. As we announced during the last hour, hotel rooms for the event are sold out for Friday and Saturday night, but that shouldn’t stop you from getting down there and enjoying as much of the convention as possible. If you’re there on Saturday or Sunday, make a point to head over the main stage and check out Revenge of the Nerd Comics, featuring our friend Lisa Corrao along with a host of other comedians speaking geek as only they can. We have a great chat with Lisa to start off this hour, talking about Revenge of the Nerd Comics, along with Star Wars geekdom, going to conventions, and the perils of handmade Halloween costumes at early ages. We thank Lisa once again for taking time between her performances at Bonkerz Comedy Club in Daytona Beach to chat with us for a bit–it was a lot of fun and hopefully we can have her back on the show again soon!

Also in this hour, we present our first reviews of Burn Notice on USA and Merlin on SyFy. Both shows have a lot going for them, including clever writing and great character actors having fun with great material. We’re going to keep on reviewing Burn Notice and Merlin, but what other shows we cover is still in your hands. There’s ONE more day to vote in our Summer Shows Poll over on our Message Board at SomaCow.net/forum. We need more votes to break ties between shows, so sign up for a FREE profile there and cast your vote before tomorrow. Make your voice heard!

We wrap up the hour by spotlighting two comic releases from last week: Batman #700 (Morrison, Daniel, Quitely, Kubert, Finch) from DC Comics, and Captain America #606 (Brubaker, Guice) from Marvel. Enjoy!

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

PTG Episode 66 is brought to you by the art and craft of creative writing. Once upon a time, in really what seems like a lifetime ago, I was a writer, or at least I aspired to be one. I went to school to learn how to write well, successfully obtained degrees in Creative Writing, and have even taught others what I learned in terms of the craft of Creative Writing. But I longer consider myself a “writer” for the simple fact that writers WRITE. They can’t help themselves but to write. They feel compelled at some point, at some moment during each and every day to put their thoughts, imaginings, ravings, and wild flights of fancy to print (or, in our technological day and age, to pixel). There’s a hunger, a need, to produce the written word that consumes writers and drives them to spend a great deal of time alone, away from the distractions of the outside world, hunched over a computer screen that slowly causing them to go blind, hashing away at stories, poems, essays, or if they are truly ambitious, novels. Alas, never once in my scholarly pursuit of writing did I feel this compulsion my mentors and friends often described–to be honest, I chose writing as my scholarly track because people said I was good at it, and it came rather naturally to me. I wrote for the approval of my peers, my teachers, and my mentors. When I finished the final drafts of stories, there was very little sense of accomplishment or joy, but rather a profound sense of relief that an assignment was out of the way and I could focus on something else. I’ve often thought that perhaps later in life, when I’ve lived and experienced more, and had something of value to say about it all that I might feel that compulsion, and that I might return to writing and do it for the RIGHT reasons. But until then, if indeed that time ever comes, I can only stand up, cheer for, and admire those lionhearted souls who, regardless of skill or talent, face the emotional abyss that is the blank page at the start of every single writing day and conquer it by filling it with words, words, words. They are truly heroic in their own way–in my mind, they’re as heroic as the characters they write about, if they are so inclined to write in genres featuring heroes and villains. Their praises can never be sung enough, especially if they toil in anonymity because their work has yet to see the light of mass print.

Why am I talking about this? Well, because during Episode 66 we spent quite a bit of time talking about National Novel Writing Month, or “NaNoWriMo”, as it is now known all over the world. NaNoWriMo is the ultimate challenge for writers of all levels of skill, no matter where in their careers they might be: Produce 50,000 words within the month of November, roughly 1,600 words per day. Those words can be the sum total of a complete novel, or the first 50,000 words of a longer piece. Spend the entire year planning, plotting, strategizing how your novel will fall into place if you wish, but put no words to paper or screen until 12:01AM November 1st. It requires the utmost discipline to keep a steady pace, for not only must you produce, but you must turn off your “inner editor”, the voice in your head that causes you to backspace and rewrite the same sentence half a dozen times until you’re happy with the utterance, only to repeat the same procedure with the next sentence. Time management is just as important as inspiration when it comes to NaNoWriMo, and it’s a constraint that cause many who undertake the challenge to not reach the finish line when the end of the month rolls around. Having known several people who have successfully risen to the task of NaNoWriMo, I know its rigors, its headaches, its tremendous potential for that sense of achievement that comes from knowing you’ve succeeded where so many others have failed, and I always tip my cap to those who go for it year after year. The competition itself continues to grow year after year, and is in itself an amazing story. To learn more about it, head over to nanowrimo.org, and to those of you who are already underway with this year’s competition, best of luck!

In addition to all the NaNoWriMo talk, in this, our LONGEST hour ever (no joke-1 hour 12 mins … yes, I know an hour can only ever be 60 mins. You know what I mean, smartass.), we bring you Flash reviews of last week’s Heroes and FlashForward episodes, as well as a Top Comic Picks segment focused on DC Entertainment’s “Big Three”, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, who were all featured in new books last week. Hope you enjoy, and while you’re listening, don’t forget to head over to the Orlando Sentinel’s Orbbies competition page and get in your daily vote for PTG! We need every vote we can get to win this thing!

PTG Episode 35 is brought to you by SomaCow’s Cure for the Run. As a part of the SomaCow Media Network, Prime Time Geek will be taking part in this event with supreme geekly gusto! If you’re local to Orlando and you wish to be a part of the event, come down to Wall Street at 4PM to register for the run on Saturday, August 22nd. A form for recording sponsors/donations can be found in the message thread linked above, or you can donate directly, probably the best option for the out of town listeners. All donations will benefit Rock for Hunger. And if you’re worried about actually “running”, not to worry–you run, jog, trot, skip, walk, or crawl the .05k distance (that’s about 164 ft!)

In this episode, I fume for a bit about DC Comics‘ replacing current Batman scribe Judd Winick and artist Mark Bagley with Battle For the Cowl writer Tony Daniel after just four issues, the latest in a seemingly-interminable string of blunders in regards to restarting mainstay titles, while also professing complete and utter mea culpa over “Wednesday Comics“, which is turning out to be lots of fun and worth the $3.99 each week. Funny thing, though–not sure what to do with 16 pages of newspaper-quality paper once I’m done reading it. Bagging it won’t protect it from turning yellow, but throwing it away or recycling it like regular newspaper just seems … wrong. Current favorite strips running in Wednesday Comics: Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner’s “Supergirl”, Brian Azzarello’s “Batman”, and Kurt Busiek’s “Green Lantern.” I want to like the “Superman” strip from John Arcudi and Lee Bermejo, but so far I’m digging Arcudi’s characterization of Clark, and Bermejo’s art and colors, while pitch perfect for stories like Lex Luthor: Man of Steel and Joker, is a bit too subdued for a Superman story. Watch for more reviews of “Wednesday Comics” in the weeks to come–I have a feeling it’s going to end up in PTG’s Top 3 more often than not.

Oh, and special guest co-hosts Loubowski (Lou Ornstein) and Glakk (Howard Herbst) help me break down Domino’s new line of “American Legends” pizzas in the “Eat More Geek” segment. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say we imagine how tasty they might be if someone ELSE besides Domino’s made them. It’s a fun segment, definitely–we enjoyed recording it, so I hope you enjoy listening.

Hour 1 of Prime Time Geek Episode 22 is brought to you by all the movies I pulled sound bytes from in order to create Mad Mario’s intro, which kicks off the podcast. Be the first listener to comment on this episode and list the correct titles of each of the films from which I pulled material to create Mad Mario’s intro in the order they’re used in the intro and WIN two passes to the Florida SuperCon Convention in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida June 6th-8th, courtesy of Bad Apple Comics! Again, the FIRST comment posted on this episode with the correct titles in the correct order will win the passes. Contest ends Saturday, May 30th, at the start of the next show. Good luck!

So Terminator: Salvation dropped into theaters this weekend, only to get dropped in the fight for box office supremacy by another sequel, Night at the Museum 2: Battle for the Smithsonian. According to the Associated Press, Terminator: Salvation took in $51.9 million, while Night at the Museum 2 took in just over $70 million. Salvation’s three-day weekend total, $43 million, is actually LESS than the franchise’s last cinematic outing, the fan-derided Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, made in its opening frame ($44 million in 2003). Having seen the movie, it’s not hard to imagine what the word of mouth effect was on the film from those who might have ventured to midnight showings during the previous week, nor it is hard to foresee a HUGE drop-off in ticket sales going into its second week of release. Of all of this summer’s geek-centric movie releases, only Star Trek has shown the resilience to forestall greater-than-50% decreases in ticket sales over successive weeks. Over Memorial Day weekend, Trek’s third weekend in release, the film brought in another $29 million, good enough to place third behind Night at the Museum 2 and Terminator and bringing its domestic box office gross total to $191 million. Pretty damned impressive for a Star Trek film, I think most everyone would agree.

Special guest co-host Mad Mario, PTG’s Highlord of Home Theater, and I discuss the merits and shortcomings of Terminator: Salvation first thing in Hour 1, then move on to discussing DC Comics’ “Batman: Battle for the Cowl” series in its entirety, and wrap up the hour with Mad Mario’s reviews of Resident Evil 5 for the XBOX 360, Killzone 2 for the PS3, and MadWorld for the Nintendo Wii. Enjoy!

PTG Episode 16, Hour 1 is brought to you by this clip, courtesy of MTV, from the upcoming Star Trek film directed by J.J. Abrams. The audio of the clip starts off the podcast, and you can listen AND watch the clip in its entirety below. In it, well, little Jimmy Kirk (no, he’s not quite James T. Kirk, not to me, not yet) succeeds in impressing Cadet Uhura with his knowledge of xenolinguistics, but makes much less of a favorable impression upon her would-be Starfleet Academy chaperones. Certainly explains why later we see him with a bloody nose and a split lip. Hour 2 will feature another released clip from the new Trek, so be sure to check back here at primetimegeek.com for that.

Hour 1 gets in gear by presenting all the rumors and stories surrounding Joss Whedon’s slow-to-catch-on new series on FOX, Dollhouse, and the question of whether or not it will actually return for a second season or instead become the latest chapter in the ongoing saga entitled, “Joss Whedon: The Broadcast Networks Hate You.” Now seriously, the stories behind Dollhouse and the other ill-fated Whedon-crafted TV series that met their ends before their times, Angel and Firefly, could not be more different, but when the end results are the same, does it matter? The man is a gifted craftsman of character drama with a talent for quippy, pop-culture aware dialogue that is a perfect fit with today’s 19-39 demographic, yet FOX continually shows nothing but ineptitude in terms of handling and marketing his work. Friday night, running after the terminally-ill Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, THAT’S the best time slot idea they could come up with, really? The web was abuzz with negative premonitions once that was announced, and that was weeks before the series even debuted! Here at PTG we humbly submit that Whedon would be best served by the folks over at NBC/Universal, specifically their cable networks: Sci-Fi Channel (soon to be SyFy), USA Network, hell, even Oxygen at this point, would treat a Whedon property with a whole lot more respect, and in today’s television landscape, probably bring in better Nielsen numbers, to boot.

The DC Comics Spotlight falls on Batman: Battle for the Cowl #2, and boy, is this book turning out to be a letdown. Yes, the writing is at fault–Tony Daniel, for all this ability to draw great scenes, is no master of dialogue or characterization–but one must look to the editorial leadership at DC and the decision to put a first time writer in charge of a heavily-hyped series that will at its end produce a replacement for one of the company’s most popular and well-known characters. The issue itself isn’t bad, and the pretty art helps make it passable, but it’s simply not GREAT, and this series, above all the other Battle for the Cowl tie-ins, needed to be a home-run for fans to even consider embracing the “next” Batman, who we all know will only be filling the bat-cowl for a short time, anyway.

And finally, we wrap with the first installment of the new segment on PTG, “Felix is Fuming” (sound byte intro to come), where I rant and rave about something in the comic book world that truly pissed me off in that particular week. Wait, me ranting and raving about something? How is that any different than any other segment, you ask? Apparently, not much, but hey, you might hear in these segments a few “colorful metaphors” get bleeped out from week to week.

(and yes, this entry might be record-setting in terms of the number of hypenated words used in the text …)

Hour 1 of PTG Episode 12 is all about DC Comics, on video, in print, and on prime time television. On video, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies appears to be the next mainstream DC storyline to be adapted into animated form as part of Warner Premiere’s DC Universe Animated Feature line, and I say “appears to be” because the story comes from Harry Knowles and Ain’t It Cool News, or AICN.com and has yet to be confirmed with a press release from Warner Premiere. Regardless of that uncertainty, we here at PTG ran with it as fact for this episode, and covered the reasons why this feature, if done right, should be a great success in this form, as opposed to more recent entries in the series, most notably Wonder Woman. (If you haven’t read it yet, you can find PTG’s review of the Wonder Woman feature on blu-ray HERE .)

In print, Battle for the Cowl #1, which if you recall was one of two titles DC’s head honcho Dan Didio recommended to yours truly back at MegaCon a few weeks ago, hit stores this past Wednesday, and it’s a mixed bag, at best. Yes, lots to enjoy here, lots of things going on, pieces moving into place, and it can feel a bit scattered at time, but the real problems lie in certain easy coincidences and poor characterization of key characters that point to inexperienced writing on the part of first-time writer Tony Daniel. Daniel’s art, as always, is top-notch in this first book, but some of the narrative decisions made to set up the story are real head-scratchers. Listen to the podcast for more details. [UPDATE: To answer SomaCow Geoff's question about Captain Marvel/Shazam! that I so POORLY flubbed during the live broadcast, the powers that young Billy Batson gains when he calls out the Wizard Shazam's name and becomes Captain Marvel are: Wisdom of Solomon ('S"), Strength of Hercules ("H"), Stamina of Atlas ("A"), Power of Zeus ("Z"), Courage of Achilles ("A"), Speed of Mercury ("M"). All those make him easily the match of Superman and the more physically powerful people in the DCU.]

And finally, on prime-time television, Smallville returned with a new episode entitled “Infamous” last Thursday night, and wow, was it a STINKER. I’d love to blame it ALL on guest-star Tori Spelling (pictured above), reprising her role as gossip-reporter-turned-murderous-meteor-freak Linda Lake, but in truth, the whole plot feels like filler and builds-up to an ending that might as well be labeled “reset button” and rendering the events of the episode a moot point, at best. This episode would be best forgotten when the book on Season 8 is closed, but I fear it will actually stand out amidst a season of relatively strong episodes as INFAMOUSLY poor, and a really bad start to the final stretch of new episodes leading to the season finale.

Enjoy this hour, and check back here at primetimegeek.com for Hour 2 on Wednesday!

I began Hour 2 with a clip from Star Trek IV – The Voyage Home, thinking I would have a chance to talk about that film’s blu-ray release (along with the other “Original Crew” films and Season One of the Original Series) on May 12th, but alas, the time got away from me and I didn’t get to it. This clip loses a little something when you can’t SEE what’s happening, but Bones’ line about “the bureaucratic mentality” and Kirk’s “Let’s see what she’s got,” are well worth it. And even though we only got to see it for about 5 seconds, that was always my favorite Enterprise bridge–the gleaming white with blue chairs and glossy black control surfaces. One of my biggest gripes about Trek V (and I have MANY) was the Enterprise bridge redesign for that film. Bleagh.

Hour 2 features some praise for Marvel’s resident evil genius, Brian Michael Bendis, as he weaves a deliciously wicked web for the ‘real’ heroes of the Marvel U to find themselves out of, complicated mightily by Norman Osborn’s team of ‘Avengers’, currently starring in their own Avengers book, Dark Avengers. Bendis must simply be having a blast writing this, taking all the ‘wrongness’ of villains pretending to be good guys that he worked so well in Thunderbolts and kicking it up a notch with villains pretending to be our favorite good guys, good guys like Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hawkeye, and Ms. Marvel, and dressing up once-and-soon-to-be-nutcase-again Norman Osborn in Iron Man armor painted like the American flag. So, SO wrong, and yet still SO entertaining.

Due to confusion over the different time slot for Episode 9, JC did not make his planned appearance, so the second block focused on more upcoming DC fodder, with particular emphasis on Battle For the Cowl. My one fear about this book is the length of time they’re going to drag things out with Dick Grayson resisting taking on the mantle of the Bat, the mantle everyone ELSE whose opinion matters KNOWS is one only he is deserving of. Others involved in the storyline, most notably Jason Todd, will certainly disagree with that conclusion, and will no doubt step up to fill Batman’s cape and cowl before Dick can get over his reservations, or at least that’s how it would go in a very conventional, predictable, boring kind of way. Please, Tony Daniel: surprise us.

The hour wraps some talking up of MegaCon this upcoming weekend and the BSG after-action report on “Deadlock”, last Friday night’s rather lackluster entry into Season 4.5. Easily the weakest of this half-season’s episodes, it serves the purpose of moving pieces into place for the final run of four episodes, as well as showing us something surprising. Before, while Ellen Tigh (Kate Vernon) was alive and in the fleet, before her death on New Caprica, it always seemed like there was NOTHING redeeming about her character, and she just served to bring out the worst in Saul (Michael Hogan). Now we see the truth: Saul and Ellen bring out the worst in EACH OTHER–it wasn’t all Ellen after all. On the Basestar in “No Exit”, Ellen is thoughtful, intelligent, maternal, sympathetic. Get her onboard Galactica and with Saul and she’s the bitchy, spiteful, manipulative harpy we were happy to see poisoned at the start of Season 3.

Episode 9 of Prime Time Geek kicks off with a clip from Bryan Singer’s first X-Men [Blu-ray] movie – the clip seemed appropos considering I was expecting to have a guest from the Wolfpack Elite costuming group to call into the show during this hour to promote the Wolfpack Elite MegaCon Afterparty. That call didn’t happen, but the clip is still cool, so it stayed in the final edit.

The highlight of the hour is, of course, my interview with independent filmmaker Katharine Leis. Katharine’s short comedy film Foobie Jesus (click HERE to see it on YouTube) has been a hit at film festivals over the past year, and she has two submissions to this year’s MegaCon Indie Film Expo, Averageman (starring our friends Night of the Night Wolf) and The Foot which are sure to entertain this year’s attendees. We talked about Foobie Jesus, her submissions to MegaCon and working with the Night of the Night Wolf gang, and a bit about the business of making movies locally. A reminder: the MegaCon Indie Film Expo begins at 6:30PM at the Orange County Convention Center on Friday, Saturday 27th. See www.megaconvention.com for more details.

In comics I talked at length about what DC Comics has coming up in terms of major events, as it will be VERY busy spring and summer for Dan Didio and his boys, particularly Geoff Johns. In particular, The Flash: Rebirth and its major players dominated the comics segment, but a little Battle for the Cowl popped in there as well.

Finally, brought the hour to a close (a mite early, it seems), with a little walk down Training Montage Lane–John Cafferty’s “Hearts on Fire” is perhaps best known as the background music for the training montage in Rocky IV (the one where he fights Drago), but if you really want some absurdity, check out how the music was used in this YouTube video: Turkish Star Wars! (never get tired of this!)

DC Comics’ Editor-in-Chief Dan Didio released this teaser image on Christmas Eve as part of his regular feature on www.newsarama.com, giving fanboys something to go crazy over while opening their Christmas gifts.

This is the sort of thing that DC has become very proficient at in terms of stoking anticipation, the big teaser image with lots of little details that provide clues … or red herrings. So, for starters, the obvious stuff – the “Batman” on the left is Tim Drake (the current Robin)-the staff in his hands is the giveaway. Second from the left I’d wager is Dick Grayson (currently Nightwing), and the only reason I’d guess its him is the utility belt–it resembles the belt used as part of the “Red Robin” uniform first seen in Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ “Kingdom Come”, worn by an older version of Grayson, and later worn by Jason Todd during “Countdown to Infinite Crisis.” Third one over–god help us–looks like Two-Face/Harvey Dent, and the fourth I’m guessing is the villain Hush from two clues: this Batman is carrying two guns, as Hush does, and his face is completely concealed, and Hush in his villain identity had his head swathed in bandages.

Other little details, like the supporting cast members in the image (Harley Quinn, Alfred, looking very British Special Forces, Batwoman, Damian (son of Bruce Wayne and Talia Al Ghul), and someone who looks A LOT like Bruce himself, as well as the backwards J on the Joker playing card at far left, have far more inscrutable meanings. This image should go a LONG way towards undoing the apathy towards the Batman R.I.P. storyline fostered by Grant Morrison’s byzantine storytelling and get people talking … hell, I took one look and I was more interested and excited by what I saw there than I felt the whole time I was reading Batman R.I.P.!

Thoughts? Comments? Let the speculation begin!