At Comic-Con, Networks Find Their Heroes

SAN DIEGO — First, the costume report: There were, interestingly, more blood-splattered, brain-eating zombies this year. Blame the economy? The pirates and the ninjas are still apparently at war, though the Jack Sparrow puffy shirt look ("Arrrrr!") appears to be winning out over basic samurai-assassin black. Of course, lots of attendees in Star Wars Clone Trooper regalia, goose-schlepping through the cavernous convention hall here, clutching goody bags. Plenty of Spidermen and Spiderboys. A few Transformers. Hairy Harry Potters. An excellent African American Batman — and many naughty Japanese schoolgirls ("Arrrr!").

The fanboys and nerdsters in their black T-shirts and costumes (and their progeny; ka-pow! children, children everywhere; they replicate!) were still sluicing through the cattle chutes over the weekend at Comic-Con International, one of the largest annual gatherings of its kind (100,000 plus) devoted to the celebration and the commercial exploitation of popular arts and culture. But there was something different in the wind this year at the Con, and that was television. TV, TV everywhere.

For several years now, Comic-Con has been the go-to hot spot for the marketing arms of the Hollywood film studios, which come to offer sneak peeks of coming attractions. This past weekend was no different, with Sony showing "Monster House" (in 3D) and Lionsgate doing "Saw III" (the fiends go dental). Warner Bros. brought freshly divorced Hilary Swank to town to sell "The Reaping," and New Line Cinema escorted Samuel L. Jackson to his first Con for "Snakes on a Plane" (huge line).

But what was new was the omnipresence of television show touts. Jorge "Hurley" Garcia from ABC’s "Lost" came, and so did David Boreanaz from Fox’s "Bones." There was product from the Nickelodeon pipeline, the Sci-Fi channel, Cartoon Network, IFC-TV, and a world premiere of CBS’s new series "Jericho," "about what happens when a nuclear mushroom cloud suddenly appears on the horizon."

The CBS answer: "chaos." (Interesting, we would have guessed: "prayer.")

Why are the TV people here?

Two reasons pop to mind. First, the paranormal is the new normal. Giving the crime procedurals (the "CSIs" and "Law & Orders" and their imitators) a run for their money are the shows about otherworldly weirdness. "Medium" and "The 4400" and "Lost" and "Psychic Detectives" and "Dead Zone" and "Ghost Whisperer," etc. We leave it to future pop-cultural archaeologists to ponder the implications of a society obsessed by forensic pathology and alien abductions.

The second reason is that the demographic represented by the Con — the genre fans of horror, Middle-earth, comic book heroes, Gotham, deep space, first-person shooter games and angels — grows ever more red-hot. A popular T-shirt at the Con: "Talk Nerd to Me." (You know this: The appellation is now a badge of honor.)

"The Comic-Con has evolved from a narrow comic book fest into this mainstream, opinion-forming, entertainment event," says Dave Howe, general manager of the Sci-Fi Channel. "It is now a huge buzz fest. We go and everyone else goes. Because it is the beating heart of buzz generation."

Howe guesstimates that for every consumer a network tout "hits" at Comic-Con, another 30 people become infected with buzz via e-mail, blogosphere, text message, cellphone photo or Internet site — and actual talking through the traditional mouth-portals of 14-year-olds.

"We live in a world of over-saturated media. It’s hard to cut through the clutter," says Eric Coleman, vice president of animation development and production at Nickelodeon. Going to Comic-Con, he says, not only gives a company a forum to peddle product, but buys them feedback. "You can feel in your gut what is cutting through."

So: TV time.

The ABC Family channel sponsored a panel showcasing the actors for "Kyle XY," a new series

about a teen/weirdo/hunk/alien who sports washboard abs without . . . a belly button. The room was about 63.4 percent full. Audience demo? Hard to pigeonhole. Smattering of fan moms. Tweens and teens, skewing toward female. Sprinkling of bald types looking a lot like Steve Carrell in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." The ABC presentation started late, which is a no-no at Con.

"Seven minutes," says a punky girl with dyed red bangs behind us, blowing a bang into the air.

"Noooo. Nine." This from her friend, who checks her cellphone. Another of their minx-mix confirms via cellphone atomic clock accuracy. Nine minutes. Late. They’re, like, impatient. (Much checking of text messages, nails, bra straps, flip-flops.)

Finally. After an eternity in teen time, John Rood, senior veep of marketing for ABC Family, bounds to the podium in Room 5AB and says, "You, like millions of Americans, have been asking who is Kyle XY?" That is their billboard. So. Repeat. Repeat. It’s a tie-in. Rood introduces the cast, which includes Kyle XY, who is the 23-year-old actor Matt Dallas (real name).

Behind us, punky girl: "Show us your belly button!"

Her seatmate: "Ooooh, he has a beard!"

Next girl (wriggling, disturbingly): "You can sit here!"

This is probably why many parental units drop their progeny off at Comic-Con and when at home simply close the door and think calming golf thoughts.

The ABC folks introduce the show with a 30-second promo. The audience erupts in applause. Rood: "Imagine if you saw the whole thing!" This is like shooting fish in a barrel.

They go to the Q&A. First question: What do they use to take away your belly button? Dallas says he really doesn’t have a belly button. Wink. Wink. Lolita behind us: "Take off your shirt!"

One fan, a teenage boy, asks Dallas to look into his handheld video camera and tell his mom that she’s hot. He complies. Big sigh, then hoots, from the crowd.

Then the kid is asked, well, is she hot?

Great answer (with disgust): "She’s my mom!"

It kind of goes on like this. At one point Rood asks what else are they dying to know? Girl behind us, whispering: "Would you have my baby?"

Julie Plec, a producer and writer for the show, assures them that the answer as to who Kyle is will be revealed soon enough, and she promises the show will not torture them like "Lost," where we still don’t really know what the heck is happening on that island. A mom stands up to say that she appreciates that the network rated an episode (they’ve aired four so far) a TV14 because it was about "adolescence and sexuality and grapefruits," and Rood assures them: "We take our trust with the viewer seriously. We’re making great stories about today’s families."

At the other end of the Comic-Con TV spectrum, there was an overflow audience (2,000 plus) for the world premiere of the new animated late-night series "Happy Tree Friends" on the gamer cable channel G4. The cartoon, created by Kenn Navarro, is a cult hit on the Internet, and G4 has been showing shorts and will do a 30-minute midnight series starting this fall.

"Happy Tree Friends" is kind of like "Road Runner" with blood. Its premise: Take little cute woodland creatures named Giggles, Cuddles and Petunia and discover the infinite ways in which their corporal cartoon bodies can be eviscerated. We’re talking internal organs. We’re talking eyeballs and brains and lower intestines. The audience goes wild. Each new insult is followed by the crowd collectively going "eeeewww," and laughing. It’s sick-schtick.

First question: "How much hate mail do you get?"

Navarro answers that he gets his fair share, but "it’s really poorly written."

A kid gets up to the mike and asks: "What made you think of fluffy little animals being chopped up?"

Navarro says it just started as a joke among his peers: Take really, really cute characters "and then just have them die the most horrible deaths."

This we learned: To make those disgusting splatter and splat and crunch sounds, the artists behind "HTF" employ a large turkey carcass and a hammer. Oh, and a head of cold lettuce (kids, try this at home!).

The suits at G4 are thinking: hit.

Neal Tiles, president of G4, says that the Comic-Con folks are the nuclear core, and that they also represent that most elusive demographic, the young male, and that they are "the real fans, the fanatics," and that TV is naturally chasing them wherever they may be found.

Several TV executives predicted that there will be more television at next year’s Con, and that it may well become — for the right kind of shows (meaning you might not take "Desperate Housewives" to Comic-Con, but then again, you might bring Eva Longoria) — an obligatory stop on the marketing circuit, joining the annual TV upfronts for advertisers and the gatherings of the Television Critics Association.

At a special 72-minute premiere assembled just for Comic-Con, NBC unveiled its new show "Heroes," sort of a director’s cut. "We decided that there was only one place to show it and it was to you folks at Comic-Con," said Jeph Loeb, co-executive producer of the show, which is the story of how a group of ordinary people suddenly find themselves with extraordinary powers (flight, teleportation, mind-reading, unkillability) and join together to save the world (from Muslim terrorists with nukes or worse).

The applause after the screening was good, but not crazed. The standout was the Japanese character Hiro (Masi Oka), the nerd who suddenly found himself, like the crew of the Enterprise, able to beam himself from Tokyo to New York. The fanboys ate that up.

NBC is clearly hoping to generate the kind of buzz that Comic-Con can produce. "But what we’ve learned is, you can’t create buzz," says Vince Manze, president of NBC Agency, the network’s in-house marketing unit. "You can fan it. You can help it. But you can’t force it."

Loeb implored the crowd to help the show succeed. "We have only one request," Loeb told the assemblage. "Talk about it!" He asked them to do this, like, three times. So maybe they will.