I Love Castle

There are empirically better shows out there, but I don't know if there are any that I'm currently enjoying more than Castle. And it's just been renewed for a third season. Woo-hoo!

Here's a promo commercial for the second season. I liked it so much, I just had to share.

Morning Had Broken Me

Man, waking up at 4:00am will mess you the frak up.

I felt like I was in a haze all day, even after I slept for an hour after the show. I managed to pump out a couple more parts of the Scene cover I'm doing. I even finished it this morning (and by morning, I mean something like seven or eight, not four) assuming my art director gives me the big okay. Part of said cover is even shown here. I'll post another image or two, probably, before I show the full cover on Wednesday when it prints.

Anyway, Good Morning Cleveland was great. I was surprisingly conscious for that early in the morning. Everybody there, from Todd the producer to Paul and Kim and Susanne and Patty to everyone else were fantastic. And a big shout out to Kimmy, who I went to Lake Catholic with and brought me to their attention to be on the show. You can see a slideshow of those caricatures here. I think most of them came out pretty well, and I was lucky enough to get the subjects to sit down for me. Last time I was on the show (it can't be seven years ago, can it?), I had to look across the studio to try to get a glimpse of them. There's probably one of the set I did yesterday that I'd do differently, but I won't out it here.

I think I even came across well in the interview, although I must admit that I've not had the intestinal fortitude to pull it up on the TiVo yet. I'll probably burn it to disc and never look at it again. I really have a hard time watching myself on TV.

But don't let that stop you if you're the producer of another morning show and want to bring me out to your studio. Good Morning Dallas... Good Morning Poughkeepsie... whatever. It's all about the self-promotion.

Set Your TiVos!

I'll be on Good Morning Cleveland here on WEWS-TV5 on Wednesday. It should be between 6:00 and 8:00. I'll be talking about Love and Capes and the whole cartooning thing. It should be fun, aside from having to wake up at 4:30am to get ready for the show. I did GMC once before, and really liked it.

I told my friend Mike about it, and his response? "You know, there was a time where I would have set a tape." He's right. I seem to be on TV a lot.

Look Who's On teh Internets

My "Del's Folks" interview is up on YouTube. This is my favorite interview that I've done, and it's a pretty good piece all around. I don't know if I'm going to be as huge as the DC vs. Marvel spots, the finest live action superhero show ever, or even this ever popular one but you never know.

Corner Bookstore

I got an e-mail from my friend Charlotte Fullerton this morning. She's contributed to a Gilmore Girls book. Charlotte's a great writer and a better person, and Gilmore Girls is... okay, I've never watched it. Oddly, I've been on the set, but never watched it. I meant to get into it a couple of years ago, as a lot of people whose opinions I respect dig it, but again, big with the busy. But, if you had a little more free time or foresight than I did and watched the residents of Stars Hollow, I think you should check it out.

Heck, I'll probably by the book myself, even if I don't understand it. Writer solidarity.

As long as I'm hawking books, my friend and client Caridad Ferrer has another book coming out, It's Not About the Accent, from MTV Books. Accent and her previous Adios to my Old Life, are Latina young adult novels. Now, while I'm sure she didn't write the books with a thirtysomething cartoonist in mind, didn't mean I didn't like it. In fact, I loved the first book and am looking forward to the second. I highly recommend both of them.

And that concludes this installment of the Thom Zahler Book Club.

Fallen Soldiers

They’ve announced most of the fall schedule. here’s some decent looking stuff on it. I’m particularly looking forward to Bionic Woman. But, that being said, I think we need to take a moment to remember out fallen comrades, the ones that didn’t quite make it out.

First up on my list is Justice. I’ll be the first to admit it was a cotton candy show, not one to reinvent the medium, but a lot of fun. One of the things I thought was particularly cool was that the actual crime was revealed after the trial was over. Since the main characters never actually knew the truth, there was never that “Law and Order” acting. You know, the kind of acting where you know someone is lying because, well, they’re acting like they’re lying. In Justice, it could be played straight, and you wouldn’t know what really happened until later.

Next, The Nine. This was a wonderful character piece about nine people who survived a hostage situation. With Tim Daly, Chi McBride and John Billingsly among other actors, this was just a bang-up cast. Sadly, Tim Daly continues to be the kiss of death on Wednesday nights on ABC. Don’t get me started on Eyes, and I’m a little worried about Private Practice now, too.

It wasn’t completely unexpected, but I’ll miss Stargate-SG1. This series did the impossible, in that it rebooted itself with a new mission and a few new characters. It did the kind of allegorical stories that Star Trek used to do. Currently, the SG1 team are fighting an incredibly powerful group of religious zealots forcing people to convert or perish. Sound like anything? The show remained fun, too. The 200th episode was a hilarious love letter to the fans, and the characters were undeniably engaging. Sci-Fi has decided to cancel this but still allow it a couple of movies to wrap everything up. So it could have been worse.

I blame ER for the demise of The Black Donnellys. This was a Paul Haggis drama, in the same vein as his also-cancelled EZ Streets. Why I’d be attracted to the story of an artist named Tommy who had to keep his brothers out of trouble. It was supposed to replace ER on Thursdays mid-season, but the venerable doctor drama came on strong this year, and Donnellys was moved to the Monday Night of Death. I’ve got a theory that really smart dramas don’t work on Monday nights. People are too fried from their first day at work to watch something thinky. Both PrisonBreak and 24 have enough action to keep people going. Donnellys may have been a little too smart for the time period…like another show I’ll get to soon.

I thought Raines was spectacularly well-written. Its pilot had a surprise twist to it I didn’t see coming, and I watch enough TV that that’s hard to do. The mysteries were pretty good, Jeff Goldblum gave a great performance, and the art deco Raymond Chandler vibe was pretty slick. This delusional detective saw murder victims and imagined the way they’d look and sound. It could have been a really good show.

I feel like any description of Drive should end in the middle of a sentence, the was Fox yanked it so quickly. Four episodes over three nights is barely enough time for people to learn a show is on, let alone like it. It was an improbably plot about an illegal cross country road race, but it was addictive. And Fox canceled it in the middle of a two parter. Man, I hate those guys. Of course, I’ve still never forgiven them for canceling Profit.

The most painful one for me is, of course, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I am an unabashed Sorkin fan, and when you put Matthew Perry in the lead I was expecting gold. I think we got it… five episodes too late. The pilot and the premise in general were plot heavy: a great comedy writing-producing team are lured back to the sketch comedy show they were fired from to save it by the new network head. Why was that so bad? Because you have to establish the comedy team, the new network head, and the big stars who work the show.

It started off a little clunky. It became apparent that the show was about writing, which is a difficult sell. Still, seeing Matt Albie walk into his office in the middle of a successful first episode to see a countdown clock reminding him that he had only a week to do it again will always be with me. And once they did their Christmas episode, every episode afterwards was just fantastic.

I think this show needed a little more time, maybe a better time slot. Sadly, it got neither and it’s gone.

I accept that my tastes are rarified. There are probably a few shows that work just for me and few other people (Chicago Sons and Profit come to mind) but not enough to support renewal. But far too many of these shows are bounced after a couple of low-rated episodes and after the time and investment, aren’t given the time to find an audience. Or they’re pre-empted so they can’t build one.

Why networks invest so much money in a series and then kill it so speciously, I’ll never understand.

Video Jukebox

I've finally had the time to do my video editing on my Kickin' It With Kenny appearance. I did a lot of bumps doing cartoons of the news and of the crew, but here are the two spots where I actually got to speak. You can download the first one or the second one, and hear me talk about Free Comic Book Day. All clips are in QuickTime/mp4/iPod format.

Okay, that should be it for the Thom Zahler Media Onslaught, Free Comic Book Day edition. Until next year… bwah-hah-hah-hah!