A dozen new characters from the universe of NBC’s Heroes will make their way into the spinoff summer series of “e-graphic-novel” stories that will be appearing on the Web and could find their way into the TV show itself, Frank Mastromauro, executive vice president of Aspen Comics, told fans at Wizard World Philadelphia Comic Con over the weekend.
“We do all the online webisodes for Heroes,” Mastromauro said at a panel for Aspen Comics on May 31. “We just received a whole bunch of new mini-scripts for this [project]. Just in the last couple weeks, [artist and Aspen vice president] Peter Steigerwald designed 12 new characters for Heroes. All these characters are debuting online at NBC.com throughout the summer, and then, towards the end, characters who get the most votes [from fans] will probably wind up making it onto the show this fall.”
From its inception, Heroes has maintained an immersive, interactive Web experience featuring weekly electronic comics that tell both unique stories about new superpowered characters and also stories that enhance the actual television series episodes. Aspen Comics has a three-year deal with NBC to produce that original graphic-novel content.
“We’ll be doing an e-graphic novel this summer,” Mastromauro said. “And instead of just stand-alone stories, it’s kind of one big continuous story with instances and things that happen to a lot of the characters we designed. It all leads up to the new season in September.” Heroes season three starts Sept. 22. –Tara Bennett
