“Chuck” x4

Every year I pick three shows to watch every episode for the season through thick and thin. I have one simple standard: at least one show has to be new each year. With the new season of television upon us, I have yet to pick out that one new show. It is only one new show because there is nothing out there that can supplant the two shows I’ve been faithfully watching over the past three seasons: the BBC’s “Doctor Who” and NBC’s “Chuck”.

“Chuck” starts a new season this Monday with Chuck vs. The Anniversary after being on hiatus for only four months. This season begins exactly where I want it: Chuck and Sarah are finally together, Morgan is involved in spyworld and that nasty Shaw business has been resolved. And with Chuck on the search for his mother, there is a direction last season didn’t originally have.

No other American TV show captures action, humor and romance better than Chuck, and it’s a rare show that gets better with each passing season. That’s a sign of good writing, but also a sign that there’s a strong lynchpin character that holds it all together. As good as all the actors are on “Chuck”, no one impresses me more than Adam Baldwin’s Casey! Chuck and Morgan can be funny without being lethal and Sarah can be lethal without being funny; however, Casey had to be both for the show to originally work! Casey’s NSA assassin is a brutal killer with a soft spot for the other characters. Since Chuck is becoming more and more competent as a spy, he can now be the lynchpin character, but I hope the producers can keep Casey in that role for the upcoming season.

With the ratings it has received over the past three years, I didn’t think that “Chuck” would last this long. I’m grateful for the episodes we’ve had, and look forward to Season Four. I can only hope more people than last year feel the same way I do about the show and watch it!

Author Notes For Pretty Vacant: Vegas Showcase

Every issue I have ever written seems to have a unique problem all its own. My first Pretty Vacant story had to adapt a 90 minute movie script into a 24 page comic book format. I knew that I could write Pretty Vacant: Vegas Showcase from scratch, but the problem I had was not the format, but the plot. What type of situation would make possible the re-plastination of Gigi Gutierrez? After all, it’s not something she would ever want to happen to her again.

Having made her way out of the plastination trap in the first issue, Gigi promised she would return to free her friend Mindy from her cryo-tank. However, Gigi was lucky as two outside events enabled her to overcome the hypnotic sedative injected into her system and avoid the cryo chamber. I felt that Gigi’s escape would make her over-confident in her rescue attempt of Mindy, and that would give Still Life the means to re-plasticize the alluring ex-athlete.

Fortunately for me, sales for Pretty Vacant have been good, giving me the opportunity to write at least two more issues. I was not going to struggle with the means to plasticize Gigi again, so I wrote it into the last two pages of this issue. I imagine there will be other problems that will crop up as I write the next issue, but Gigi being plastinated will not be one of them.

Thanks for the sales and the support! I hope to see all of you soon, or at least when the next issue, Pretty Vacant: Final Repose is published.

John Villaino