Secondly, io9 and Sci Fi Wire -- things I don't normally read and only accessed when I typed Pushing Daisies into Google News Search -- are also reporting that the comic book series, which will serve really as the third season of the show, might be dropping before 2009 is over (take that recession). Fuller, apparently, has pulled in most of his writing staff and hired an artist that I've never even heard of, which honestly isn't a fair assessment because most comic book artists have had to won Pulitzers (Art Spiegelman) or drawn album covers (Craig Thompson) or written other novels (Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore) for them to hit my cultural radar. The online comics ABC had up before ABC went all stupid were entertaining enough and I think with the same devotion that Fuller has always shown, these will be fine. The only thing lacking: the wonderful performances of the cast. Chi McBride, for one, is too good for a great majority of the work that he recieves (Let's Go to Prison? I, Robot?).
Anyway, here are some key quotes:
I am going to pull together the Pushing Daisies writing staff. It will be run
like a writer's room, where I will write the first story, and we will arc out
the other issues, which will comprise what we were going to do in the back nine.
We'll also make it accessible for those who are not familiar with the TV series,
as well as introducing villains we couldn't do on ABC. There is a villain from
the Comic-Con preview comic about a guy who got his head cut off. Ned touched it
to get some answers; the body came alive too and proceeded to grab his head and
get away. We definitely want Head to come back as a big villain.
Is the comic book considered season 2.5, then?
Fuller: In many respects, it's probably season three. We're going to see a lot of exploration with Ned and his father, which we teased but were never able to make good on. We had George Hamilton save Ned and Chuck, and by having Emerson and Dwight Dixon clean up the whole mess we're going to understand who Dwight was to Chuck and Ned's dad. Dwight will be making a return, and we'll be seeing the adult Eugene Mulchandani and Danny that involves helium smuggling. There's a lot of fun stuff woven into the series that we were intending to pay off that we can now do in the comic-book series. The fans of the show will see a lot of stuff come to fruition, but new fans will have a greater appreciation, too. Since it's Marvel, I would also love for the Pie Maker to touch Captain America.
Also, some speculation about the cancellation:
The writers' strike is the big bully to blame for the plummeting ratings. There was a writers' strike in 1988, and television shows lost around 30 percent of their audiences. During this one, shows lost 20 percent of their audiences. It was a combination of the writers' strike and being off the air for 10 months.
The other problem was our timeslot wasn't good, since we didn't have a lead-in. When we aired at 9 p.m., we went up by 3 million viewers, which was really dramatic. ABC refused to move us from the 8:00 timeslot, which had worked previously the season before, but after the writers' strike and the erosion of the audience, it wasn't sustainable, so we asked them to move us repeatedly. We would have even taken Friday night at 9 p.m., because people don't watch TV earlier. All the Nielsen ratings indicate people start watching TV at 8:30. That was a big indication, but I certainly don't think the quality of the show went down. If anything, it got stronger and clearer.
Oh, if you're reading the articles, be wary because there's a lot of stuff being spoiled.
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