Interviews Conducted by Robert J. Beck

Molly’s Dream

Where did the idea of the cockroaches come from? Was it from the recurring ones that have been seen in show?

The cockroaches have always been a theme of the show, all the way back to Kring’s original vision. My plan with Molly’s dream was to take as much iconic imagery from the show and try to kill her with it. Ryan Odagawa did an amazing job, especially with the helix’s stabbing into the pavement. That was so cool the way Ryan did that.

This is your second ‘dream’ novel; do the guys at NBC think you have a talent for writing dreams?

I’d like to say it was talent, but really I think it was just coincidence.

The Kill Squad, part 1, 2 and 3
This was one of the big stories introduced and featured characters who were not killed in the comics but expanded on (the kill squad are now in the iStorys, I don’t know if you knew this). Did you feel a lot of pressure writing it?

No pressure. I wrote The Kill Squad between seasons 2 and 3. We were all given the ability to go off and tell our own stories about the company, making sure to bring them all together in the end. I wanted to tell a story about a group of humans who decided to start killing the specials. And what would happen as a result of that. After the three-parter, John O’Hara (from New Media) and I decided that it would be cool to keep telling Kill Squad stories and at the moment the best place to do that, was on Heroes Evolutions. So yes, I knew about it, and helped out a little.

Was it purposely written to make the reader think that the ‘kill squad’ were the team in part 1 or was this just accidental?

I think I actually called them a “support team” once or twice in the comic. But people were misled by the title, which I realized would probably happen. It added another twist to it.

You had a lot of returning characters in this novel, did you choose these or did NBC give them to you? I know a lot of fans were upset to see Paulette Hawkins get a power to only be killed off in the same comic.

Yes, I did have to get permission to use certain characters. Everyone always has to for the webcomics. I’m always wondering what happened to the characters that we haven’t seen in a while. Paulette was one of them. I was just trying to give the audience as many surprises as I could in six pages. “Paulette was being held by the company? She has a power? OMG, they just killed Paulette!!!” I wanted the death to have meaning for the Kill Squad. And since they were all relatively new characters, killing off an established character from the show seemed to really say that Sean Fallon means business.

Is Sean Fallon and HRG being in Mohinder’s Madras apartment hinting that the company have been keeping tabs on him for a long time?

Well, HRG was in Madras in the pilot. So who knows what happened from then to when he showed up in Mohinder’s cab.

Was the ability of plant growth chosen for a novel rather than an episode because the costs to make the CGI est. would be too much?

I did plant guy for a few reasons. The first is that we’ve never had the power on the show. I always thought that the most realistic evolutionary step for humans on the extraordinary level would be something like skin photosynthesis or something. So you can thank my 9th grade science teacher, Mr. Hopkins for that. Second, the power really seemed to work with the setting of an overgrown ghost town. (The perfect place for a big showdown without a lot of civilian witnesses).

Are Lewis’s healing powers similar to those of a tree? You chop off his arm and eventually it will grow back?

As far as we know, Lewis’s abilities were not tested to those extremes. A lot of things could have happened while he was a captive of The Company. But Lewis is dead now. As far as we know…

Can we assume that the person who made the crater had some sort of explosive power like Ted? Can you tell us anything more about this individual?

The person manifested their ability and it unfortunately killed everyone in the village.