Interviews Conducted by Robert J. Beck

Where did the idea to make the comic ‘The Rogue’ one where

 you had to sign up to NBC.com come from?

This was part of a larger program that Nissan purchased to be
 part of Heroes in season two.

Was it nice to get the chance to ‘join one of the dots’ of Heroes?
 (Showing how Claire’s car got to Mexico)

Yes! That's the best part of transmedia storytelling -- getting to fill
 in the gaps between the episodes on multiple media platforms.

There is a painting of a man named ‘Drucker’ in this novel, is it meant to be Richard Drucker or one of his family?

Absolutely! Everything we did in Heroes Evolutions had a purpose.

Are you a big fan of ‘Dres’ who appears as a bobblehead in this comic or was it the artist who put this in?

Definitely wouldn't say I'm a big fan of 'Dres. I wanted to put this story near the location of the SDCC. So 'dres is short for the Padres who play baseball by the San Diego convention center. I'm a Dodgers fan.

You wrote a episode of Smallvivle called ‘Jinx’; your portrayal of Mister Mxyzptlk in this episode was very different from how he appears in the comics. How did you decide upon your modernisation of the character into Mikhail Mxyzptlk?

At the beginning of the season, the Smallville writers and producers pitched The WB the idea of a high school gambling episode. The writers' room thought the original concept behind "Jinx" was a good fit for this subject matter.
To show you how much things can morph in the process, my original pitch was that Pete Ross had to play Clark in a championship football game. This was dicey because Pete knew Clark's secret and threatened to call him out as a cheater who uses superpowers to win. We added Mxy when the actor who played Pete (Sam Jones) wasn't available for the episode and we needed something else to make the episode worth shooting.
The idea to add Mxy to Smallville originally came from one of our interns named Clark Crozer (who, if you look closely, has the same name as Clark's star running back team mate in episode). Clark had pitched another version of how to bring him into town but again, since Mxy's a trickster and they wanted a booky, the fit seemed right. It was Jeph Loeb's idea to make Mxy from a made up country in Eastern Europe. It's Smallville, so of course an imp from the Fifth Dimension had to take the form of a model from an Ambrocrobie & Fitch ad in order to fit in.

You are called ‘the father of interactive television for your work on Smallvivle. Are you proud of this title and what do you think of other shows online content?

I'm totally embarrassed by this title. It is far from true. That myth needs to be dispelled before it bites me in the ass. It's been fun working on the interactive side of TV since 2001 but I'm sure there are many others who have been working on the tech side of truly interactive TV that are far more deserving of the title.
As far as other shows' online content, I like the instant involvement of fans in the initial Dollhouse online content and am eagerly anticipating what Jesse Alexader is going to do with "Day One" because it's been built as a transmedia series from the beginning. I also think that what MLB.com is doing with its interactive online baseball games is the best current example of truly interactive TV.