By Don Kaye
Special to MSN TV

July 24, 2008

Having been to the New York edition of Comic-Con for the last two years, I felt somewhat prepared for my very first journey to the much older, much larger and much more chaotic San Diego event, which has been happening in this Southern California city since 1970. The show has changed massively since then: What was once a gathering of a few hundred comic book aficionados in the basement of a hotel is now a multimedia pop-culture behemoth, drawing well over 100,000 attendees over its four-day span. It's a given that huge genre movies like "The Dark Knight," "Hellboy II" and others use Comic-Con as a marketing platform, but with the growth of genre television, more new series are being launched here too. Where else can you directly target tens of thousands of fans -- mostly male, mostly nerdy -- who would cut off their right arm for a chance to see Kristen Bell or Julie Benz in person?

The San Diego Convention Center is a long, sun-swamped structure situated across from the city's downtown district, and traffic around it is already stalled for blocks in every direction on Thursday morning. Most attendees make their way in on foot, and it's these crowds we join as they flow into the main hall. Lots of families, lots of couples and lots of packs of single men roam the grounds, not to mention hordes of costumed attendees as well. The Joker's white face paint and green hair is popular this year, but somehow I keep running into the couple dressed as the Incredibles who, unfortunately, don't do the tight-red spandex suits much justice.

'Knight Rider'

The lines for panels at Comic-Con are legendary in their length, but perhaps because it's relatively early, I have no trouble sliding into the late-morning panel for "Knight Rider." NBC's reboot of its cult '80s series got the green light following a backdoor pilot that aired earlier this year, and now the full press is on. But there's a catch: The low-key but still healthy crowd is greeted only by executive producer Gary Scott Thompson and cast member Paul Campbell. The rest of the cast -- including stars Justin Bruening, Deanna Russo and Sydney Tamiia Poitier -- are stuck in traffic on the way down from Los Angeles. KITT itself, the series' amazing artificial-intelligence car, is also absent (it's set to show up on Friday). Thompson is game, though, putting his cell phone to the mic so that Russo and Bruening can say hello to the audience, then taking each actor's seat in turn to discuss their roles. Of course, it's the trailer for the show that jazzes the room with lots of fighting, lots of shooting, lots of babes and lots of KITT, including one scene of the car transforming into a weapon on wheels that gets the room cheering. Cars, girls and violence -- what else does a Comic-Con fan want?

The rest of the cast eventually trickles in, but of course, the big question is: Will there be room in the series for original "Knight Rider" star David Hasselhoff? "David and I talk regularly, but he's super busy," says Thompson. "And there's no reason to bring him back unless there's a great story to tell. But it's always a possibility."

'Doctor Who'

Next up is the "Doctor Who" panel, and the first thing that strikes me is how large the room is. The second thing I notice is that the place is packed. The third thing is that there are only two guests onstage: executive producer Julie Gardner and writer Steven Moffat (who's set to take over as showrunner for the fifth season next year). That's it -- no David Tennant (The Doctor), no Catherine Tate (Donna Noble), no stars at all in fact -- and the crowd is still eating it up. It occurs to me that an event like Comic-Con is probably the only place where the writers and creators of content are regarded as highly as the stars (that sure as hell isn't the case in Hollywood).

In any case, Moffat is up to the challenge, slinging one-liners in classically dry British style. When asked about a possible reunion of all 10 Doctors, he ruminates that it would be "one hell of a logistical problem," since several of the oldest actors are dead. Other nuggets include concerns over American audiences missing the British jokes ("We stop and say, 'Is this too British for everyone else?' And then we put it in anyway") and whether the show will be too scary with Moffat at the helm ("If you're concerned that it will be frightening -- tough"). The icing on the cake is a brief trailer for the "Christmas '08" special, which will send the Doctor back to 1851 and into a confrontation with one of his most fiendish and famous enemies, the Cybermen.

The stars do come out for the "Torchwood" panel, as actors John Barrowman, Gareth David-Lloyd and Naoki Mori join Gardner for a romp through questions about the sexed-up "Who" spinoff. I haven't had a chance to sample this increasingly popular show, but if its quality is anywhere near the excellent of "Doctor Who" (which airs on both the Sci-Fi Channel and BBC America), then it's worth a look.

'The Middleman'

There's just enough time for a brief snack and a walk through the main exhibit hall -- which must be the size of four or five football fields -- before heading upstairs for the "Middleman" panel. This ABC Family series, which is in its first season, is based on a comic book by Javier Grillo-Marxuach, who spent two years as a writer on "Lost" and is also running "Middleman." The quirky show, which is about a mysterious crimefighter (Matt Keeslar) and his teen-girl sidekick (Natalie Morales), is an odd duck, poised between standard children's fare and a slightly edgier tone (the show has featured, for example, bleeped language).

Marxuach tirelessly evangelizes for his own creation and implores the audience to do the same, noting that many of them have watched it online but that a few more eyeballs pointed at actual TV screens (preferably in homes monitored by Nielsen) would help as well. The fan turnout is relatively small but enthusiastic, going wild for a Kevin Sorbo cameo that gets screened and asking appreciative questions of the show's guru and his star.

'True Blood'

The panel for "The Middleman" ends around 3 p.m. and it's time to get in line for the next big presentation -- HBO's "True Blood." The line for this one loops around itself so many times that the end somehow ends up near the main entrance (it doesn't help that the "Dexter" third-season preview will be in the same room immediately afterward -- in other words, I'm parked here for the next two and a half hours). "True Blood," based on Charlaine Harris' best-selling "Southern Vampire Mysteries" series, is the first new TV show from "Six Feet Under" creator Alan Ball since that series ended in 2005. It follows Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), a waitress who works in a Louisiana bar in an alternate future where vampires and humans co-exist, thanks to the introduction of a synthetic blood called TruBlood. As with "Doctor Who" and "The Middleman," the creators -- in this case Ball and Harris -- get the most attention from the crowd, even with the presence of the lovely Anna Paquin and the rest of the attractive cast.

The trailer -- an exclusive for Comic-Con -- gives some idea of what to expect for those of us who haven't read any of Harris' eight books (the show's first season will essentially cover the first book). It's part Southern Gothic, part apocalyptic vampire epic and part small-town melodrama. It seems utterly unlike "Six Feet Under," although Ball says during the panel that "ultimately ['True Blood'] is about relationships," noting that as the main similarity to his previous effort.

Ball also explains that he wanted to avoid several major vampire clichés, including "blue lighting, contact lenses and opera music," and adds that he's trying to keep the supernatural aspects of the show as "mundane and matter-of-fact as possible" in keeping with the tone of Harris' books. And while he says that working on "True Blood" has been "the most fun I've had in my career," he's not interested in reading fans' reactions online if changes are made to the original text. Paquin chimes in with a few thoughts on her character, although she laughs at being called a "sexpot." But it's Ball who gets off the best lines, especially when he responds to a question about marketing a real-life version of TruBlood by saying it will be a combination of "V8, Valium, Vicodin and Viagra."

'Dexter'

A large portion of the audience leaves at the end of the "True Blood" talk, but they're quickly replaced by a fresh legion of "Dexter" fans. Stars Michael C, Hall (Dexter) and Julie Benz (Rita) are on hand, along with executive producers Clyde Phillips and Melissa Rosenberg, to preview the show's third season. A trailer introduces Jimmy Smits as a new assistant district attorney, while Dexter himself seems to be enjoying domestic life with Rita and her kids. But as the trailer quickly shows, that is not bound to last for long. Phillips says after the trailer unspools that the theme of the upcoming season is "the evolution of Dexter as a man."

The Smits character represents "family values" and is committed to cleaning up the streets, although Phillips says that "[Smits] and Dexter set something in motion that they can't pull back from." When one fan asks Hall what kind of personal experience he draws upon to play a serial killer, he replies, "Well, I'm not compelled to kill killers and dump them in the ocean, but I do understand what compulsion feels like."

And so do I -- the compulsion to eat is overwhelming, plus I have a deadline, so I sneak out of the "Dexter" panel a few minutes early to get a bite and get to work. Thursday is done, but there's three more days to go, and the crowds here are only going to get bigger.

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