by Stacey Levin

Ever sit around watching television and see a show that’s so bad, you shout out loud to no one in particular: “How the hell did this get on television!?”  Ahh, the wonders of “pilot season.”  Yes, there’s actually a name for the time when studios and networks decide what new series they’re going to make.  In fact, Hollywood is all a twitter right now because it’s in the midst of “pilot season” – that frantic time of year when the television executives pluck several scripts from the depths of development and make them into a single episode of a television series known as a pilot.  Once they’re all completed, the execs view them and decide which ones will be ordered to series and which ones will never see the light of day.  Being a television exec myself, I can say that there are often many times when a really good pilot doesn’t get a chance and we sit around and scratch our heads as to why.  Here’s an aside: I once worked on a pilot called “Babylon Fields” that was fantastic and to this day, I’m still mourning the decision not to pick it up to series.  You guys would have totally loved this show – it was about zombies who return to their lives as they left them when they died.  Not crazy 28 Days Later monster zombies – just dead people who didn’t understand why they’re back and how to live as zombies.   Am I right?  You would have so watched this show.

Memories of “Babylon Fields” makes me wish that execs would show the pilots to the public and let them decide which show they’d watch if it became a series.  I can’t even imagine how much money, time and effort that would save everyone involved.  And it might help keep some of the “crap” off television.  Well, someone at Top Cow was apparently reading my mind when they decided to create “Pilot Season” for comics – an ingenious plan to launch new comic titles as one-shots and let the fans vote on the winners which will then become new series titles.  They first launched the event in 2007 and received a great response from fans and new readers alike.  Since then, they’ve chosen the two top-voted titles each year to go to series.  Creators ranging from comic veterans to newbies have gotten a shot at the “Pilot Season” test, but this year Top Cow mixed it up a bit.  They paired two giants in the industry, writer Robert Kirkman and artist Marc Silvestri, to do five one-shots .

“Pilot Season” 2009/2010 consists of “Murderer,” “Demonic,” “Stealth,” “Stellar” and “Hardcore” with the latter being released next week. Continue reading »