Getting ready to hit the con floor, but for those of you playing at home, here’s some stuff to make up for not being in Nirvana.

Science fiction publisher Tor.com launched their new website, and the free DRM-free ebooks and wallpaper they were giving away free for the last few months are all here for one last week. Excellent top-notch works from John Scalzi, Harry Turtledove, Mercedes Lackey, Peter David, Kage Baker, and many more. Plus there’s blogging from their writers, original short stories (with download links plain as day!) and yet another community to join. Go check ‘em out before the idiots fill up the place.

There will be a sequel to “Robot Chicken: Star Wars.” Obviously it will be darker, and Seth Green’s hand will be chopped off on-camera.

Joss Whedon is reshooting the “Dollhouse” pilot, but it’s not at all like the “Firefly” situation, nope nope nope. Yeah, we’ll see. Also: Dollhouse webisodes.

Bryan Singer has signed on to produce “Capeshooters,” a movie about superhero-chasing paparazzi. Which makes sense, because he’s already proven he knows how to ruin at least one superhero’s life…

On to the con!

Now the saga is complete… We’re giving away some amazing stuff for this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, like Battlestar Galactica prints, a FOX promotional “Terminator: Sarah Conner Chronicles” cap, BSG and Serenity character dog tags, and now…

The Instant Geek Kit! Turn your home or workplace into an immediate geekfest of toys and buttons.

This is just a glimpse at the box of geeky wonderfulness coming your way if you win this cheesy box. Action figures, vintage geek buttons, Darth Vader Potato Head, slave Leia, and whatever else I decide to toss into this geeky gumbo. Every item guaranteed to have adorned the desk of a geek (ahem) at some point, with a few items that are hard to find these days. I thought about having a mini-contest asking people to identify everything here, but I’m not sure I could, so never mind…

Head to our SDCC page to find out a) how you can win, b) how you can spread the Hiatus word at the con, and c) how you can win something even if you’re not at the con.

Hey kids! Comics!

There’s lots of comicy goodness out this week, and the 800-lb Bat-gorilla is the new Batman movie “The Dark Knight,” which opens tonight and is already wowing audiences and building Oscar buzz for the late Heath “The Joker” Ledger. Some of that may be because he died tragically before the movie came out, but other actors have done that and not won and he did do a.. really, really scary job of it, so here’s hoping. Wouldn’t it be excellent if a comic book movie won an acting award for once?

And in front of “The Dark Knight” you might get to see the trailer for another of the most anticipated and most dreaded comic book movies, “The Watchmen.” Alan Moore’s brilliant graphic novel, painstakingly brought to life. I’m of two minds on this – sorry, Harvey Dent – because I LOVE the book, but the scenes I’ve seen so far look awfully good and every Alan-Moore-based movie gets closer and closer to his vision. (In my world, “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” never happened, never never neverm la la la). You can check out the HD trailer here.]

And, OK, maybe I’m on my own here, but one of my favorite comic characters returns next week in “Ambush Bug: Year None” next week and Newsarama did a recap of why we should care. *POP!*

Apparently Dr. Horrible’s evil plan to join the Evil League of Evil involved crashing the frickin’ Internet. The first of the three-act super villain musical by Joss Whedon and half his family was posted at drhorrible.com just after midnight on Tuesday morning and they were getting hit by over 200,000 visits per hour before their server caved. Not only did it take several hours to move Dr. Horrible to a new monster server, but people looking for more information also crashed Whedonesque.com with over 5 times the maximum traffic their host allows, so they’re migrating now as well. On the plus side, drhorrible.com is back up now and, if you’re the “pay the artists” type, you can buy the 1st act or the entire season at iTunes.

One of the guys here, C. A. Bridges, got to speak to Joss – lucky bastard – and he wrote an article about it here (audio included). Or you can read the transcript here.

In other news, an outrage is being committed. Producers of the reality series “The Mole” have started a save-our-show site, SavetheMole.com, with an open letter begging fans to help them out. Excuse me, isn’t that the fans’ job? This kind of corporate-led fan movement just co-opts our pure grass-roots process. Who’s going to take us seriously now? Seriously, if the fans didn’t care enough to do it themselves, well… maybe it’s time to let it go. Man up, Mole people.

Just got confirmation of my signing times from the California Browncoats. I’ll be signing at their table Thursday from 1 p.m. to 1:30 p.m., and again on Saturday from 5 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. The California Browncoats will be at tables A7/A8 in Hall A at the back of Aisle 300. This will also be your perfect opportunity to come by and get one of our sketchcards with the special contest codes!

So come by and say hi! I’ll be the one in the hat.

Lotta stuff going on out there, and most of it costs money. Here’s where mine’s going:

There’s a new James Bond graphic novel coming out.

Big TV-on-DVD sale at Amazon means cheap Buffy, Angel, Bones, Firefly, Simpsons, Arrested Development, Addams Family, and many more. How hilarious is it that Amazon’s scattershot “starring” section lists the Simpsons DVDs as starring Doris Grau?

Quantum Mechanix has announced several new Serenity-related things this week: a Big Haul contest where you can win a million dollars in replica Alliance credits (and more), the release of the first of the Little Damn Heroes series of Serenity character cartoon maquettes, designed by our own Adam Levermore-Rich, and a set of portrait lithos of the Big Damn Heroes by Steve Anderson.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog debuts on the web next week for free (and the free tie-in comic, “Captain Hammer: Be Like Me” should pop up on the Dark Horse Presents MySpace page sometime today), but we’re already getting hints at the incredible extras on the soon-to-come DVD, including musical commentary(!)

And a reminder: we’ll all be at the San Diego Comic-Con in a few weeks (I’ll be twittering from the floor!) and there’s tons of exclusive stuff to grab while you’re there, although you may not want to get between me and that BSG toaster.

The Master Plan has been revealed!

Joss Whedon’s minisode musical for the Internet, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, and Nathan Fillion, will be broadcast for free starting July 15. There will be three episodes, and then downloads will be offered for a charge, with a massively-packed DVD coming along later. This is Joss’ plan for taking his skills straight to the people! The “people” meaning us. And, in his announcement,  he has marching orders for us:

3) Joss, you are so kind, and generous, and your forehead is like, huge, like SCARY, like I think I can see Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint hanging off it… what can WE do to help this musical extravanganza?

What you always do, peeps! What you’re already doing. Spread the word. Rock some banners, widgets, diggs… let people know who wouldn’t ordinarily know. It wouldn’t hurt if this really was an event. Good for the business, good for the community – communitIES: Hollywood, internet, artists around the world, comic-book fans, musical fans (and even the rather vocal community of people who hate both but will still dig on this). Proving we can turn Dr Horrible into a viable economic proposition as well as an awesome goof will only inspire more people to lay themselves out in the same way. It’s time for the dissemination of the artistic process. Create more for less. You are the ones that can make that happen.

Wow. I had no idea how important you guys were. I’m a little afraid of you.

Get ready! Brace yourselves! Take whatever mental and spiritual precautions you feel are necessary! Also, spread the word. Head to the Dr. Horrible website and watch the teaser, join the MySpace and Facebook and Twitter pages, grab banners to spread around. Digg it! Tell your friends! Tell your enemies! Tell your enemies’ friends!

It’s coming…

Just a quick post to let you all know that I just talked to the California Browncoats, and it looks like I’ll be doing a couple of signings at their booth at San Diego Comic-Con this year. No details on the times yet, but it will probably be early afternoon on Thursday and late afternoon on Saturday. I’ll keep you posted with more specifics as I get them.

We’ve got a bunch of really exciting things in the works for Comic-Con. Some of them will be things you can only get if you’re at the con itself, but there’s special stuff in store for the rest of you too! Stay tuned!

California Browncoats Special Events and Guests

Great news for all you people out there with the same interests as me! (Me being Twitch, which is me)

First, the complete 41-DVD set of “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” — 105 episodes, plus all kinds of extras — is coming out October 21. This is the same set that was previously available only through Time-Life, with the attache case and everything, but now it’ll be in the stores and 50 bucks cheaper.

And I was torn on this one, but finally gave in. Tim Minear’s unproduced screenplay of Robert A. Heinlein’s classic “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” has been released online. I wasn’t sure if, technically, this was a copyright violation since Mr. Minear didn’t put it there and I don’t download things I’m not supposed to, but apparently he approves of it being spread around and read. nd Walker downloaded it for me anyway because I couldn’t click the link with my eyes closed, so U.S. Copyright Office enforcers should talk to him and totally not me. That’s “Walker M. Gerhardt,” you probably know him already. Anyway, the script is great. There’s more than a few changes to fit a massive and detailed book into a two-hour movie, but the tone feels right and it’s way better than “Starship Troopers” even if it did have Neil Patrick Harris.

Hi folks, Tess here. We’re going whedony with our links today, with good news and bad news.

First, the bad news. The Serenity laser-etched lucite ornament coming from Dark Horse is no longer coming from Dark Horse. Cancelled, they say, for lackluster sales.

Also cancelled: the Buffy Tarot Deck. “Due to circumstances beyond our control, Dark Horse will not be producing the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” Tarot Deck. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, but no existing orders will be filled. We appreciate your support of this program, and again apologize to those who placed advance orders and to fans alike.” Boo, hiss. How will I know my hard-to-interpret future now?

Joss’ last “Runaways” comic, the end of his Dead End Kids arc, comes out today (here’s a preview). Yay, new comic! Boo, last one, although incoming writer Terry (“Strangers in Paradise”) Moore is an excellent choice.

So, bummers. But in good, good, good news, the teaser for Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Joss Whedon’s Internet minisode musical starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion, is out on the Web! Let the squeeing commence!