One of the high points of the New York Comic Con was catching up with Jamar Nichols. Writer, illustrator, and one of the hosts of the Comic Book Diner podcast, Mr. Nichols has always been a great guy to chat with.

The New York Comic Con found its way back to the Javits Center this past weekend, and it was nice to see that it’s still the chaotic zoo of a convention that it’s always been!

[THIS IS YOUR ONLY SPOILER ALERT! USE IT WISELY]

Sam and Dean investigate a string of gruesome murders and discover the Egyptian god Osiris is behind the deaths. The vengeful god is putting people on trial for their past mistakes and killing them if found guilty. Osiris homes in on Dean’s guilt and decides he’s the next to stand trial. Sam steps in as Dean’s lawyer, but both brothers are unprepared when Osiris calls an unexpected witness – Jo.

The boys get a break from the hell that the leviathans are causing in Defending Your Life. Written by Adam Glass and directed by Robert Singer, this episode is a cleverly disguised clip episode detailing some of the major plot threads that got Sam and Dean to this point.

Dean is finding it bizarre that they have a run-of-the-mill case compared to their recent leviathan woes when he and Sam arrive to investigate a rather ‘normal’ case but find it’s very abnormal to say the least. A car has apparently killed a man in his 10th floor apartment and the only clue the boys have is some red dirt in the apartment. While they are handling the investigation of the car hit, Sam thanks Dean for his understanding about not killing Amy (last week’s episode, The Girl Next Door) which Dean conveniently forgets to mention has been taken care of.

After another man is killed, this time in an apparent dog attack while in the restroom of a diner, Sam and Dean try to line up the clues. Outside of the red dirt, it appears that the two men are dying under curious circumstances that surrounded their lives. The first guy was a sober alcoholic that killed someone in a drunk driving related accident while guy #2 was a convicted man guilty of running dog fighting rings (insert appropriate Michael Vick joke here) who had thus reformed and was an animal rights activist. The red dirt leads the boys to an apple orchard where they encounter a completely spooked man running into open traffic running from a farm where he was just put on trial.

Dragging the man back to their motel room, Sam and Dean hear out the man’s story about an abandoned barn with a man presiding over a makeshift court with no jury and only one true executioner. The judge is even making ghosts appear of the man’s murder victims from a liquor store robbery from 1981 — an act that he served 30 years for and just recently gotten paroled of. Warren the ex-con explains that he was at the same bar that one of the men whose death Sam and Dean were investigating. He got jumped and then found himself in the barn on trial. Dean’s basically had enough of this case because it seems that all the dead people had it all coming to them in the first place, but Sam knows it’s a real case. Offering Warren some protection, he leaves him in the motel room in a circle of salt with the television running and calls Bobby.

Because he’s tired and doesn’t want to devote time investigating the case anymore, Dean decides to check the bar and tells Sam to check out the barn if he wants. Sam gives one warning: DON’T DRINK. Dean, being Dean, goes to the bar, starts getting hammered and begins hitting on his lovely bartender while at the same time starts baring his naked soul to her in earshot of a bar patron that earlier bumped into him.

At the barn, Sam gets a phone call from Bobby who identifies their latest perp: Egyptian God Osiris. Osiris likes to weigh in the guilt of the human heart, being judge, jury and executioner. If Osiris finds you guilty, you’re dead. And Sam just let his own brother, a person notorious for feeling remorse for any and everything he does, go off alone to a bar. Sure enough, Dean gets snatched while waiting to get lucky from the bartender as the guy from the orchard accidentally breaks the circle of salt Sam left him in four his own protection and gets executed by the ghosts of the two people he killed in the robbery. After going into a small panic, Sam gets the news that Dean’s disappeared and heads back to the barn to find Dean before it’s too late.

Osiris (Faran Tahir — Warehouse 13, Star Trek) plays it pretty straight letting Dean know that the chains he’s in are definitely Houdini-proof and that he has a very loose tongue when he’s drunk. As the trial for Dean starts, Osiris calls out Sam who decides the only way to help is to defend his brother in court. Osiris throws his weight around swiftly with threats of death and removal of tongues for contempt of court before calling witnesses to Dean’s trespasses, starting with Jo (Alona Tal).

Having died in the Season 5 episode Abandon All Hope along with her mother Ellen while trying to thwart Lucifer’s summoning of the Horseman Death, Osiris asks Jo compelling questions that pulls out Dean’s feelings of guilt behind her death. Sam cross examines Jo, and they quickly discredit Osiris’ case by proving that the real reason she became a hunter was because of her father, not Dean, and that her death may have very well happened whether she knew Dean Winchester or not. Osiris quickly dismisses Jo and puts Sam on the stand next to testify. Trying to use Dean as the ultimate fall guy for why Sam is the way he is, Sam makes a case by simply saying that Dean is not the reason he would have been pulled back into the life of a hunter.

Osiris reveals that people want to be judged for their actions and that their feelings of guilt measure their lives. Sam gets Osiris to concede to letting Dean take the stand and gets Dean to realize that he’s not really remorseful for the people who have had bad done in their life, just that he feels deeply for what has happened. Osiris manages to bait Dean into succumbing to his feelings of guilt by dangling the possibility of calling Amy to testify and sentences him to death.

Bobby comes through with a solution that’s temporary, but will definitely keep Osiris off their trail for the rest of their lives and Dean knows that Jo’s coming to execute him. While Sam hunts down Osiris, Dean and Jo have a conversation and Jo tells Dean that it’s not all his fault for how any of it turned out. Unable to really shake the fact that he seems to be at the center of so much personal loss, Dean is ready to die when Sam makes his play for Osiris, ending the game. Jo disappears and Dean’s life is saved.

As the episodes closes out, Dean tells Sam that he would have probably made a decent lawyer, all things considered. Dean still doesn’t fess up to the situation with Amy, but in the end, it’s Sam that tells him that he doesn’t really feel guilty about his past because it’s behind him and that he has to move on.

Next week, Dean and Sam encounter a pair of witches having the mother of all domestic disputes in the coming episode Shut Up, Dr. Phil.

I love me some Kid Sister, but I don’t know how I feel about this Riff Raff fellow’s decided to ally herself with for “Hide & Seek”. It’s got a nice enough beat, and KS lays down a nice creepy-sexy hook, but I just can’t take this dude Riff Raff seriously. When you’re official introduction to the mainstream is some wack-ass reality show (Mr. Raff was featured on MTV’s G’s to Gents), you’re already behind the 8 Ball as far as I’m concerned. Not to mention looking like the product of a Paul Wall-Vanilla Ice-Snow three-way. Oh, and if you want to be a rapper, it would help if you were actually good at it. If nothing else, check out the vid for Kid Sister decked out in her best early 90s gear, looking like something out of a Technotronic video.

[THIS IS YOUR ONLY SPOILER ALERT! USE IT WISELY]

The Apocalypse was derailed. The mother of all creation has been destroyed. The angelic civil war is at a stalemate (we hope). Castiel is dead.

After Dean and Bobby receive the thrashing of a lifetime from a leviathan-infested Castiel, what’s left of the angel begins to melt as Castiel’s host (that guy named Jimmy) succumbs to holding in too many souls. The next thing everyone knows, what’s left of Castiel is wading into a reservoir and loosing everything inhabiting his body into the water supply. If last week’s episode, Meet The New Boss, didn’t welcome you back to Supernatural, seeing the once-fallen angel’s demise in a whirlpool of water and blackness definitely should.

I really loved the character Castiel and I’m going to miss him tremendously. Don’t worry, I’m not going to be eulogizing over Castiel this review — I’ll save that for a PCS Television podcast…

Episode 2 of Season 7 is off to a roaring start with the death of a friend and the delivery of a new evil for the season. In this week’s episode directed by Guy Bee and written by Ben Edlund, our heroes now have more than a handful with the leviathans running wild who-knows-where. The boys are powerless at the moment to do anything because the leviathans have all dispersed into the town’s water supply and they have no knowledge of anything that can stop them.

Sam’s head is bursting to capacity with full-on hallucinations of fallen angel Lucifer (guest star Mark Pellegrino) and Dean is starting to finally buckle under all of the weight he’s had to shoulder for nearly 4 years (seasons). As the scene closes, Dean picks up Castiel’s raincoat and the trio head back to Bobby’s to try and make sense of it all.

Soon enough, the water system delivers at least 4 of the ancient terrors into brand new hosts, and the new nightmare starts. A little girl hosts the first leviathan that emerges and we catch a small glimpse of what the leviathans are truly capable of. After a set of leviathans massacre a high school boys swim team, the hunters finally have their first lead on where to track them down, but with Sam in no condition to be of use, Dean takes off after the clues while Bobby stands watch over Sam to try and keep him together.

Let it be said that Sam is truly made of some stern material. After Castiel tore down the wall that blocked all his memories of Hell, the younger Winchester brother held it all together extremely well but now it’s coming apart faster than anyone, particularly Dean, could expect. Sam finds himself wrestling with visions of Lucifer while at the same time trying to deal with keeping both Dean and Bobby calm. After some prodding from Dean, Sam finally lets them know how bad it truly is and Dean and Bobby have no choice but to call Sam a liability in his current state.

Another familiar face from past seasons returns this episode as Sheriff Mills (Kim Rhodes) is seen in a hospital recovering from an appendectomy and being driven all sorts of crazy by her roommate who doesn’t trust doctors. Knowing how Supernatural likes to segue to recurrent characters, it all comes together when all four of the leviathans show up in the same hospital. The leviathans have a purpose for walking the Earth since their jailbreak out of Purgatory, but first, they have to feed and leviathans only want to feed on one thing — human flesh. After Kim witnesses her surgeon chowing down on the liver of her ‘doctor-phobic’ roommate, she grabs a phone and sends Bobby an SOS. Booby swoops in and rescues the Sheriff before something tragic can happen to her and starts investigating her reports of a monster devouring livers.

Meanwhile, trying to cope with his hallucinations of Lucifer by cleaning all of Bobby’s guns, Sam gets to take a break when Dean shows up drafting him for help with his hunt. Unknown to him, the Lucifer hallucination is once again playing with his head and lures Sam to an abandoned warehouse to convince him to take the ultimate step to ending his own nightmare — kill himself. Luckily, the real Dean manages to track Sam down before it’s all too late and pulls him back to reality just in time for them to get a phone call from Bobby who has a leviathan on his ass. Running to meet back with Bobby back at the house, the brothers arrive just in time to see the house is burnt to the ground and the junkyard in shambles with no sign of Bobby. And a leviathan waiting for them.

Sam and Dean learn that these particular leviathans are answering to a higher authority and that authority wants the hunters dead. The brothers stop their adversary, but only after the leviathan makes short work of them by breaking Dean’s leg and cracking Sam in the skull with a pipe. The episode ends with the brothers waking up in an ambulance being rushed to the hospital. Sam is once again seeing Lucifer and Dean has gotten confirmation that they are being rushed to the very same hospital that the leviathans have set up camp at. Good times…

First Castiel, and now apparently Bobby is gone, too. With the current batch of troubles the Winchesters are up against, it’s crazy to think that only someone like Castiel can get them out of this.

The six-episode web series following covert government agents Sandy Bergson and Luke Weber as they seek to suppress the truth about extraterrestrial encounters, continues with Episodes Two and Three below.

We’ve already had a taste of HD Star Trek: The Next Generation with the 2009 release of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Motion Picture Collection Blu-ray set, and now, following countless rumors and speculation, CBS Paramount has announced that Captain Picard and the crew of the starship Enterprise-D will be boldly going (again) on Blu-ray.

Starting in January, CBS Paramount will tease us with a sampler of several popular episodes, followed by a box set for season one set to be released later on in 2012. StarTrek.com has reported that all 178 episodes of The Next Generation‘s seven seasons will be transferred to true high-definition 1080p for release in the Blu-ray format and, eventually, for runs on television and digital platforms in the U.S. and across the world. Having launched in 1987, the released of The Next Generation on Blu-ray comes right on time with the series’ 25th anniversary.

“Fans have been clamoring for a high-definition release of Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Ken Ross, Executive Vice President and General Manager of CBS Entertainment, said in a statement. “Transferring the series to high-definition presented difficult technical challenges, but our team has come up with a process to create true 1080p HD masters with true HD visual effects. We can’t wait to show fans how pristine the series looks and sounds with our upcoming Blu-ray releases.” On September 21, 2012, LeVar Burton tweeted on his personal Twitter account, “Stopped by to see how the TNG conversion to HD for Blue Ray [sic] was coming along…” along with a photograph of CBS Television City.

The sampler, called Star Trek: The Next Generation — The Next Level has a set date of  January 31, 2012, and will be presented as a single disc, which will include the feature-length version of the series pilot, “Encounter At Farpoint” and fan-favorite episodes “Sins of The Father” and “The Inner Light”. The Next Level will sell for the suggested retail price of $21.99.

For more information on this, and other upcoming Blu-ray releases, check out the Star Trek official website (www.startrek.com) and back here as well.

[THIS IS YOUR ONLY SPOILER ALERT! USE IT WISELY]

Season 7 of Supernatural is off to a start and already bringing troubles to the Brothers Winchester. The writing staff for the hit CW series is definitely delivering on their promises of keeping the story fresh, alive and intense following last season’s exit of series creator Eric Kripke. Picking up where season 6 ended, Sam, Dean and Bobby have a choice — bow to the new God Castiel or be smitten by his wrath. Easily enough, Bobby makes the sensible choice for them all and takes a knee. Castiel lays out one more ultimatum to the hunters before letting them walk away with their lives. Castiel has a definite plan for setting the world and Heaven right and before the opening credits roll, it shows with a field full of angel corpses in paradise.

The plot threads for the premiere episode of Supernatural revolve around the hunters trying to figure out how to deal with Cas as he travels the world over curing diseases and punishing the wicked masses. No one from hypocritical religious leaders to white supremacy organizations to motivational speakers are spared. It’s only when Castiel bears down on Crowley (Mark A. Sheppard) that we finally get an idea of what’s driving Castiel and his new mindset. Adding more insight to the situation, Castiel is definitely being effected by his new transformation from angel to deity. The entire summer was spent wondering how long it was going to take for Castiel to get to Crowley and it didn’t even take half an episode for it to happen.

Part of the blow-back from the season 6 finale is Sam, who is being assaulted with hallucinations of his memories from hell after Castiel broke down the wall. Dean and Bobby are worried, but they give Sam as wide a berth as can be while not knowing that Sam is being wracked by nightmares. After having a few words with Crowley, the hunters have a new objective — imprison Death to reap God.

In typical Winchester fashion, the brothers acquire all the items they need to summon the horseman (Julian Richings) and after nearly incurring the wrath of Death, they’re no more on track to figuring out answers on how to deal with Castiel when Castiel actually shows up. Death reveals the horrors of what was truly released when Purgatory’s gates were broken and explains that Castiel has done a lot more than just opened up Pandora’s Box in his quest to defeat archangel Raphael. As fast as the brothers and Castiel learned what was really happening, Castiel takes off to handle his next target — an incumbent senator who has been misusing her authority. Death imparts the hunters with the best advice he can give that will get Castiel to lost his powers and even arranges to modify the alignment of the universe to get it all rolling.

After witnessing Cas at work delivering retribution, the hunters manage to reach out to Cas one more time and get him to realize that the power he sought is now corrupting him completely. Returning to the site where Purgatory was cracked open, Dean and Bobby lose track of Sam at the most critical moment but get Castiel to give back the souls he received. All of them, except for one which is possibly the most dangerous of them all…

With more than a few balls up in the air for this new season, Supernatural is back and looks to be one hell of a ride. Crowley being spared was one of the best perks of the premiere episode and any episode where Death is involved makes for some great storytelling. Hats off to the creative staff behind the series. They’ve previewed a really excite season 7 for us and have shown (with Castiel’s actions) that nothing is too sacred or ‘too soon’ for them to touch.

(In case you noticed, there are spoilers here, but some things that went on in the episode you’re still going to have to watch for the full story since I left those out.)

AMC has announced that when The Walking Dead returns, the premiere episode will run a full 90 minutes. This premiere event will kick-off the new season starting Sunday, October 19th at 9/8c as well as kicking-off a two week long Fearfest on the network. Six episodes of season 2 will air from October through mid-December with the show taking a break and returning with the final six episodes set to star airing on Sunday, February 12th at 9/8c.

It’s a thirteen episode season for the graphic novel turned cult television series (more than double the order from last season), but with the hiatus mid-season, many are wondering why the break in the first place and whether or not the break could hurt the show in the long run.

LucasArts and Bioware have released an update to the Jedi Consular class in EA’s upcoming Star Wars The Old Republic MMO. With that update of course, comes a new in depth trailer of the playable class. Hit the jump for the video.