Zachary Quinto deserves a lot of credit for making Sylar the frightening, unique character that he is.

But a lot went in to the planning of this super villain. Below, Heroes Creator Tim Kring and others discuss the steps that were taken to mold Sylar into the man he's become...

Sylar's first "appearance" was simply a bloody skullcap found by Hiro during "Dont Look Back," as part of his first sojourn to the future. Before long, though, the Heroes baddie would be heralded by bloody scribblings and stuntmen in shadowy baseball caps to crank up the suspense.

Said Kring:

"I knew [Sylar] would be a better character if we built him up off screen for several episodes so that you were waiting and waiting and waiting. It was a little bit of a logistical nightmare to try and hide his identity, but we knew the character didn't appear until Episode 8, so that meant we really couldn't start casting until close to that."

The mystery of Sylar is then heightened when Mohinder discovers the these scrawlings in a closet of Sylar's apartment. Later in "One Giant Leap," Parkman confronts the baddie and shoots him several times, but the shadowy figure rises unharmed and escapes.

"Sylar was still evolving, and we liked the idea of keeping him hidden in the shadows. The big plus was that Sylar became even more larger than life by keeping him hidden," said writer Jeph Loeb. "Viewers started to speculate that it was a cast member. There were lots of votes for Nathan (Adrian Pasdar), some for "Niki's other personality" and even Claire because she could regenerate after the bullet wounds—ha!"

Quinto makes his first official appearance as Sylar when he sits in the corner of the Burnt Toast Diner during "Seven Minutes Midnight." He closely observes Hiro and his next intended victim, Charlie.

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We know Hayden Panettiere is 18 now.

But, still, the Heroes actress shouldn't go flaunting her goods everywhere she goes.

Seen here during the show's worldwide tour, Milo Ventimiglia is trying to warn Panettiere that a certain body part of hers may be exposed. We hope she listened...

Masi Oka recently gave props to Lost.

And not just because it's such a well-written, well-acted show. He also acknowledged the ABC series for helping to pave the way for Asian actors to land solid roles; the drama stars Koreans Kim Yun-jin and Daniel Dae Kim.

"There's a lot of credit that has to go to Lost for its storytelling and also the foresight and boldness to put two Asian characters on screen," Oka told The International Herald Tribune while promoting Heroes in Hong Kong with fellow cast members.

Oka said the success of Lost provided advertisers with confidence in shows with non-Caucasian actors. He added international viewers are also demanding shows with more diverse casts.

"The world wants to see things that are reflective of our global society that we have. Even in America, there are so many Asian-Americans and so many Latino-Americans," Masi said.

Another Asian cast member, Sendhil Ramamurthy, said he and Oka were fortunate.

"We were very fortunate that they went in the direction of having two Asian characters. I think there's a certain amount of luck involved, as well," he said.

Ramamurthy was born in Chicago. Oka was born in Tokyo and moved to Los Angeles as a child.

The two stars were in Hong Kong to promote Heroes with fellow actors Ali Larter and Greg Grunberg as part of an international tour that also includes stops in Tokyo, Singapore, London, Paris, Munich and Toronto.

We may need to start reading more of the Dallas Morning News.

Check out the praise this newspaper has for Heroes - as well as its first season DVD - and another show we love, Friday Night Lights...

To watch an episode of FNL or Heroes is to want to watch another, and another. And while there are always the Internet and on- demand services, DVDs remain the ultimate expression of this power-viewing style of consumption. Both collections were made with a keen understanding of this, although, as with the shows themselves, they take opposing approaches.

Heroes wears its self-knowingness on its sleeve, tagging each episode a "chapter," feeding its roots in the comic-book/online world with its lifeblood pursuit of everything behind-the-scenes and in-the-margins.

It includes oodles of audio commentaries, how-they-did-it documentaries and treasures such as creator Tim Kring's cut of the "unaired pilot."

FNL's DVD, meanwhile, like the show itself, is all artful restraint and understatement. Packaging is minimal: a few snapshot-style cast-in-character photographs culminating in an inner-jacket, multipanel portrait of stadium lights against the wide Texas sky.

Each approach, as with almost everything with these shows, is just right. Heroes - with its coils of characters and subplots, its intersecting conspiracy theories - benefits from the bag-of-tricks approach. It's fun to have more stuff to pore over; it's great to hear Kring and company talk about all the minute choices, all the incidental details about this scene or that storytelling twist.

It all feeds the fantasy.

Likewise, you don't really want to see or hear a lot about the making of FNL. This show is like a great magic trick, or even better, a beautiful dream – you don't really want to know how they did it; you don't want to be jostled awake. You just want to be caught up and carried away.

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Remember Molly Walker, the little girl Matt Parkman saved to begin season one... and then befriended again to end season one?

As most Heroes followers could have guessed, her fear of the "Boogeyman" will play a prominent role in season two.

Here's what Creator Tim Kring had to say about the part of Molly, also known as the Heroes "tracking device" for her unique super power...

To be honest, we actually thought her re-entry into the show was going to be a lot sooner, and it got pushed back. While we knew she was coming back, in all seriousness and candidness we didn't know it was going to be that late in the series. I would pay some attention to Molly Walker and what she represents as an important clue as to where [Season 2] is going.

That'll be revealed pretty much in the season opener, but this idea that Molly Walker and Suresh's [Sendhil Ramamurthy] sister had similar ailments is a key part of where this story is going in the second season.

Another week, another magazine cover for Hayden Panettiere.

Here she is on Genlux, a publication dedicate to luxury beauty and fashion.

We hope fans don't grow sick of this young star.

The DVD for Heroes season one hits stores today.

As countless fans make this purchase and relive their favorite moments from their favorite show's inaugural episodes, Wizard Universe got the creative forces behind Heroes to reminisce on a few key scenes, revealing how there was a method to their madness, why fake blood is truly nasty and what's in store next year...

Scene: YATTA! (Episode 1, "Genesis")

Tim Kring: We filmed this on the same day we shot Peter [Milo Ventimiglia] falling off the rooftop. We did it on top of a parking lot in downtown Los Angeles with a green screen, and it was done late in the day with just two very quick shots that took only about 15 minutes to do. We could only do a limited sort of size on Hiro against the green screen and then with that, we put a composite of footage from Times Square that we had gone out to shoot, a 360-degree plate of Times Square.

Scene: Stripping for Supper (Episode 1, "Genesis")
Ali Larter: [Stripping on camera is] absolutely difficult and makes you completely uncomfortable. You worry about your dad, your grandpa. But on the other side, it's sexy and it's fun, you know? There are two sides of the line you have to balance: One side is serving the character and the other is making sure it doesn't get gratuitous.

Scene: Fly, Peter, Fly (Episode 1, "Genesis")
Kring: We hung both Milo and Adrian Pasdar on these harnesses and shot them while they were about 10 feet off of the ground. We shot up using wide-angle lenses to make it look like we were shooting really high up. Then it wasn't until after we got picked up for a series that we went back and did one day on a green-screen stage and we got close-ups and performance stuff there. So a lot of stuff like that was added literally two months later.

Ventimiglia: I love doing that stuff. There were some things they wouldn't let me do for insurance purposes, but I would have been jumping off that 15-story building into an airbag the size of a Volkswagen if I could.

Scene: Painting for Sale (Episode 1, "Genesis")

Producer Jeph Loeb: [Kring] called and asked whether or not there was an artist who could do the things he required, which was someone who could work quickly and who could draw on a large canvas and work in various mediums—pencil, ink, paint. There really was only one choice, and that was Tim [Sale]. So that was sort of my first real contribution, finding Timmy, and putting the two Tims together. The world will never be the same.

Aritist Tim Sale: I'd never been asked to do anything like this before and thought it was exciting. I remember telling Jeph it'd make a cool comic, and depending on how that was set up, it could be something I'd really like to draw. It reminded me a lot of his scripts with some of the dialogue.

Scene: Gruesome Girl (Episode 3, "One Giant Leap")

Hayden Panettiere: It was a freezing-cold steel table. I had this piece on top of me that was really heavy and they kept spraying it and it was wet. The [fake] blood was trickling down the sides and it's made of corn syrup and so you can imagine how sticky it gets—It never fully hardens and it's ripping the little tiny peach fuzz [hair] off your skin. It's not pretty. But that scene [in the autopsy] I was in practically nothing, just a bra and underwear on this cold metal table. There was gobs of blood and it was not fun. My hair was pink for a while.

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You'd think our favorite photo of a Heroes actor or actress would be the one of Ali Later nude.

And if you had asked us last week, this probably would've been our answer.

But take a look below at this shot of Masi Oka being lifted into the air by a sumo wrestler during yesterday's stop in Japan for the cast. It's impossible not to stare at and smile.... even more so than when ogling Larter in her birthday suit.

Now that Heroes fans have realized that Kristen Bell truly is coming to their favorite show, one question remains:

What will be her character's super power?

Fortunately, for those that crave Heroes spoilers and simply cannot wait a few weeks to find out, Kristin from E! Online has the following short scoop:

Kristen's power is electricity. I'm also hearing that Kristen might be doing some kind of scene with Masi Oka/Hiro in the past, but honestly, that makes no sense whatsoever to me based on everything else I've heard.

Well... okay then.

From what we hear, it doesn't sound as though Bell's use of electricity will be for the greater good, either. She's rumored to take over as the new villain once Zachary Quinto (Sylar) goes on hiatus for a few weeks to film Star Trek.

A little more than six months ago, Heroes fans were treated to the episode called "Six Months Ago."

Hosted by Masi Oka and James Kyson Lee, it aired again last night. You can read the hour's recap right now by following our link to it. It was an important selection in the series' over-arching story line, as we discovered just how these Heroes came into contact with one another, while they also first learned of their powers.

Refresh your memory now by checking out photos from the episode.

You can also read through a few Heroes quotes from the program. See how Sylar felt about his first-ever kill or how Hiro reacted to his experiences with time travel.

Don't forget: next week, we're treated to the rerun of "Company Man." And in just four weeks: it's the second season premiere.