iF: Did you feel as the first season progressed that it had started off very grounded and then as powers were learned and people got more comfortable with being “super" that the plots became more fantastic and comic book styled?

LOEB: I don’t know if that is what I would say. First of all I never know what people mean when they say “comic book style”, but I will address it in one way. As the show got bigger, I don’t mean in terms of more popular, I mean as stories became more driven towards "How Do You Stop an Exploding Man" the ordinariness of the pilot and what was originally our tagline “what happens when ordinary people turn out to be extraordinary” was further from where we had started.

iF: It started as a drama with people who had bits of their powers, then by the finale there were more effects and tons of powers and more battle elements.

LOEB: All of that is true, so because of that when we come back in Season Two, we will have stripped everything back down to where we were in the pilot. If there is an ad concept line for this season it’s “how do you become ordinary once you’ve been extraordinary.” The fancy version is how do you keep ‘em down on the farm once they’ve seen Paris?

iF: So now that they’ve used their powers to save the world they have to go back to being like everyone else?

LOEB: Exactly. For some people that’s what they want and for others like Claire it’s going to be very hard. Denying who you are, even for a good cause, is very hard and your nature good or bad will eventually win out.

iF: With the new spin off series ORIGINS, is the same team going to be doing both shows?

LOEB: None of that has been decided yet. The reason for ORIGINS is Tim is very motivated by and excited by the origin stories. So the idea is to create new characters and to see them from the point at which their powers manifest themselves and within one hour tell the story that completes that character. So if it’s a teenage boy, we would see his powers manifest in high school and by the end of the episode he’s a hero or a villain, he’s dead, or he’s gone to New York to see Doctor Suresh. But, there will not be a lot of cross-pollinating with the mother ship. The show has been described in many ways, because nothing has been locked down. It lives in the HEROES universe, but it only lives in the HEROES universe in terms of it being our universe. Think of it as annuals if you want to look at it from comic book terminology. It’s an opportunity to explore new character and with any kind of luck one or two of them will be worth chasing more and will come up to the mother ship.