Ray Subers, our colleague at Box Office Mojo, reports on Day 2 of Comic-Con.

While pre-existing hit shows like True Blood and The Big-Bang Theory dominated Ballroom 20 today, a handful of upcoming shows took to the smaller venues in the hopes of sparking some positive buzz ahead of their debuts.

Waking up bright and early, I was able to start my day off with the Hawaii Five-O reboot panel featuring stars Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park, both of whom entered to boisterous applause. While they were obviously there to promote Hawaii Five-O, Lost and Battlestar Galactica were constantly being discussed. Unfortunately, neither Kim nor Park had seen the ending of the other’s show, so they were both amusingly subjected to major spoilers.

Next up was AMC’s The Walking Dead, which I will readily admit was my most anticipated panel due to my affinity for both zombie movies and AMC original programming (I heart Don Draper). From the beginning, I knew I wasn’t going to be disappointed: the audience (myself included) was blown away by the astounding five-minute trailer, which honestly looked better than most movie previews. The cast and crew provided some seriously great moments as well, including executive producer Frank Darabont‘s hilarious rant about the importance of tax incentives (they shoot the show in Georgia, not in Los Angeles) and the reveal that composer Bear McCreary (of Battlestar Galactica fame) will be handling the show’s music. Throughout the rest of the day I repeatedly overheard positive rumblings about the show, indicating that AMC could have yet another major hit on their hands.

A little later in the day I managed to catch the pilot episode of NBC’s The Cape, though thanks to a ridiculously rushed pace and questionable editing I initially thought I had watched select footage from the first few episodes. The show finds the only clean cop left in fictional Palm City framed for murder, left for dead, and forced to become a vigilante superhero. Based on the footage shown and the panel discussion afterward (which featured genre favorites Summer Glau and Vinnie Jones), the show seems aimed at filling the void left behind by the departure of Heroes, though the decidedly mixed audience reaction indicates the jury is still out on this one.

The most pleasant surprise of the day came from MTV’s Teen Wolf, of which I fully expected to disapprove of prior to the presentation (really, why would you make a TV version of Teen Wolf?). While the ten minutes of footage they showed was by no means groundbreaking, it was tense, atmospheric and well-written, and instantly made the main characters seem worth caring about. The young stars of the show seemed a bit nervous on the panel, though they did demonstrate some nice chemistry. An ongoing discussion was whether there was room for another werewolf or vampire show on television, to which star Tyler Hoechlin (Road to Perdition) cleverly quipped “there’s always room for something good on TV.” I couldn’t agree more, Tyler.

The last panel I was able to check out was for Falling Skies, a TNT series from executive producer Steven Spielberg that’s set to debut next June. They kicked things off with the trailer, which depicted survivors battling back, insurgency style, in the aftermath of an alien invasion. During the panel segment, ER‘s Noah Wyle and Terminator Salvation‘s Moon Bloodgood (looking splendid, I might add) amusingly answered what they would grab from Sears in the case of an actual alien invasion: Wyle went the practical route by opting for duct tape, while Bloodgood took a moment before deciding she’d track down some clean underwear.

-Ray Subers