I am – Hercules!!

1) FRAY DAY. You thought today would be remembered as the day Arnold announced his candidacy? Ha! The eighth and final issue (dated July 2003) of the Joss Whedon-scripted future-slayer comic book “Fray” finally hit the newsstands, and there are numerous clues throughout that suggest Melaka Fray’s first story arc will not be her last. When we’ll see the next story arc, Joss only knows. When “Fray” #1 debuted in June 2001, Buffy’s corpse was spending its summer vacation underground, Winifred Burkle had just been rescued from an epic stay in Pylea and “Firefly” was more than a year from visiting our airwaves. The first five “Frays” were dated June, July, August, October and November 2001. Then things slowed. A lot. Issue six was dated March 2002. Issue seven was dated more than a year after that(!), April 2003.

2) OUT OF THE POOLE. The entertainment press has been howling of late about the casting of Sarah Thompson (she played Dana Poole, the high school senior who laid a big wet one on Harry Senate in the “Boston Public” pilot a few years ago) as Angel’s new Wolfram & Hart assistant. But the script for 5.1 that Herc read makes it pretty clear Thompson’s character, Eve, is not Angel’s assistant; she’s the liaison between Team Angel and the firm’s senior partners. (Cordette-turned-vampire Harmony Kendall, however, apparantly is serving as an Angel aide these days.)

3) RAND NOW THE NEWS. Our pal Drew Z. Greenberg, who used to write for “Buffy” but now pens dialogue for Clark and Lex over on “Smallville,” dropped us a line Saturday to reveal the whereabouts of a fellow “Buffy” writer, fabulous “Freaks & Geeks” vet Rebecca Rand Kirshner (“Help”). (When we slapped together our little “Where Are Mutant Enemy Writers Now?” feature two months ago, we still hadn’t learned where she landed.) Now it can be told that Kirshner’s the only major “Buffy” writer not employed by a netlet this season. Instead, she’s hard at work with the big boys over at NBC, cranking out fresh installments of the James Caan casino-security drama “Las Vegas.”

I am – Hercules!!