Premise
Dozens of people have discovered that they have superpowers. A shadowy organization tracking these people is up to something nefarious. Up to something even more nefarious is a sociopath killing the paranormals and absorbing their powers. And a time traveler, a precognitive, and a dreamer all predict that most of New York City will be destroyed in a nuclear blast in two months.

Evaluation
Dan Schmidt once complained about how reviewers of a certain book were falling all over themselves to congratulate the author on her audacious premise, when it was fairly tame compared to stuff one aisle over in the sci-fi section. Somewhat similarly, Heroes became the hit show of the 2006-7 TV season — enough of a hit that I heard about it and ended up watching it, even though I don't have a TV and had to get the episodes online — and while all in all I'd have to say that I enjoyed it, I also feel duty-bound to report that this series isn't really doing anything that Marvel Comics wasn't doing in 1986.

The best thing about Heroes is the way it brings to life the wonder of people doing extraordinary things. The fact that superhero movies have become immensely popular even as the superhero comics market shrinks down to almost nothing suggests that it isn't the genre to blame for the decline of the American comics industry; blame the business model, blame the silly conventions like bright costumes, or maybe blame the abstracted nature of the medium itself. If I had to select one moment as the highlight of the first season of Heroes, it would be that in which Claire, the cheerleader with the healing factor, approaches the out-of-control nuclear guy to stab him with a tranquilizer before he blows up, and as she fights through the energy blasts, her flesh starts to burn away... I've seen that scene countless time before, with Wolverine and the Hulk, and yet there was something moving about seeing it in live action, even with only the effects a TV budget can buy.

Heroes also has a good touch with establishing characters, creating people who are easy to root for (or to despise) in just a few strokes. Good thing, too, because there are just so damn many of them and none of them gets much chance to be developed properly. Now, you might well ask, how deep is the characterization of comic book superheroes? And the answer is: very deep indeed. Superheroes in comics often have their own titles and so don't have to share the spotlight in every episode with twenty other characters. Even in team books, it's fairly rare that anyone is off panel for very long — a key difference between a team book and an ensemble piece. Besides, when you appear in thousands upon thousands upon thousands of pages over the course of several decades, your character is going to get thoroughly fleshed out even if no one's really trying. One of the problems with Heroes is that when the writers do try, as in the scenes attempting to add some depth to the villain Sylar by delving into his childhood, the results tend to be more embarrassing than anything else.

So that's one problem with Heroes so far: the way it flits around like a hummingbird trying to touch base with twenty characters in every show. I can understand the temptation — the Marvel and DC universes are so vast that naturally you wish you could have an equally vast universe to play with — but it is no coincidence that the best episode, "Company Man," was the one episode that spent its entire length on one story thread. I would also contend that in establishing over two dozen characters who secretly have superpowers, Heroes not only stretches plausibility (not one goes public?) but also loses one of the advantages of not being Marvel or DC: the opportunity to make superpowers seem truly miraculous, which is difficult to pull off in a world with more superhero teams than rock bands.

Another problem is that 23 episodes into the series, it is still unclear what the story is with these powers. At first it seems that they are a new phenomenon, just beginning to manifest at the time the story gets underway, but then it turns out that some people have had powers for years and that in fact there has been a cat-and-mouse game surrounding this phenomenon for generations. I'd like a little more clarity on the premise — I'm bored with stories that revolve around the revelation of a mysterious past. I'm equally bored with stories that give portents of the future and then revolve around how that future will come to pass or not. While this is not always the case, all too often these tricks are employed primarily to hide the fact that the story is not good enough for the writers to get the audience up to speed quickly and have sufficiently interesting things happen that we don't need a prize at the finish line to wonder what will happen next.

On the other hand, maybe more of you would have read this page the whole way through if you had known that there would be a picture of a kitten at the end.

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