Asking the Wrong Questions

Via Bookslut comes this surprising report : Heroes creator Tim Kring is collaborating with literary critic and novelist Dale Peck on a sci-fi/ alternative-history trilogy that was sold at auction to Crown yesterday for an advance said to be worth a staggering $3 million. I... just don't know what to say about this.

Like everyone else, I read Entertainment Weekly 's Nov. 7th interview with Heroes creator Tim Kring, in which he winningly owns up to the show's vertiginous drop in quality since the beginning of its second season, and vows to do better in the future. A week ago, my only reaction to statements like We assumed the audience wanted season 1 — a buildup of intrigue about these characters and the discovery of their powers. We taught [them] to expect a certain kind of storytelling. They wanted adrenaline. We made a mistake. was 'no shit, Sherlock,' but today, perhaps in the wake of this week's good-but-not-yet-great flashback episode, I got to thinking about this quote, and I just had to ask: why? Why would Kring assume that retreading season 1 would have good results? Heroes is a show that lives and dies with its plot progression, and it slows down the relentless pace of events and revelations at its own peril. Who in their right mind would think that stalling, an...

...after killing off most of the women and characters of color: David Anders, best known for playing the evil British freelance spy Julian Sark on TV's "Alias", will play ancient samurai warrior Takezo Kensei in NBC's sci-fi drama "Heroes" next season. There are times when loving this show takes a lot of effort. (reported by Strange Horizons )

I'm not a big fan of comics, and especially not the kind featuring superheroes, but even I took less time than your average studio executive to work out that if you're going to port superhero comics over to an audio-visual medium, cinema is your absolute worst choice. For more than half a decade (well, for several decades, but there's been a glut recently), some of the finest filmmakers in the business have been trying to crack the comic book film formula. Some of their results have been financially successful, others have been well-received by critics. With the possible exception of Pixar's The Incredibles (I say possible because I'm not convinced that it's entirely accurate to describe the movie as a comic book film, not because I don't think it's excellent), none of them have even approached the distinction of good cinema, or the even more elusive honor of faithful adaptations. Most importantly, none of them have managed to replicate the intricately ...