Recently, media outlets from Entertainment Weekly to the New York Times have jumped on the Heroes bashing bandwagon, each offering an opinion on how to save the failing show. While it’s obvious that Heroes was never really as great as everyone thought (save those perceptive individuals who never thought it was good to begin with), are their suggestions or any of our suggestions any better. Heroes is escapist fantasy, a weekly comic book on a $4 million dollar budget. It never has been anything more, and likely never will be. Everything heroes is doing wrong is exactly what the average superhero comic does every month (I say average because there are a lot of talented independent and mainstream creators who actually push the boundaries of the medium.). Any fanboy/girl worth their salt knows that meticulously and viciously criticizing a comic is standard practice on any comic forum. Heroes is no exception to this phenomenon, the only difference is the scope. Heroes, with all its pomp and hype, was built movie-level publicity, which immediately draws the ire of mainstream media. In this age of the post-modern superhero pop culture movement, anything about comics and superheroes draws a horde of attention. And, who better to comment on mainstream superheroics than the comic geeks who love them? But, are the geeks right? Maybe, but probably not.
This isn’t revolutionary, but geeks don’t know it all. First, most geeks are fans who know too much, but miss the obvious. Just because you’re a X-Men fanboy/girl who remembers every arc from Claremont’s historic run in the early 80’s doesn’t mean the average TV viewer in 2008 has any recollection of Days of Future Past or the Phoenix Saga—though, that’s more likely today than it was in the past. To most viewers, the storylines in Heroes seem relatively—not brand spanking, but fairly—new. Also, many casual TV viewers enjoy soap operas. Check the ratings. Aside from procedurals, the most popular shows on TV are all soap operas—albeit in vastly varying degrees of quality. So, complaining about the soapiness of Heroes, it’s revolving door death policy, and ludicrous family tress is to ignore fundamental aspects of serial storytelling. For that matter, most comics are quite soapy with unlikely accelerated romances, pretentious dialogue, tawdry melodrama, revolving door death policy, ludicrous…I don’t need to go on. If Heroes is failing because of any of these reasons, then its only real fault is slavishly adhering to the conventions of serial storytelling.
As far as storytelling goes, no geek—professional writer or otherwise—can write someone else’s story. Perhaps, the creators of Heroes do have a plan—though its likelihood is often challenged by the show’s quality. As the audience we don’t know that plan and it’s not for us to tell the creators where the show should go for one simple reason: if we we’re writing our own original (used loosely in Heroes case) creation we wouldn’t want someone else to tell us how to write it. Criticism and observation is one thing. It’s our right as consumers to comment on what we like and dislike about a piece of consumptive entertainment. But, we shouldn’t try to guide the hand of the creator’s too make something that only appeals to one specific fan or fan base. If you don’t like it, don’t watch. I know there aren’t many options on network for sci-fi/fantasy fans, but really if it’s that plodding, that derivative, that bad then just bust a hustle to your local comic shop or Blockbuster and pick up the latest X-Men comic or movie and you’re set. Trust me, you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches every Monday night. If the creators of Heroes want to go down in flames for sticking to their vision, however flawed it may seem to us, let them. Maybe, it’s their destiny.
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