This was supposed to go up Tuesday, but I just realized that I entered the date in wrong. I’ll explain more later.
Jamie
**Edit**
Alright, for those that might be interested, the first section of this post is going to be about the software running this endeavor. The second part is going to be about The Greatest Show on Earth. Ringling Brothers, you must surrender your tagline because the truth of the matter is, you are no longer it.
No Reason is run on a modified version of WordPress, a relatively easy to use blogging program that allows us to easily update and control the posting process – including editing the dates of posting (hence why even when I update late, I post it to the fridays and tuesdays). It has both plain text and visual rich text editing options, basically the whole works. It’s an awesome program. However, in editing what it known as the timestamp for this comic, I set it up for November instead of October. I’m an idiot.
Now, the important stuff. I imagine Murph will want to weigh in at some point and offer his more expert of opinions (his knowledge of the realm of superheroes is intimidating). For now, however, you are going to have to deal with my fan boy excitement over possibly one of the most exciting programs to have touched down in TVland in the last decade.
I am not much of a TV guy. I like a few programs, and generally at any given time have perhaps one, maybe two shows that I must watch in any given season – if that. For a long time, I didn’t even have cable, and relied only on movies and mini-series DVD’s for my passive entertainment. I like things that are well done – dramatic, cinematically interesting, essentially HBO’ish quality material. Band of Brothers is a perfect example of the kind of programming I get excited about.
Heroes has all of what I look for in a program. Fascinatingly diverse characters, with a ‘realistic’ sense of development as ordinary people cope with the sudden discovery of super and extraordinary abilities. The fact that all of the characters are flawed, that their weakness are are self-defeating personality conflicts and the stresses of ordinary life in conflict with freakish new abilities is what makes these people great. A Precog with heroin addiction, a meek Japanese fellow who can control time, a narrcisitic politician that can fly, a dreamer who longs for greatness that mimics the powers of others are only a few of the great characters we’ve been introduced to.
Story wise, we’re still in the initial stages of introduction. We’re just learning who these characters are, and connections are slowly coming to fruition. The lines of good and evil are still lightly drawn, and the direction of how we are getting to where we are going is still a mystery. I find it somewhat frustrating that with such a huge ensemble cast, so spread out at this given moment that the story jumps around so much, but I imagine that as this story comes together, that will happen less and less as the story arcs that have opened begin to interweave. We have the major arc of the doomsday of New York, the knowledge that a nuclear bomb is set to go off in New York. We have the secondary portion to that story that has become the seasons quote line: “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World.” We have the smaller stories of a love triangle between The Precog Artist, Isaac, The Mimic, Peter and a girl named Sophie. We have a small Mystery as to the role of the Cheerleaders father, and his dark friend. We have the politics funded by crime story. We have the secrets of a good homelife story. There is the domestic dispute avec superpowers with a split personality, super strengthed mother, and a father who can walk through walls, over a kids with an I.Q. that puts Hawking to shame. And finally, we have the pursuit of heroism by all of them.
Honestly, thus far, Heroes is the best thing I have ever seen on television.
Jamie
