Those of you who know me personally know that I pretty much hate NBC's TV show Heroes. It wasn't always this way though. Back in the show's first season I really liked the show a lot. Sure, it was a blatant ripoff of the X-Men, but I was just happy to be able to see a superhero show on major Network TV. But then the first season ended and the show has been a mixture of horribly unoriginal, repetitive, nonsensical and boring ever since. I still watch the show every week, partly out of a hope that the show will get better and partly out of a masochistic desire to punish myself I guess. But I can't help but long for a superhero TV show that is actually, you know, good. Something that is a joy to watch. Something that has me glued to the TV the way Lost and Battlestar gets me.
Hopefully, my prayers have just been answered.
The FX network has announced that they are in talks with comic writer Brian Michael Bendis to adapt his comic book Powers into a TV series. For those of you who have never read Powers, let me explain. It's basically a cop drama about two detectives who work for the homicide division of the local city police department. Here's the catch though. They work in what is called the Powers division. They are responsible for investigating any and all homicides that are related to superheroes or were committed by superheroes. The detectives themselves don't have any powers. They're just regular people, but they're tasked with tracking down and arresting superpowered murderers.
Mixing police procedural with superheroes, Powers manages to explore the traditions (and cliches) of comic book superheroes in a way that Heroes has never quite accomplished (instead, the NBC drama mostly chooses to imitate them. Especially if they're old X-Men comics), and just may be the superpowered TV show you've always waited for.
This news has me really excited. Powers is an amazing comic. The first few graphic novels suprised me with their depth, characterizations and story telling style. The comic is very dark in it's tone too, so having it on cable as opposed to network TV is definitely a good thing. Networks like ABC or NBC wouldn't like a show as dark as Powers needs to be. They'd try to lighten it up somehow and would ruin the show. FX, however, has no problems with creating dark or morally ambiguous shows. Look at some of their earlier shows like The Shield or Nip/Tuck and you can see that they may just have the right amount of edge needed to make Powers right. A really good TV show could be made out of this comic, if it's done right. And luckily, it looks like FX is being smart. They've actually brought in the comic's creater Brian Michael Bendis to develop and write the show for them. When asked about the show recently, Bendis had the following to say:
I just handed in a draft to the network and we're getting our notes from the network as soon as [New York Comic Con] is over. So next week I'll get the notes, and as long as they don't involve sock puppets and some sort of orgy scene that I'm not interested in, then hopefully it will go in the right direction.
I'm trying hard not to get my hopes up, but if the TV adaptation comes out even half as good as the comic was then it's going to blow Heroes out of the water. And I'm perfectly fine with that.
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