You won’t get any costumes in NBC’s Heroes. Instead, you’ll get a whole twisted tapestry of characters whose subplots not only move the story along but create the plot itself. If you haven’t watched it, you should. You really should if you used to or still do read comic books.
If the story were to have a main character (which I don’t think it does), it would Hiro Nakamura. Destined to a life of lackluster, Hiro discovers he can bend space and time. He travels to the New York six weeks in the future, where he finds a comic about him and witnesses a nuclear blast. Later, his future self travels back to tell Peter Petrelli, who absorbs others’ powers, he has to “Save the cheerleader, save the world.”
The cheerleader in question is Claire Bennett, who is indestructible, like a girly Wolverine without the claws. A good amount of season 1 revolves around saving Claire, who is trying to figure out how to keep her secret and appear like a normal teen. Painter and heroin addict, Isaac Mendez paints Claire’s future. His bleak paintings tell of how the show’s villain, a psychopath named Sylar who takes out the powers of others using deadly force, then gives himself the power.
Other characters include Peter Petrelli’s brother, Nathan who is a congress hopeful who can fly; Niki and Jessica Sanders, one mother trying to make with a fractured personality that gives her super strength; Niki’s son Micah, a technopath who can talk to and fix machines by touching them; his father, DL, a guy who can phase (walk through) solid surfaces like walls; Matt Parkman, a telepathic investigator who can’t keep a job working for the law or his marriage intact; Mohinder Suresh, a professor from India who has picked up his murdered father’s research into the people with powers; Mr. Bennett, the cheerleaders mysterious and foreboding father who is more in the know than most of the characters.
I can’t say more, because I don’t want to give away too much. This show is addictive, really addictive. Let’s just say that the actual goal of this very comic-book feeling book is actually to stop an exploding man.
As for my favorite character, it would have to be Hiro Nakamura. A character from another NBC primetime show, “The Office”, Dwight Schrute said it best: “I’m not a hero. Hiro from “Heroes” is a hero.” Once you watch it I’m sure you’re going to agree.
