CONTEST: High Concept # 4, Kitbashing

[Martin Phipps]

On Oct 29, 7:29 am, Tom Russell <milos_par... at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Oct 28, 7:11 pm, Martin Phipps <martinphip... at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > That sounds like the first season of Heroes: Peter absorbed other
> > people's powers and eventually blew up.
>
> I should probably get around to watching Heroes eventually, if only b/
> c I hear Robert Forster is in it.

I see.

Besides the heroic Peter who simply absorbed powers, the villainous
Sylar also collected powers, usually by killing the person he took the
powers from.  Peter's father was also villainous and he took powers
from people and left them powerless.  This was a recurring theme on
Heroes until they realised it made characters too powerful.

Another recurring theme on Heroes was people getting visions of "the
future" and then spending the whole season trying to prevent it. They
used that gimmick three seasons in a row.

So far Heroes has borrowed a lot from X-Men: besides the getting-a-
vision-of-the-future plot which rips off Days of Future Past we've had
characters looking for a "cure" to their powers, a villain planning to
artificially give powers to ordinary people so that powered people
could be accepted, a government directive passed to register and
relocate them (that was soon forgot about at the end of season three)
and even a disease that kills powered people but not ordinary people
(that was soon forgotten about after season two).  Oh and of course
the powers (telekinesis, mind control, telepathy) are a bit familiar
too.  They did get Stan Lee to make a guest appearance but I think
Marvel would get upset if they ever started refering to themselves as
"mutants". (There was a British series called The Tomorrow People that
was just like Heroes and they didn't use the word "mutant" either so
maybe that's where Marvel draws the line.)

Martin