I was waiting for a new issue to come out before I reviewed these but I have no idea if they've stopped until the new season, so I'll do it now.
If you watch Heroes and don't read these comics, you are missing out. These are professional grade comics being passed out free online. Better, actually. You'd be hard pressed to find a combination of writing and art this good in any currently published book that doesn't say "Vertigo" in the upper left corner. Not only that, but the writers clearly have a good understanding of the comic medium. There are a lot of good writers in comics who just write great stories but who have no idea how to tell those stories with pictures. That is not a problem here.
When I first checked these out, I thought they were going to be little insignificant character blurbs, intersting but largely irrelevant to the real story. I was completely wrong. Remember Wireless, the girl who can talk to computers? She's been in one episode of the show, but in the comics she's already been into outer space. I don't want to ruin anything but suffice it to say she has a number of crazy adventures, some of which will have to have an impact on the TV show.
But it's not just Bit-Part Heroes Excellent Adventures, there is also some very good character development, especially regarding the history of the characters prior to the show. If you read only one of the stories on the site, make it the one about when the Haitian first got his powers (called It Takes A Village). No matter which character is your favorite, you'll be able to find some new insights on them in these comics.
The comics tend to be about 7 pages long each, with larger stories told throughout multiple "issues". I'd highly reccomend reading them using the "printer friendly" version, as their online reader was designed by chimps, for chimps and turned me off of the entire experience the first time I tried to read them. Also in the printer friendly versions, the Nissan ads are much larger than the comic itself in many of the first ones, so you'll have to do some resizing. The comics are free (thanks, I'm sure, to Nissan, whose product placements, you will soon find, are not limited to television) so a little extra effort shouldn't be a problem unless you're an entitled beardo, but if that's the case why are you reading this blog instead of writing angry e-mails to JMS? (If you're an entitled beardo, you know to whom I'm referring)
Normally I would go into more depth, but honestly they're online for free. If you want to know what they're like, read them.
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