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2010 TV News Archives

September 25, 2010: CNN Reports on Rules for Successful Superheroes on TV

Smallville CNN.com has an interesting article on Superheroes on television titled "The Rules for Small-Screen Superheroes". The article goes over the five general rules for putting together a successful show about superheroes on television:

    1. Make Your Superheroes Believable.

    2. Give the Characters a Good Origin.

    3. Don't Try to Be "Lost" (or "Heroes").

    4. Never Underestimate the Importance of Villains.

    5. Keep It Simple.

The article examines current and upcoming comic book themed TV shows and actually lauds "Smallville" for being the one show that seems to have gotten most things right. Creators behind the upcoming "The Cape" and "No Ordinary Family", including Jeph Loeb, discuss the five rules and how the rules have worked or not on their shows. Interestingly enough, rule #3 could be re-worded as "Be Like "Smallville"". Though Jeph Loeb hones up to his participation in "Lost" and "Heroes", there's no mention of his affiliation with "Smallville" in its early years though Loeb does discuss the success of the "Smallville" model in terms of how he's talked about adapting Marvel characters for TV (which is part of his job now). According to Loeb:

    "What we've talked about is more of the model on 'Smallville.' It may have had an overriding arc, but it was more of the emotional arcs that we were following," he said. "We want to start each show with a problem, and resolve that problem at the end of the episode. Whatever the emotional arc is going on, that's what you care about. If you don't care about characters, you're not gonna care about the show. We don't want a show driven by the plot, we want a show driven by the character."

Check out the CNN piece in full by clicking here.


2010 Television News

Listed below are all the Television News items archived for 2010 organized into various categories:

“Smallville” News:

“Young Justice” Animated Series News: Other Superman Related Television News:

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