Chapter 23: Family Man
A new graphic novel was posted today to the official Heroes website. This week’s story revolves around Mr. Bennet:
The graphic novel comes in two flavors: interactive or printable [PDF]. Choose your poison.
If you’re not familiar with the graphic novel, you should be! (You can read all of the past graphic novels here.) In most cases they pick up right where the television show leaves you and fill in additional back story between episodes.
A brief introduction to this week’s graphic novel and some additional discussion/spoilers after the jump.
Chapter 23: Family Man
The man in horned-rimmed glasses, Mr. Bennet, has dealt with many individuals with fantastic abilities. Most were faceless entities, those to be “bagged and tagged.” A very few became friends. And one he would encounter early in his career, who would become the most special person in his life: the girl called Claire.
If you’ve been keeping up with the graphic novels, you’ll notice that the intro for this week’s issue is the same as Chapter 22: Hell’s Angel. I’m not sure if that was deliberate, or simply an oversight.
Chapter 23 picks up where Episode 17 “Company Man” left off. Claire’s stopped Ted Sprague from going nuclear. Thompson, Mr. Bennet’s associate in the “Organization”, sees Claire walking out of the burning Bennet house… she’s basically a walking cadaver. “Your daughter is extraordinary. You have one hour to bring her in.” Bennet feels a tremendous amount of guilt. He had been trying to hide Claire from his employers for months. Now he had an hour to try to save her life. Bennet tells his family to find a hotel to stay in while the mess is cleaned up. He was going to get help. The only person he could trust was a woman he had trained: Hana Gitelman. He sends her a message: “Parkman and Sprague found me. I know you helped them. I’m changing side, Hana. I need your help to shut it all down.”
Through this story and through “Company Man”, HRG has actually turned out to be quite the hero himself. That’s pretty funny considering how he was the “bad guy” early on in the series.
I did notice a couple of inconsistencies between this issue and the tv series… On the last page, we see HRG laying in a puddle of blood. In the background we see two vehicles: a red truck, and a black sedan. Neither car was present in “Company Man”. The other inconsistency is the fact that the scenery surrounding this same panel is lush vegetation… HRG was shot on a bridge… in the middle of nowhere… and trees were nowhere to be found (except, perhaps, underneath the bridge along the stream below).
I wonder how much information the graphic novelists are given to work with. There have been other minor inconsistencies throughout. I notice that Mr. Bennett can’t remember Claire’s name at the end of the graphic novel. In the show, he could. Maybe they don’t get a final copy of the script? I don’t know much about making a graphic novel, but I doubt it’s done as quickly as Isaac whips out paintings.
I suppose another possibility is that the show changes as they’re filming it and the graphic novelist doesn’t get the updates?
Anyway, I think that despite the inconsistencies with the actual show, the graphic novels are a great tool to fill in some of the missing pieces. Things like how Sylar got to Virginia, what happened when HRG & Claude went to Claire’s house, how Micah’s life changed when Nikki turned herself in as a murderer, etc.
Keep up the good work, guys! I love your podcast and the way it makes me think a differently about the show.
Jesse
Taylors, SC