SKIRMISHER

You watch NBC’s Heroes, and you’d never think Tim Kring, its creator, has never been a fan of the comic book genre. Good thing you can always hire a bunch of scribblers at the right kind of compensation.

To compensate for his ignorance of the superfriends genre, Kring hired a team of comics-savvy writers who dubbed themselves the League of Heroic Scribblers. Kring acts as a mainstream counterbalance. The result is a show that straddles two worlds, bringing geek sensibility to the masses and mainstream TV polish to the caped-crusader crowd. It’s Topic A whether you’re standing around the watercooler or hanging out at a Star Trek convention. And even though Heroes may have been the product of reverse engineering, the experiment has been such a success that it may well end up surpassing other cult touchstones.

Stumble it!