Heroes: Powers and personalities

Re-reading Astonishing X-Men while catching up with Heroes on BBC2 (up to episode 12 now) its very striking how differently the same basic hook of mutant superpowers is used. While the X-Men’s abilities shape their personalities they don’t obviously arise from them. Maybe it’s different for secondary mutations - Emma does like diamonds - but I’m not going to speculate based on one example. In Heroes on the other hand part of the joy of it all is seeing how each character’s power reflects on him/her. Bearing in mind that I’ve only seen half the series (but am more than a little spoiled for the rest) it’s too tempting to go through them all character by character and guess at what each power means. In most cases I don’t think it’s as simple as the power being a metaphor for a character trait. ( Read more... )