The Comic Book/Soap Opera Connection

Neither side likes to admit it, but comic books and soap operas are a lot alike. Both tell melodramatic stories and use elements that require quite a bit of suspension of disbelief. Both have rabid fans who follow the stories closely and call "foul" quickly when something violates established continuity. And both genres are treated with no small level of disrespect by the mainstream press. So it's about time that soap operas and comic books team up. Tomorrow, November 1, long-running CBS soap, Guiding Light, crosses over with Marvel Comics. An 8-page insert started running in Marvel's comics last week, and tomorrow on the show, one of the soap's characters gets super powers. Harley Cooper, a cop, and a mother of two, gets electrocuted, and gains several new abilities, which she uses to fight crime, for at least the one episode.

This is a bit of a bizarre development, and somewhat surreal for the tiny population of people who both, watch Guiding Light, and read comics. Reaction has been mixed. Heidi MacDonald has a good sampling of mainstream reaction here. CBS has a preview of the episode up here. You can also see the trailer here (scroll down). Word is that her powers go away by the end of the episode, but they're being a bit coy about whether or not they may return someday. I'm in that tiny population that follows both GL and comic books, so I'll just sit back and watch.

UPDATE: Comic Book Resources has a behind-the-scenes look at the show here. However, they do list the wrong timeslot. In most of the country, the episode airs today at 3 PM.