Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett takes a look at a "superhero" television show.

I had previously suggested after the Supergirl TV series announced it was adapting the Alan Moore story "For The Man Who Has Everything" (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--Do Overkill") I’d have to start watching it on a regular basis.  Well, that didn’t happen, and for pretty much the same reason I’m not watching any of the other current comic book related TV shows (Arrow, The Flash, iZombie, Legends of Tomorrow, Lucifer, Gotham, The Walking Dead).  It’s the same thing that makes it so hard for me to connect to any new TV show these days, whether they’re comic book related or not: a special blend of ennui, inertia and indifference.  A.K.A.  It’s Not You, It’s Me.

That having been said one of my favorite TV shows is at least somewhat superhero--adjacent, CBS’s Person of Interest.  Its premise is that a reclusive millionaire creates The Machine, a computer which uses mass-surveillance feeds to predict violent crimes, then hires former CIA agent John Reese to prevent them.  On the surface it’s the kind of cozy police procedural (albeit one with a science fictional fig leaf--it’s revealed that the Machine is an artificial intelligence) CBS specializes in; each week Finch and Reese receive the social security number of someone involved in a potentially deadly situation, never knowing whether they’re the victim or the perpetrator.

I know the series sounds like an oddball blend of two other CBS hits, CSI and Big Brother, but along with being equal parts thoughtful drama and intense action show, POI is probably best known for being more than a little prescient.  Since its premiere in 2011 each episode has opened with the chilling narration, "You are being watched," and this was years before Anonymous and Edward Snowden began making international headlines.

But as much as I enjoyed it, I have to confess that I never really thought about Person of Interest being about a "real world" superhero; it’s certainly never advertised itself as such.  But after I heard its producers describing it that way during a POI Comic-Con panel that was posted on YouTube, it becomes kind of obvious…  It provides a mainstream audience a believable pretext as to how superheroes always manage to arrive in "the nick of time."

While Mr. Reese doesn't have a costume, he does have a suit, a stylish black number by Hugo Boss.*  It’s such a distinctive look there’s soon an urban legend in NYC about a vigilante known only as "the man in the suit."  This is as close as Reese ever gets to having a "codename."

While Mr. Reese is a world-class marksman who regularly incapacitates bad guys by shooting them in the knees, he much prefers hand to hand combat and can defeat a half dozen at the same time using a combination of Krav Maga and Wing Chun kung fu.

Living in a world without superheroes Reese invariably has trouble explaining to people who he is and why he’s helping them, but some people get it.  In the first season episode "Wolf and Cub" (an obvious homage to the manga series by Kazuo Koike and artist Goseki Kojima) Reese teams with a comic book-reading teen who’s trying to avenge his brother’s death who “recognizes” him as a ronin, a masterless samurai.  And in a season four episode "Pretenders" an insurance agent playing cop named Walter openly tells Reese, "You’re like a freakin’ superhero."

Over the course of four seasons, POI has evolved from a fairly straightforward crime show to a cyberpunk saga about the war between The Machine and Samaritan, a far less benevolent A.I., with the fate of humanity hanging in the balance.  And in spite of the fact the show continues to have a strong fan base (particularly in China, for some reason), ratings have declined so the fifth season was truncated from 22 to 13 episodes, and delayed from Fall 2015 to Spring 2016.  It was just announced that as many suspected the fifth, premiering on May 3, will also be the series’ last season.

If many retailers haven’t seen it, well, it’s kind of understandable given that, as far as I know, there’s never been any Person of Interest merchandise.  No action figures, novels, comic books (and even NBC’s The Blacklist has a licensed comic book); nothing.  But if anyone out there wants to give it a try, all four seasons are streaming on Netflix and you’ve got about six weeks to catch up.

Here’s a confession: I’m actually kind of sad to see the end of Grayson, DC’s surprisingly good super secret agent comic.  And now that Dick will soon be putting on his Nightwing costume again that leaves a vacancy at Spyral, the agency he worked for.  One that could be filled by Jimmy Olson; after all, he had been a secret agent back in the 60s.

* In the words of Jim Caviezel, the actor who plays Reese, "For the regular scenes, it’s Hugo Boss; for the fights, it’s JC Penney."  Tall, good looking and capable of speaking in an attention commanding throaty whisper that never sounds forced, not only would Caviezel make a good Batman, he’d make a far better one than the guy who’s wearing the outfit in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.