Lost Magazine and 24 Magazine

Lost; 24

by Larry Dobrow, Tuesday, May 22, 2007
LIKE EVERY OTHER MIDDLEBROW consumer of pop culture, I dig "Lost" and "24,"
or at least I did until "24" went off the rails creatively in March. Forced
cliffhangers, nonsensical mythologies, improbably comely torturers and
computer experts and fertility docs... sure, what the hell. It beats
readin'.

Alas, there are people out there who want you to read about TV and,
probably, dance about architecture. They toil for a company called Titan
Magazines, which produces bimonthly mags on shows with particularly
rapacious fans ("Lost," "24," "Smallville," "Grey's Anatomy," a few others).
I should add that they appear to be successful at what they do, according to
my anecdotal and specious research. Titan dominates a highly visible stretch
of real estate at my local magazine store, and there's always a gaggle of
people paging through their titles.

Which doesn't mean that they're any good, nor that, in this era of techy
Internets and such, there's a pressing reason for them to exist. TV diehards
tend be obsessive about their weekly tune-ins -- just try engaging me in
conversation about any other subject when "The Wire" returns from
hibernation -- but they sure don't lack for ways to indulge their fandom.
"Lost" is perhaps the prime example. In addition to having replaced "Buffy
the Vampire Slayer" as Entertainment Weekly's every-issue crush, the show
boasts roughly 72,000 Web sites that analyze its every red herring, not to
mention a slew of books and podcasts and god knows what else.

So for a long-lead publication about "Lost" or "24" to gain any traction, it
has to offer something that can't be found elsewhere. Yet despite the
expected interviews and set visits, neither Lost: The Official Magazine and
24: The Official Magazine does so.

I sort of admire Titan's economy of scale. The May/June issues of the two
mags are almost the same publication. Both run 66 pages long and include
features on action figures, set design and music composers. They work from
the same graphic templates and poach the same over-posed photos from ABC's
and Fox's online press kits. Lost, in fact, runs the same exact shot of
Elizabeth Mitchell (FWIW, she's the blond Other chick whose loyalty flips
every six minutes) three times.

Tonally, each mag adopts the same faux-chummy and insight-free approach. One
of the producers of "Lost" chimes in with this bombshell about a pivotal
character: "As far as Ben, the question I always get is, 'What's his story?'
So I would say, I would be very upset if we didn't find out a little bit
about Ben this year." Take that, Internet spoiler-sports! 24, on the other
hand, seems to have a bit of a media obsession. It notes how "industry
aficionados from across the media have been praising the new season of
'24'!" and that "the creators of '24' have turned down Hollywood superstars
Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston for cameo roles on '24,' according to one
of the biggest selling magazines in America (with nine million readers each
week!), TV Guide." Sounds like somebody's angling to be bought, no?

24 is the more playful of the two mags, and thus by far the more
embarrassing. In addition to the expected interviews and
double-super-exclusive insights from the show's producers, 24 attempts to
entertain. There's a "Chloe Tact Test" ("You're one of the few who knows
Jack Bauer is alive since helping to fake his death. What do you do for his
birthday?") and a quiz that comes across as something you'd read on a
McDonald's tray liner (character-name anagrams, a
find-the-differences-in-the-photos bit).

24 also gets the short end of the copyediting stick, twice referring to
ninja-deadly cleft-chin babe Mia Kirshner as "Mia Kershner" and inventing
new words in its subheds ("we try to prise (?) some answers out of
ubiquitous actor Peter MacNicol"). Throw in an odd cover gaffe -- of the
three individuals featured in stamp-sized head shots, two are referred to by
their character names and one is referred to by the actor's name -- and 24
reeks of a cheap cash grab.

Lost is assembled a bit more professionally. There's a flashback to Sayid's
flashbacks, a visit with the makeup folks and a poster pull-out of the
trippy diagram that Locke saw in one of the hatches last season. There's
also a calamitous "Love Island" cover story about Kate and Sawyer "los[ing]
themselves by the firelight" that will likely prompt the show's producers to
be more prudent about inking licensing deals in the future.

In one of my other massive-conflict-of-interest-inducing gigs, I yapped with
a few of the "Lost" and "24" folks earlier this season. Lord knows that the
resulting Q&A pieces didn't exactly reinvent celebrity journalism-lite for
the new millennium, especially given my intensely articulate queries ("Hey
guy who plays Hurley: When you went in the Hatch the first time, was the
Hatch cool and was the Hatch nice and did you like being in the Hatch?").
Nonetheless, I came away from the conversations thinking, "Wow, these folks
and their jobs are darn-tootin' interesting." That neither Lost: The
Official Magazine nor 24: The Official Magazine can convey a smidgen of that
personality or fascination is their fatal flaw.

MAG STATS
Published by: Titan Magazines
Frequency: Bimonthly (four issues and two "yearbooks")
Advertising information
Web site

Larry Dobrow (larry@mediapost.com) is a Contributing Writer.

Magazine Rack for Tuesday, May 22, 2007: http://publications.mediapost.com/

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