If you obsessively follow the ripples and ebbs of the New York publishing world -- trawling sites like Romenesko's MediaNews and poring over The New York Observer -- then you've no doubt heard of Radar. If you don't, then you probably haven't. The most common reaction to the copy of Radar's first issue that we've been carrying around for the past week has been, "What the hell is that?"

"What the hell is that," indeed.

Radar is the aggressively fluorescent phoenix that has risen from the ashes of Tina Brown's late-and-unlamented Talk. (Do you ever hear anyone pining for Talk magazine, or mourning its passing? Anyone?) Radar's earned this description because it's edited by Maer Roshan, a latter-day Brown deputy who was credited with spicing up Talk's final hours, insofar as Talk's final hours could be considered "spicy." (Here, about halfway down the page, is a hindsight look at our take on that magazine's death throes.)

When Talk tanked, many people declared that its demise marked the end of the big, general-interest magazine launch. Apparently, so the thinking went, if the quasi-legendary Brown couldn't harness her powers towards creating an actually readable publication, then the entire idea of magazines must be doomed. Plus, you know...September 11th. "We'll never see its kind again," thought the mournful (if slightly gleeful) observers, as they watched Talk sink beneath the waves.

But Roshan -- Brown's cunning deputy who'd retreated to the shadows -- was apparently thinking, "I know how to do this better." And not just the "don't launch magazine with million-dollar party at foot of Statue of Liberty" part, but also the "find right mix of dishy celeb coverage, upscale style, and thought-provoking political pieces" part.

The result, a few years later, is Radar, a hotly anticipated (at least among New York publishing nerds) and massively hyped (at least among New York publishing nerds) new magazine.

By tapping into the voice of an ascendant generation, Radar aims to be one of those rare titles -- like Rolling Stone in the '60s, Spy in the '80s, and Vanity Fair in the '90s -- that captures a cultural moment by getting there first. We know this because Roshan told us so, in his very first editor's letter, from which the preceding sentence was taken, word for word. (Note: apparently the 1970s did not have a generation-defining magazine. We can't comment, since we were too busy reading Owl and Cracked at the time.)

Now, we might suggest that, if you're going to start a new magazine, you're best not to evoke Rolling Stone and Spy in the very first issue. Especially if the magazine you're starting most closely resembles Us Weekly.

In fact, you could make the argument that Bonnie Fuller's current work of evil genius is the leading candidate for the title of Magazine That Captures the Current Moment. That doesn't mean it's a good magazine, because it isn't -- and heaven knows it's certainly not Spy.

But at least there's a semi-admirable purity to Us Weekly's unabashedly tawdry, self-consciously unselfconscious embrace of the celebrity cyclone, and all the tidbits of trash it sends dancing into the air.

Radar, for its part, reads like Us Weekly put together by people who like reading Us Weekly but feel guilty for doing so. Which means you get party pics of the Hiltons and Lionel Richie's daughter (complete with ripped-straight-from-Us arrows and annotations) but you also get a long article about presidential candidate Howard Dean. Or you get sassy, overdesigned up-front tidbits about hot books/TV shows/CDs, but you also get a long and musty-smelling rumination about Kinko's central place in American culture. (The cringe-inducing headline, Kinko Nation, gives the game away. Note to editors: "Blankety-Blank Nation" may now be retired to the trash heap of overused display, along with "Sex, Lies, and Blankety-Blank," "Do the Blank Thing," and "My Big Fat Blank Blankety-Blank.")

Editors tend to be omnivorous consumers of magazines, much as, we imagine, ad directors are omnivorous consumers of advertising. Most editors wallow in Vanity Fair or even People while also dipping into The New Yorker and The New Republic.

Thus, there is ever the desire among editors to create this hypothetical, all-things-to-all-people magazine, even though no such title currently exists and none ever really has. (The closest example would be Vanity Fair, though its supposedly "wide-ranging" coverage -- i.e. its celebrity coverage, its society coverage, and its political scandal coverage -- all seemed aimed at exactly the same readers: people who like to imagine that, had things gone a little differently in their lives, they'd be reading the issue on the terrace of their Upper East Side penthouse, overlooking the park, with Hilary Clinton on speed-dial and Nathan Lane dropping by later to look over upholstery swatches.)

Apparently, editors forget that people sometimes buy more than one magazine and through this bizarre newsstand ritual are able to sate their appetites for both serious reading and for fluff. Just because there are people who care about both (a) politics and (b) Jared and Cameron doesn't mean that these people must, or even want to, read about both subjects in one publication.

Certainly Radar's intention to be the defining magazine of its time is honorable, and '60s-era Rolling Stone and Spy (and, hell, even Vanity Fair) are excellent inspirations. But Radar, at least for now, has confused having a great idea with the notion of wanting to have a great idea -- and as such has pilfered liberally from every magazine that ever had one.

So it's stolen little bits and pieces from all the other magazines it likes: a little Us Weekly here, a little watered-down Spy there, a jigger of Vanity Fair, and even a dash of The New Yorker.

And it's not particularly clever in hiding the evidence of its sticky fingers. The Monsters List, complete with Spy-style icons, only serves to remind readers just how brilliant -- and seemingly effortless -- Spy magazine really was. Clearly these kind of lists are harder than they look. Take Radar, for example.

The rest of the magazine is a similar cut-n-paste of disparate influences. The back page, in which drawings of heads are sent to various personalities, who add their own doodles, is lifted straight from the British magazine The Face. In fact, the whole idea of piling up your cultural coverage in a separate section in the back on different coloured paper is lifted straight from better British magazines. (This leads to some confusion, too: it's not exactly clear why, in Radar, there are CD and book reviews in the front and more CD and book reviews in the back.)

So, in a way, Radar succeeds, as a kind of Utne Reader of Other Magazines You Like. Instead of reprinting stories, they've reprinted ideas, and cobbled them together in a toilet-top friendly package. The magazine certainly has potential, if it ever finds its voice. Right now, however, it's simply really good at doing impersonations.