Day 4 - Comic Book Heroes

I was never big into comic books as a kid. I subscribed to the “Star Wars” comic for a year, but don’t remember much other than being annoyed when the stories focused on new characters instead of my movie favorites, and experiencing my first taste of inflation when the cover price shot up to thirty-five cents an issue. I still knew a lot about comics because I had older cousins and could always find comics lying around their houses and our grandmother’s. I didn’t know all the character origin stories or histories or relationships, but I wasn’t a true believer so I didn’t feel I was missing out on much.

Despite my appreciation for so many aspects of full-on nerd culture, I never got caught up in the graphic novel world as an adult. When the still often-mourned Border’s store that was LESS THAN A MILE FROM MY HOUSE closed, I picked up a compilation of the entire “Watchmen” run on clearance, and it was okay. I’m a huge fan of “The Walking Dead” now, but I have no interest in ever reading the books. Graphic novels? Just not a thing for me.

So I’ve never had much of a relationship with comic books. But comic book movies? Oh yeah. I loved the first Spider-Man movie, and thought the second one only made everything better; one of my all-time favorite movie scenes is when an unmasked Peter Parker struggles to stop a runaway train. The more recent Superman movies have had pros and cons, but I enjoyed them both. The Christian Bale Batman movies are almost their own category; while “The Avengers” is easily my favorite comic book movie, it’s hard to deny “The Dark Knight” is the best movie in the category, and great by any standard.

When Iron Man showed up and ushered in a wider cinematic Marvel universe, I ate it up. Granted, Marvel has had some misses. Daredevil? Eh. That second Ghost Rider movie? Yikes. That third X-Men movie and Spider-Man 3? Both a bit off the rails. And the solo Wolverine movies were a lot like a singer making a solo album: Too much of the time you wind up missing the rest of the band.

This weekend I saw “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.” I liked the first one, impressed by how Andrew Garfield made Peter and Spider-Man into two separate characters. And I’ve always been irritated how the studios can’t play nice and agree on a way to get Spider-Man into the larger Marvel universe. But after seeing this newest entry, that might be for the best. I know there’s irony in complaining about a comic book movie being one-dimensional, but wow. And poor Jamie Foxx got saddled with having to play the most poorly-written comic villain I can remember seeing. Nothing about it his Electro clicked for me.

Luckily there’s a promising X-Men movie coming later this month, and I’m really looking forward to it. Two sets of X-Men (X-People?) in one movie? That'll be something to see.