Augie De Blieck Jr. mentions that a fellow advertising the previously-mentioned Secret Spider-Man Movie site was at the San Diego Comic Con, in costume, loudly proclaiming his dislike of Hollywood’s superhero movies. I did a quick Google-search for pics, and all I could find was an image of a hand-printed sign advertising the site’s address posted on a pole (look a few pictures down). Probably too early yet…I’ll check again in a few days.
Actually, like Augie says, I’m not sure what that fella was complaining about, since the Spider-Man and X-Men movies, while certainly not perfect, were a darn sight better than they had any reason to be. I mean, it’s not like they were on par with James Batman or anything (though James Batman is wonderful in its own peculiar way). Apparently the problem is that the films are not spot-on adaptations of the comics…you know the type: “Well, clearly Spider-Man is flawed from the start by its complete glossing over of Gwen in favor of Mary Jane.” Or Spidey has organic webshooters, like Chris mentions, or Wolverine is too tall, like Shane mentions…it’s getting caught up in the little details without looking at the big picture. It’s like the people who got bent out of shape over Tom Bombadil not being in The Lord of the Rings movies, even though his presence almost certainly would have brought the proceedings to a grinding halt. Though speaking of little details — it’s “SPIDER-MAN,” not “SPIDERMAN.” If these people are going to complain about the quality of someone else’s work, they should at least spell the name correctly.
I was joking the other day with a customer of mine about how I think they should do a completely true-to-the-source-material adaptation of, say, The Korvac Saga from The Avengers just so people would see what bad idea a 100% accurate comic to film translation would be. Sure, we comic fans would probably dig it (some at face value, some on a self-aware ironic level), but the general public would almost certainly stay away in droves.
Anyway, that’s enough carrying on about comic book movies. Go read a comic. I’m reading the first Adventures of Barry Ween Boy Genius trade paperback, which I picked up after reading the Free Comic Book Day issue. What are you reading?