recently, there’s been a lot of comic book talk among me and my classmates. we quiz each other on the fantastic four’s alter egos (reed richard, sue and jonny storm, ben grimm), talk about the worst mutants we’d want to be (beast has is pretty bad), and i’ve even gotten a chance to spread my love for alpha flight, Canada’s superhero team, by explaining their origin.
today i read about heroclix, a superhero game that’s a cross between overpower and warhammer (though few know what those are). i’ve been watching old episodes of x-men, with plans of brushing up on the phoenix saga. i’ve even been looking for episodes of the new cgi spiderman.
my dvd wishlist is populated mostly with marvel flicks, with me needing to pickup the hulk, daredevil and x2 movies. not so much for the films themselves, but for the great comic book history special features. a little hulk trivia: ang lee himself donned the motion capture suit when it came time to animate the cgi eric bana. i was amazed by the green behemoth’s movements during the film, and now i kinda know why.
so what brings me to write about comic books? i just caught myself daydreaming i was bitten by a radioactive spider, and suddenly gained spider strength/sense/webs/agility/etc, and decided to swing around town.
it just goes to show that i don’t just think about videogames. but i wonder if i’d fight crime, or just use the spider powers to do chores around the house, like how toby redecorates his room in the movie. hrm…
Yeah, he’s not a mutant but I think Quasar has it pretty bad. Flying around outer space all the time trying to find new ways of being gay.
I recently wrote a 14 page essay on a comic book. Granted, it wasn’t on any kind of superhero thing (it was on Lynda Barry, if anybody is curious) but in researching comics, I found some (not much, but some) pretty scholarly work on the subject. A lot of people don’t consider comics much to read but as indicators of popular culture, they’re pretty interesting. I started looking at comics in a heightened way after that, I think. The relationship between words and images becomes a science of sorts in the form.
It may be so-called “low art” (whatever that is) but like hip-hop and science fiction, it’s still pretty interesting and worthwhile to study.
People would think more of comics if they just called them Graphic Novels.