Lingering Adolescence

When I was... let's say twelve-or-so, one of my uncles abandoned his lingering adolescence and with it his comic book collection which was, at the time, inadequately housed in a number of blue plastic milk crates. I more or less rescued those blessed crates and the comics therein from sharing the fate of this same uncle's record collection, which ended up smoldering among the coffee grounds, eggshells and plastic bags in the local dump four miles outside of town. (I do hope some resourceful soul rescued them, although to this day the only record I can remember seeing in that stash was Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell which isn't particularly rare.)

In those blue plastic milk crates were several comic book series like DC's Jonah Hex and Scalphunter and Marvel's Power Man and Iron Fist and, my favourite at the time, The Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu. And I spent many happy months with those comics spread out over the floor of my bedroom, reading.

I was dismayed to learn, after reading them, that most of the titles I had been enjoying had been cancelled. The one series that hadn't been cancelled was The Amazing Spider-Man, of which there were relatively few in my newly acquired collection. So I started buying them every chance I got at the Fort Richmond 7-11 while my parents shopped for groceries at the Safeway across the street.

I soon realized that there were three Spider-Man titles, The Amazing Spider-Man, Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man and finally Web of Spider-Man. Being 'from the country', it was hard keeping up with all three on those infrequent forays into 'The City'. It never occurred to me to subscribe, probably because of the pure joy of spinning that squealing metal rack at the end of the candy aisle, (in that 7-11 which always reeked of vomit), perusing the various covers before finding my chosen quarry.

For anyone who's been paying attention, (or not), you've probably noticed Hollywood's obsession with comic-book based movies in recent years. Which I greeted with some righteous indignation after watching the Batman franchise get progressively worse, (before finally surfacing from the quagmire of mediocrity and bad camp with last year's Batman Begins).

Then came X-Men.

I never bought any X-Men comics, but one of the two other guys in my high school who read comic books did, (the third read Fantastic Four, so we had all bases covered), and I read his. And I found the first film very satisfying. Cyclops was still a bit of a dweeb, and Wolverine rocked, though I found myself disappointed in how underutilized Rogue was. But, more importantly, the story and characters were true to the comics, more-or-less, and the special effects were suddenly viable. It gave me hope that comic books could make good movies.

And then, finally, in 2002... Spider-Man.

I won't get into how disappointing the Green Goblin's high-tech costume/armour was, or the fact that Kirsten Dunst was miscast as Mary Jane, because, frankly, I was too mesmerized seeing Spider-Man swing through the streets of Manhattan. It was just as I'd imagined it. I could have watched that alone for the two hours. (Sorry, I'll, rein in the fan-boy stuff.)

When I read about the guys that got hired to write X-men, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man et al, I learned that most of them were guys like me who had read comic books on the floors of their bedrooms as kids and grew up to become screenwriters. Some of them even wrote comic books, which was something that had never occurred to me for some reason. Most of them got to meet Stan Lee, and were given free comic books from the studio. And, as it turns out, comic books make good movies because the writing and imagery are similar to screenwriting and story-boarding.

Now, why didn't I think of that?

Guess I should start working on my pitch for The Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu.

Update: Drat, foiled again.