More of this, please…

Deadline Hollywood Daily:

Warner Bros is trying to ready its DC Comics stalwart Superman to soar again on the Big Screen, and the studio has turned to Chris Nolan to mentor development of the movie. Our insiders say that the brains behind rebooted Batman has been asked to play a “godfather” role and ensure The Man Of Steel gets off the ground after a 3 1/2-year hiatus. Nolan’s leadership of the project can set it in the right direction with the critics and the fans, not to mention at the box office. Besides, Nolan is considered something of a god at Warner Bros and has a strong relationship with the studio after the success of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Though he wasn’t obligated to do so, he gave the studio first crack at his spec script Inception, and Warner Bros was able to buy it before other studios even got a sniff. While Nolan completes that Leonardo DiCaprio-starrer for a July 16th release, he’s also hatched an idea for Warner Bros’ third Batman installment. Now his brother and frequent collaborator Jonah Nolan, and David Goyer who co-wrote Batman Begins and penned the story for The Dark Knight, are off scripting it.

Let us emphasize that Superman 3.0 is in the early stages of development. And we doubt Nolan would direct. This wouldn’t be a sequel to Superman Returns but a completely fresh franchise.

Read the full piece here.

And in education:  After ignoring developments in Washington and not studying various legislative proposals, Bizarro World Wildlife Fund’s all-volunteer Directors of Board am decided to endorse repeal of the Bizarro Marine Mammal Protection Act. Revocation of the BMMPA, according to organization’s official website, “will deliver on key priorities for us been fighting for.”

Moving on to sports:  After ignoring developments in Washington and not studying various legislative proposals, Bizarro AARP’s all-volunteer Directors of Board am decided to endorse proposed $400 billion cut to Medicare as well as termination of federal funding for Medicare Advantage Plans, which benefit over 25% of their membership. The proposed cuts, according to the organization’s official website, “will deliver on key priorities for us been fighting for.”

Wait!

Me am getting update!

Bizarro needs to correct final story. It am not Bizarro AARP that slash benefits to members, but AARP on Earth!

Now Bizarro am confused!

Am Earthlings becoming Bizarros?

This am disaster for Bizarro culture. Bizarros am opposite of all things Earthling. Planet Earth am round; Planet Bizarro, square.  Only one Superman on Earth.  On Planet Bizarro, everyone am Superman! If Earthlings act like Bizarros, then Bizarros am forced to behave opposite of Earthlings and not be Bizarros, but Earthlings am!

Aaaarrrrrgh! Me head aches!

Wait! Do not panic! This just not in…

AARP Directors of Board am not normal Earthlings but liberal shills for White House who put own socialist political dogma ahead of members’ best interests.

Whew…

And coming up at eleventy o’clock: Bizarro Nancy Pelosi tells truth that health reform bill am too much expensive and 1,900 pages are smoke screen to hide true objective which am single-payer system! Will she use legislative nuclear option to ram through fiscally responsible G.O.P. Plan that includes long overdue reforms to Bizarro health care system?  Many say, “Yes,” but some say, “Yes.”

Bad evening and do not remember, Bizarro am #1!

The 1970s showed the once-invincible comic book super-heroes to be losers, in attitude and sales. Watergate had disillusioned the super-patriot Captain America with a storyline implying Nixon was the head of a terrorist group. The Captain trashes his outfit and becomes Nomad, The Man without a Country. My 11-year-old mind thought this was ridiculous, as Cap was originally a Depression-era 98-pound weakling until given a Super Soldier serum to bulk up and fight Nazis. It was unlikely that one of the “Greatest Generation” would bail on his country so readily. Even then I realized that this development merely mirrored a hippie writer’s attitude more than staying true to a character’s origins. 

Super-heroes became bleaker and even homicidal in the 1980s. The Punisher, a murderous vigilante, has become a top Marvel character. The Dark Knight Returns, a re-imagining of Batman, introduced an elderly caped crusader fighting the corrupt U.S. government represented by a stoogish Superman. Watchmen was set in a dystopic alternate reality where Nixon is still president and the super-group is made up of, among other miscreants, a rapist and mass murderer. It was a transmutation of established super-heroes from the 60s with Steve Ditko’s Objectivist hero The Question recast as the psychotic Rorschach. 

Ironically, while super-heroes have become leaders in the Hollywood box office, these films don’t help comics’ diminishing sales. In the 1940s, if a comic didn’t sell over a million copies it was cancelled. By the 80s, the cut-off point was 100,000 copies. Now companies are extremely happy selling 10,000 copies. The only time sales increase is when the publishers appeal to diehard collectors by releasing a title with multiple variant covers, and they gotta have ‘em all, or a new first issue of a popular character. Comic sales are at an all-time low and basically kept alive as merchandise-generators for film and other products. Time-Warner recently moved DC Comics from their publishing stable to the film division. Disney has bought Marvel Comics and it wasn’t for the stellar sales of their publications. 

One reason comic sales in general have dropped is because it is a one-genre medium (though there’s still Archie!). It’s as if the movie industry only made westerns and not comedies, science fiction, romance or other types of films. The industry has also ghettoized itself with the advent of the direct sales system. As sales withered on the newsstand (along with newsstands themselves), comic stores popped up with a new distribution paradigm. Copies that weren’t sold on the newsstand were sent back to the distributor for credit. With direct sales the books are non-returnable. They sell a lot less but they’re guaranteed sales. At first a supplement to newsstand distribution, like subscriptions, they are now the main source of revenue. 

Lower print runs have been blamed on the usual suspects; television, video games and the Internet. In fact publishers are marketing to the hard-core fanboy, an increasingly shrinking demographic. Stan Lee had introduced on-going storylines and continuity throughout his books. Earlier stories rarely continued and various super-heroes almost never interacted. Anyone could pick up a comic and read a self-contained story with a beginning and end. Now Stan’s continuity has mutated into ridiculous proportions with plot lines crossing over multiple issues and titles. The casual reader cannot pick up a singular issue and enjoy it, let alone understand it. One has to know the convoluted backgrounds of hundreds of characters or it won’t make any sense. There are obviously more people who might want to read comics than just comic geeks, but they can’t begin to unravel the catechism of modern super-heroes. Still more can’t find comics outside of comic book specialty shops and may not dare enter a place festooned with images of veiny, muscled goons lugging weapons and dripping blood. 

Super hero movies are popular for the same reason comics used to be attractive. They take you to a world of stunning visuals, exciting situations and heroic characters… unfortunately, the films are now beginning to fall in the same trap as comics. The most recent Batman and Spider-Man films featured the characters as darker, borderline evil, individuals and Marvel plans to introduce continuity to their movies. They will release new films with Captain America, Thor, Ant Man and others and then mush them all together with Iron Man and Hulk in an Avengers film. People who may have missed an earlier episode may not bother to see a later one where you’re expected to know all the characters’ baggage. 

Most disappointing in the superhero film trend was Superman Returns. The quintessential American super-hero becomes a metrosexual who ditches his baby mama Lois Lane for an outer space road trip to find himself and it tanked at the box office. The film pointedly refers to him fighting for truth and justice, but it’s not cool to mention the American way. Even the fabled Justice League of America is now termed the Justice League in a nod to one-worldness. 

It’s nearly impossible to find a comic that doesn’t star an angst-ridden anti-hero. The end of exceptional American super-heroes is here.

The characters we now recognize as super-heroes crystallized with the debut of Superman in 1938. Representative of the American experience, Superman was the ultimate immigrant. Not merely from another country, the Man of Steel came from a whole different planet! With his success, publishers released a myriad of titles featuring crime-fighting patriotic adventurers who all fought for “truth, justice and the American way.” That included those who were born on an all-female island (the star-spangled Wonder Woman), from Atlantis (the Sub-Mariner), robots (the Human Torch) or even dead people (the Spectre and Kid Eternity)! Gaining super powers even reformed criminals as in Plastic Man’s case. 

America hadn’t yet entered World War II and super-heroes were already bashing Nazis. There were no isolationists in comics and when the Japanese attacked America the characters leapt into the fray, punishing Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini on seemingly endless covers. Individual comic titles sold in the millions and were read by all demographics. This era of comics was rightly dubbed the Golden Age. 

Super-heroes were the epitome of American Exceptionalism; there wasn’t anything they couldn’t do. In contrast, European fiction was rife with super-criminals, from Fantômas and Dr. Mabuse, on to comics with killer protagonists, most notably Diabolik. Murderers like Kriminal, Satanik, Killing and Fatalik followed. This could be due to the fact that after centuries of strife, as well as being on the losing end of two world wars, their culture was not as optimistic as the United States. 

Sales of super hero comics peaked after the war and many publishers transitioned to other genres like teen humor, funny animals and most ominously, crime and horror. 

Psychologists and social critics looking to explain the rise of juvenile delinquency latched onto the lurid content of comic books. Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist who had defended cannibals and child rapists in court, wrote the book Seduction of the Innocent, which posited that comics, especially of the crime and horror ilk, caused kids to go bad. He accused super-heroes of sado-masochism and defined the innocuous relationship of Batman and Robin as homosexual. 

This lead to the infamous United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954, ultimately chaired by the coonskin cap wearing Senator Estes Kefauver (D-TN). The bad publicity led to the formation of the Comics Code Authority by a cadre of comic publishers to self-censor their titles, similar to what the Hays Code did with films earlier in Hollywood. 

The net result was that comic book content was lobotomized and the medium limited to children and adults with arrested development. Super-heroes had mostly left the scene except for the triumvirate of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman… and their adventures were rendered mundane under the Code. 

The genre was revitalized in the late 1950s when DC Comics revamped its older characters for a new generation. Neoteric versions of the Flash, Green Lantern and more were introduced and, noting their popularity, Marvel Comics launched a new batch of characters in the early 1960s. They had the significant characteristic of “heroes with problems…” Spider-Man couldn’t get a date, Iron Man had heart problems and the Fantastic Four were bickering with each other. 

This appealed to eggheads and college students who preferred Marvel to the staid and conservative (read “square”) heroes at DC and Marvel started receiving positive press in magazines from Esquire to Rolling Stone. Marvel writer/editor Stan Lee got a lot of credit for the success, but it can’t be denied that the innovative and dynamic artwork of Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby is what primarily dragged readers into the “Marvel Universe.” 

Comic sales were atrophying in the 1960s with the Batman comic almost cancelled until the premiere of his groundbreaking TV series. Batmania hit the world and comic sales rose to 1940s levels with every publisher doing super-heroes again though sales soon dropped off again. 

The first generation of comic fans soon became professionals, aping Stan Lee’s work without his context and adding their own political and psychological attitudes. “Social relevance” was the rage, and while award winning and noted in The New York Times, these new themes did not translate to new sales. During this period, Green Arrow’s sidekick was revealed to be a heroin addict, vigilante heroes became killers and Iron Man was ultimately revealed to be an alcoholic.

Next: The Fall of the Super-Hero

Sammy was a Bronx born actor and comedian who had some minor success in the 1950s.  He took his physical similarity to Jerry Lewis and ran with it.  He became known as the “fake Jerry Lewis” after creating an onstage and onscreen persona that mimicked Lewis’ shtick.  He even went as far as to hook up with a Dean Martinesque straight man named Duke Mitchell.  The real Jerry Lewis wasn’t amused and even went so far as to intimidate others in Hollywood not to feature Petrillo on their shows and bullied Vegas venues into blackballing his act. 

Most reboots are epic fails.

The point of bringing up Petrillo (besides encouraging you to watch his funny performance in “Bela Lugosi meets the Brooklyn Gorilla” on YouTube) is to illustrate that the “trend” of ripoffs, remakes, reboots, and re-imaginings is nothing new. Take it from me, the guy who shamelessly made “Transmorphers,” remakes and ripoffs are part of Hollywood history.  What is more depressing is the fact that re-imagining and remakes are also part of the political culture.

Our society has a sort of “political amnesia”; forcing us to repeat the same economic and policy mistakes every thirty years or so.  What else is the Obama administration but a “remake” of the Clinton administration (with almost half the original cast!)?  You can almost hear the pitch meeting.  “It’s FDR meets Clinton!  We reboot the franchise.  We forget about the Carter episode just like we pretended that Superman III and IV never happened.”

It’s the same tired ideas.  Same scripted attacks.  Same demagoguery.  Just listen to mental midgets like Paul Krugman discussing Keynesian economic models and talking about getting the “factories” started.  Hey, Knuckleheads, in the modern world the factories are all in China and Wal-Mart is the nation’s largest employer.  Let’s get “shovel ready” projects going so we can help out all those Starbucks baristas who are unemployed.  Let’s pretend that race relations today are only slightly different than they were in Mississippi circa 1950.  These clowns live in the past.

It’s maddening that this amnesia also affects our ability to learn from global history.  How well has pandering to maniacal, tin pot, dictators worked out in the past?  Why don’t we ask the Eastern Europeans how cool it was to have centralized everything and a government that spied on average citizens?  Yeah, that flag@whitehouse.gov thing was a great idea.

I’m sure that every evil dictator started out by laying out his case for evil fascism.  Stalin, Castro, Idi Amin, and yes I’ll go there, Hitler all showed up twirling their mustaches and telling everyone how great its going to be living in a statist hell hole.  No, it always starts out with smiley faces and unicorns, but it ends in bread lines and political prisons.

While I don’t advocate a wholesale freak-out at this point, a little perspective would be refreshing.  Anything resembling a massive clusterfark should ring alarm bells for all citizens, regardless on which side of the left/right paradigm they sit.  We should be past the point of deficit spending orgies, head-in-the-sand foreign policy, and irrational discussions about impending Christian theocracies.

I like to smack around my leftist friends by pointing out that since 1970, for the past 38 years, we’ve had 26 years of Republican administrations and 12 years of Democratic presidencies.  Yet, we don’t have prayer in school, forced Christian conversion, film and television censorship, book burnings, gay concentration camps or back alley, illegal abortions.  Still, you can bet that in early 2011, the news media and the wunderkinds of the left will start crying about Palin’s book banning, Romney’s Mormon proselytizing, and Huckabee’s closet desire to turn the airwaves into 24/7 Christian programming.  I can’t imagine what they will dredge up about my homeboy Bobby Jindal (oh, wait didn’t he perform and exorcism?  Frack!)

I’ve seen this movie before.  Several times actually.  It is old and busted.  Where is the new hotness?

There is a bright side.  The latest episode of leftist nincompoopery seems to be particularly inept.  Too many development execs and a weak, first time director.  They had a big opening weekend, but their box office is down, and dropping fast.  In 2010 and 2012 the other side may have an opportunity to return to the top spot.  The question for us is this; do we want another lame remake or sequel of our own?  Do we want our own “Transformers 2” or a remake of “Nightmare on Elm Street”?

I dig the original, but give me something new.

I vote that, at a minimum, we push for a re-imagining like “The Dark Knight.” I want familiar concepts and ideas but told with a new spin and by really talented people.  I want it to be multi-layered and complex.  I want a classic.  I want something with staying power that resonates for generations and changes the landscape for the foreseeable future.

Even better, I want something completely original and fresh that changes the political landscape forever.  Just look at the cinematic world before and after “Star Wars”.  That’s what I want for politics. A reformation.  I want to build on the successes of the past and avoid the obvious failures.

I want politicians who don’t want to be politicians.  I want senators and representatives who push for term limits, and drastically reduce their pay.  I want them all to understand the concept of “public service”.  I want a massive dismantling of our government’s bureaucracy.  I want a complete rethinking and overhaul of the tax code.  I want massive, massive privatization.  I want people of all races, creeds, religions, and sexual orientations to put aside their differences and join together under the banner of national pride.  I want politicians who not only preach the dangers of socialism, but also extol the virtues of liberty and free markets.  I want my fellow countrymen and women to understand that the true path to success for all people lies in self-reliance, responsibility and national brotherhood, not in the suffocating embrace of big government.

Any politician or movement that can capture that sentiment and actually deliver will get boffo box office.  I’m talking “Titanic” numbers.

After eight years of George Bush bashing, a financial meltdown and a general desire for “change”, the left waltzed into total control of the nation.  The right and the middle may find themselves in the exact same position in a very short time.  When we do, let’s not make the same mistakes.  Lets not accept another retread, no matter how nostalgic it feels, and demand something bold and totally different.

We are Americans.  We deserve nothing less.

I wrote about this two years ago, just when Hasbro and Paramount execs decided to give GI Joe a makeover. Back then they felt the world would be too pissed at us for getting rid of Saddam Hussein to go see a movie about an American hero. As it turns out, they were wrong – the backlash over Saddam’s death had less impact than Norman Fell’s.

But for a moment, let’s attempt to use Donny’s logic on other flicks. “Sex and the City,” my favorite film – made a pile of money around the world, and it was about five American chicks exercising their rights to both unfettered capitalism and sex. According to Deutsch, it would have been better to make them all multi-racial, transgendered dolphins – and stationed them in Brussels in a cool undersea condo shaped like Earth. Granted, that does sound awesome – but it probably would have been less successful than the original concept (which made me cry).

Fact is, our mainstream media feels awkward about anything “American,” and finds the idea of an international force (made up of everybody!) stamping out evil far more palatable than America running the show. But hey, that fantasy doesn’t exist – and if it ever did, Americans would have to run it.

The ugly truth: the world loves America more than MSNBC talking heads are willing to admit. And they like our heroes even more: our Rambos, John McClanes, Supermans, Dirty Harrys and Charlotte Yorks. We make great heroes, because our country is full of them.

Unlike MSNBC.

They’re just full of it.

Tonight we’ve got: Congressman Thaddeus McCotter, comedian Paul Mercurio and Patti Ann Browne. Plus more junk!

In case you’ve been in an Afghanistan cave for the last thirty years, comics are big business. Comics to film projects are in demand at least partially because of the pre-visualization aspect of the medium. Fantasy is an expensive and risky genre and comics offer the cheapest glimpse into the depiction of on-screen events before one dime is spent on production.

Though the medium is gaining visibility, comics aren’t new. They’re simply words combined with pictures that communicate a sequence of events. They’re actually very similar to the silent film where an actor speaks, then his words appear onscreen to read. We’re Chaplin like that. But my favorite part of the medium is due to it’s power, and I love me some power.

What took James Cameron 200 million dollars to communicate on film with “Titanic” or his up-and-coming “Avatar” one could do for 20k in comics. You don’t get the sound, movement or music but the actual story, lighting, acting, character development the logos could be depicted by one man on the cheap. Can’t get your “Star Wars” made for 150 million? With a small group comprised of one writer, one artist and one colorist, we could depict events from the desserts of Uncle Owen’s vaporator farm to the Death Star without resorting to overseas funding. That’s power.

So why are comics so junky? Well, like all things that came into popularity in a post-modern era we don’t exactly have the most literate authors or audiences surrounding the medium. It’s not the graphic novel’s fault that Homer or Da Vinci didn’t made comics. I think we’re in a junk food phase of entertainment where we disrespect the greats of the past to explore our own personal expression and over-the-top stimulation. Comics came into popularity at a generally bankrupt time in entertainment, but this also helps the stand outs in the medium shine all the more.

While I can count the essential graphic novels on two hands the effect of comics on culture is cumulative. There is no single “Batman” that stands up as great literature, but Batman is more of a state of mind than any one book. Spider-Man is like a logo that might as well be an American flag it is so deeply engrained into our culture’s subconscious. When a rockstar wears a Superman shirt or my son wears Hulk underwear or Guillermo Del Toro directs a “Hellboy” movie, I get the feeling we’re stewing more than just ankle-deep in comics. In fact, you cannot separate comics from American culture. It’s where we’re at.

This will be my 20th year of attending the San Diego Comicon. My 10th year of having a booth with my books for sale. Every year, the crowds get bigger, more voracious in their appetite to buy. Now I get daily visits from every studio sending out tendrils looking for cheap IPs to buy and exploit. Hollywood is hungry for material, and this medium has helped me make a good living in a tough town.

I’ll be blogging from the convention all week. Stop by my booth at 1714 if you can find me in the sea of over 110,000 people. I’ll be the comic geek in the Superman shirt–oh, never mind.

People not familiar with copyright law might be surprised to hear that McCartney-one-half of music’s most-successful songwriting duo-must pay royalties to perform his own hit songs.  The fact certainly seemed to grate on McCartney, who frequently made mention of it in interviews.  But even more surprising, at least to those not acquainted with the intricacies of copyright law, is that Sir Paul will one day be able to re-acquire the rights to his music without even having to pay to buy them back.

This is true because of the Copyright Act’s reversion provisions, which allow the original author of a copyrighted work to reclaim the work many years after assigning it away.  It is this same right to reclaim lost copyrights that will soon make millionaires of the heirs of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, Superman’s creators, when they conclude their pending lawsuit against Warner Brothers. 

Congress, seeking to protect content creators who sell the copyrights in their works before understanding the works’ true value, inserted in the Copyright Act the right to reclaim a copyright-generally by terminating an earlier assignment-after a certain number of years have passed.  For copyrighted material created before 1978, these rights will most often be available 56 years after the work was created.  So in McCartney’s case, he should be able to reclaim the copyright to a Beatles song first published in 1964 in the year 2020, and he (or, likely, his children) will retain those rights for the final 39 years of the copyright term.  

For newer works-specifically, anything created after January 1, 1978-the original author has the right to terminate a copyright assignment after 35 years.  So, sticking with McCartney, he and Wings released the album “London Town” in 1978.  Assuming he immediately assigned the copyright to the record company-which is common in the industry-he would most likely be entitled to terminate that assignment 35 years later, in 2013.  These reversion provisions, then, will become an important news item in the coming years, when composers, authors, artists, and other content creators begin to reclaim works they created and assigned away in the late 1970’s.  Because of the complexity of the reversion provisions, these efforts to reclaim copyrights will no doubt spawn dozens of high-profile lawsuits as well. 

There are media rumors that Jackson has left to McCartney the publishing rights in Jackson’s Beatles catalogue.  If so, we may never see the coming legal clash between two of music’s biggest superstars.  But thanks to the Copyright Act, even if Jackson left the rights to somebody else, Sir Paul may still get his music back soon enough.

I only steal the best. Ask my wife’s first husband.

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1.  Superman (1978) – Superman Saves Lois and Catches the Helicopter: “You’ve got me? Who’s got you?” The genius of this moment is that director Richard Donner makes you wait for it. There’s forty minutes of mythology and story and teases until finally, finally he hits you with the awesome. The special effects still convince, the score still makes you want to tie a bath towel around your neck and “fly” through the house (Right? Don’t leave me hanging), and in the ensuing decades this moment’s only gotten better because of my growing appreciation for just how fabulous Christopher Reeve is in the title role and in knowing that Margot Kidder as Lois Lane was one of the most perfect pieces of casting ever.

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2.  Iron Man (2008) – Iron Man Kills Him Some Terrorists: How great was it to watch Iron Man fly into a sovereign nation and unilaterally dispatch evil?  Iron Man could’ve rationalized that killing terrorists only creates terrorists, wrung his hands over the reaction of the “Arab Street,” waited for a United Nations resolution,  argued for more diplomacy, or blamed Israel . Yep, he had all kinds of all-too familiar reasons to let innocent people die in the furtherance of “peace.”  Thank heaven someone with the power to get a film made understands that real heroes don’t practice depraved indifference.  

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3.  Spider-Man 2 (2004) – Spider-Man Stops the Subway Car: It’s not just watching a terrified superhero using everything he can think of to save others, it’s afterwards. The gratitude and decency of the people on that subway car is a rarity in Hollywood these days – a generous look at the simple humanity of everyday people.

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4. The Dark Knight (2008) – Joker Blows Up Gotham Hospital: As incredible an achievement as Christopher Nolan’s examination of heroism is, nothing sticks in the mind like Heath Ledger’s Joker, dressed as a female nurse, nonchalantly walking away from a large city hospital as it explodes into pieces. This moment might be the purest expression of anarchy we’ll ever see. Normally, I’m not a big fan of DVD extras, but if Nolan explains how the scene was shot, it’s worth the extra bucks.

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5. Unbreakable (2000) – A Boy Learns His Father is a Superhero: The scene at the kitchen table when Bruce Willis confirms with a simple nod that in fact he is everything his young son wanted him to be is the best moment of M. Night Shyamalan’s best film.

Ogres are superheroes – Hulk. It’s so bad that even the creatures of underworld are being enlisted into the superhero category, and I don’t mean Al Gore. (Although, what do you think Al Gore was doing in his documentary if not saving the world?) Who I mean is Hellboy, a creep who looks so evil that the logline’s compelled to explain, “Believe it or not, he’s the good guy.” 

How much of this nonsense can the public take? In its dynamic, this superhero hysteria is reminiscent of the escapism of the 30’s musicals, but only in its dynamic. Essentially, escapism was not deception but a convention to ease the burden of everyday life. People who went to see the musicals were very much aware of their personal economic hardship; they just didn’t want to deal with it for a couple of hours.

Superhero movies are simply a lie, not because they’re fantasies that take us into imaginary worlds, but because most of the contemporary superhero movies are a guilt trip - substitutes for real stories of real heroes not being told. And that real story is the story of the men and women of the U.S. Military. 

This is the greatest story not being told, or rather the greatest story not allowed to be told. This is the real superhero movie. After their country was attacked these ordinary people discovered a power within to go and combat the evil order of powerful demons who spread fear and terror around the world. The world does not support these ordinary people and most of their countrymen do not support them out of the fear of demons. But these ordinary people succeed. Outnumbered (100 thousand in a country of 25 million), under excruciating heat and with danger hidden behind every stone, they continue to fight the evil as their own city makes pacts with the Joker to abandon them. 

Superhero movies as a genre are fine. I’m not waging war on the genre since I am well aware that “nuclear weapons will only irritate Godzilla.” I’m just stunned by the sheer quantity, frequency and, of course, stupidity of superhero extravaganza.

In a world where beheadings are videographed and pitched to major networks, I guess, it’s hard to find an appropriate way to express the gravity and seriousness of our struggle. We know we can’t escape, although the musical is surely coming back (only “Mamma Mia” could compete with Batman at the box-office last year). We cannot escape but we still haven’t developed the guts to tell stories about what’s really going on. We’re afraid to call the evil to account and we’re afraid to call our own sons and daughters the real heroes. 

How sad that the only time they’re portrayed on film is when we rush to condemn them, like in Brian De Palma’s “Redacted.”  

To conclude, superhero movies are fun. So the next time a pissed off worshiper of a Joker-god sets a bomb off and/or tries to behead you, make sure to call Batman, aka Christian Bale … if he is not too busy berating a cameraman that day.