Stealthoneill (Level 14)

I consider myself a comic book fan. I’m not one of those guys who visits a store every Wednesday (Or Tuesday, in my local store) and picks up a handful of trades a week but I do have an unhealthy amount of hardback collections from my favourite stories. This is the way I prefer to collect comics and will only collect weekly trades for a taste of something new or trialing something I’ve read a lot about (Flashpoint, for example, which got a lot of hype). I can give you the broader strokes of the last couple of decades from both Marvel and DC and. although I’m not the most knowledgeable of my close friends, I can hold my own when a discussion pops up.

Now, as part of being a comic book fan, I’ve always enjoyed the avenues in which the business of comics attempts to expand. You’ve got the animated - Mostly direct-to-DVD - features, Television shows - Both animated and live action, and of course, the movie projects that have most definitely picked up over the last decade. Often we see people discussing these avenues in great detail and with a lot of new fans being drawn from these places I feel one area tends to get neglected - Animated Superhero films.

Animated Superhero films, in my opinion, have always been treated like the ugly step-child of the comic book world. Little is spoken of these and, more often than not, they’re forgotten all together. Fans, of course, seek these movies and and watch them but do these movies hold a greater significance? Is someone who decided to pick up a few comics because they loved Iron Man or Batman Begins going to truly appreciate where these films are coming from? And, if they should stumble upon the nice list on Wikipedia, have the right materials been chosen to represent the last couple of decades in comics.

That’s a broad question and not one I hope to answer in a single blog post nor, perhaps, in a life time of considering the point. I will, instead, pick a couple of the movies and pick them apart one at a time while considering the single point - Is this movie attractive to what I think is a modern day comic book fan who is coming in to comics because of the Hollywood success.

I don’t want to answer the question for you - I’ll be posing my opinion up here and opening the way for a discussion.

The features I’ll be watching are listed below. I’ll be reviewing each separately but won’t be including that within the blog post as I believe that poses different questions than the primary one I’ll be asking.

• All-Star Superman
• Batman: Under the Red Hood
• Green Lantern: First Flight
• Superman: Doomsday
• Planet Hulk

And there you have it, a beginning - a plan - I find I’m far better if I put this out in public and set myself a goal so forgive me if this blog is a whole lot of rambling and justification for something that I haven’t even started yet.

Have I missed out a feature you think I should include? What’s your favourite animated feature?

Ideas, suggestions, comments - Always welcome!

Quick shout out to JJWeatherman whose blog series Cartoon Retrospective got me thinking about this idea!