Geeky Stuff

May 2nd was Free Comic Book Day. It was also the day after the release of the newest X-men film: Wolverine. Somebody planned ahead. While it was a good weekend overall, the problem though was that both events felt forced.

The popularity of Wolverine as a written character lays within his mysterious past. You can't paste that past up as a summer blockbuster without ruining some of the appeal of the character. Add to that, cliche after cliche, a failed romance story, and a wobbly ending, and the movie only comes out as a a superficial cut, as opposed to a penetrating and sharp story with some teeth and claws.

The movie is underdeveloped starting from the hurried to finish script (a possible writer's strike casualty that never got a rewrite going into actual production) to poor 3-d rendering of some key effects (Wolverine popping his newly-dipped claws in the bathroom looked like animation from The Last Starfighter).

What saves this movie from Halle Berry Catwoman catastrophe is Hugh Jackman himself. He is a good actor. Even though it is difficult for one to relate to an indestructable mutant, Jackman is sincere in his protrayal of the title character. In addition, there were a few guilty pleasures in the movie including the character of Deadpool making an appearance, the Emma Frost cameo and the stand-up performance of Patrick Stewart (despite the poor make-up attempt at making him look younger). Lastly, could it be that the old-folk harboring Logan were actually the parents of an Alpha-Flight member?

Speaking of comics, Free comic book day was a blast, but also a slight dissapointment. I took my daughter in hopes of picking up a few kiddie themed comics, while I looked around the shop, and of course picked up the comics I was interested in. There are about a dozen titles or so, that comic shops must purchase at a nominal fee to then give out for free. It is a great way to promote books, writers or storylines, while drawing in traffic into the brick and mortar comic shops.

My problem was not that most of these shops restricted you to a specified number of the free comics, the shops paid for them, and they can dish them out as they see fit. One shop I went to restricted you to one title, another three. My issue is that the more popular titles, more than likely would be picked over, while the independant writers would be left on the shelf. Wouldn't an average consumer more typically chose a mainstream title like Avengers over another lesser known work? I don't know how free comics could be distributed more evenly, unless certain title were restricted to one per, while others were not. Nevertheless, I picked up a couple I wanted, my daughter got a couple she seemed to like (she's 2, but fairly picky nevertheless) and I still spent a bunch of cash in an event that was described as free.

I love being a nerd!