Once again, tomorrow marks the annual Free Comic Book Day. If you live near a participating outlet (and you can find out whether or not you do by clicking here), take the chance to sample the delights of Ninth Art for no charge.

In the year when America celebrates the 75th anniversary of the modern comic (Japanese and European dates differ), the art form finds itself in strange shape. Internally, the medium is suffering-like all print media- from the encroachment of digital alternatives. Comics readers are getting progressively older, and the market itself is increasingly propped up by expensive hard cover albums and spendy ancillary merchandise (much of which appears absurd to all but the most woefully addled and obsessive collectors). Comics magazines of the the kind that Funnies on Parade inaugurated are an ever-dwindling portion of what constitutes "comics"; the cost of paper and the shipping of such small items has made individual comics close to prohibitively expensive, especially when one considers the extent to which the mainstream publishers pack a monthly comic with advertising.

And yet, while commercially speaking comics appear to be in trouble, artistically they are in the rudest of health. The perceived saviour of mainstream comics is branding and adaptation onto other media platforms, the main thrust of this post being three such endeavours. Yet the inevitable focus of these is on super-heroes, the majority of these originating from the forties, fifties and sixties. This masks the richness of 21st century comics (cast an eye over the nominations for this year's Eisner Awards- the Oscars for things with staples in the middle- and you'll find recognition of less then 20 conventional capes and tights books among almost 150 choices) and confirms the outsider's worst prejudices about the industry; that it's nothing but adolescent power/revenge fantasy and Freudian technicolour wet dreams.

Fewer people than ever are reading comics, but a larger audience than ever is consuming the fruits of comics artists and writers' labour. This summer, movie-goers will be given the opportunity to sample five comicbook movies (eight if you include the spoofs Hancock (good) and Superhero Movie (dire) and the animé inspired Speed Racer). God knows I'll probably see all of them, but there's three I'm specifically excited by: today's release of Jon Faverau's Iron Man, based on Stan Lee and Don Heck's 1962 creation; Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the second collaboration with creator Mike Mignola, now in his fifteenth year of illustrating HB's adventures; and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, his sequel to Batman Begins and a film that looks like it'll owe as much to Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, Frank Miller, Denny O'Neill, Neal Adams, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale as Bob Kane, the man whose name has been most readily associated with the character since his first appearance in 1939.

These three characters have all, at one time or another, been favourites of mine and it's interesting to compare and contrast them. Both Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark are super-heroes bereft of super-powers, made extraordinary by their intelligence, their bravery and their wealth. Hellboy is super-powered, supernatural in fact, yet has a resolutely blue-collar demeanour. Iron Man and Hellboy seek redemption; one is a hawk turned into a dove, the other a demon trying to be a man (an angel's probably too much to ask). Batman is motivated by pure vengeance, often positively embracing the darkness that enveloped him as a child. Also separating him from the other two is his apparent distaste for sensual pleasure; he pretends to be a playboy billionaire to better conceal his personal war on crime, whereas HB would much rather kick back with a six pack than fight the forces of evil, and Stark is positively self-destructive in his vices. Indeed, it's impossible to point to a less healthy hero. Depending on which books you read, he's ravaged by shrapnel wounds, alcoholism, gunshot wounds, paraplegia, quadriplegia, nano-technological viruses and terminal cancer. Of late, certain comic book writers have been emphasising a streak of fascism in the character that was barely perceptible in the beginning but slowly emerged as he was portrayed as an ever-more wealthy Reaganite technocrat in his double life. In this respect he is again comparable to the vigilante Batman and unlike the resolutely anti-authoritarian and generally put-upon Hellboy.

All indication's point to an Iron Man film made with genuine affection by all involved. As previously written, Robert Downey Jnr is insanely appropriate casting for Tony Stark, and all the visuals have been superb. Reviews indicate a severe case of "first in a speculative trilogy" syndrome; once the character origin is well and entertainingly told, the film has nowhere to go in the remainder of its running time. Some form of partial resolution must be provided, yet aces must be held for future instalments. Cue big, noisy, shallow fight. On that point, I think the film will suffer too from the absence of a villain that's anything more than a bigger, badder version of the hero (ditto Spider-Man 3 last year and Incredible Hulk later this summer). The film makers can't be blamed for this entirely; Iron Man lacks a rich gallery of rogues and his main "big bad" is an embarrassingly outdated racial stereotype. Never the less, I think this film will be a much stronger stab at the Marvel Comics vibe than recent woeful efforts such as Electra or Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, thanks in no small part to the fact that its the first production from the publishers own and newly-established studio.

The Dark Knight arrives in cinemas in July, unshackled from the burden of franchise building or "rebooting" mentioned above. Christopher Nolan remains tight-lipped about whether he intends to weave further tales in Gotham City. This is perhaps due to the untimely death of Heath Ledger, his Joker, that has inevitably cast a pall over the film's publicity campaign. The movie's official web site remains little more than an obituary for Ledger, even at this late stage of the game. Warner Bros have instead invested in one of the most lavish poster campaigns and complicated and obtuse "viral" strategies ever mounted for a movie, climaxing in flash-mob events around the globe triggered by puzzle-based web sites. This strategy would seem more appropriate for a film featuring the Riddler than Joker, two characters often confused in the public mind. Nolan has gone on record to say he won't include outlandish villains like the Penguin. Perhaps the Riddler is too flamboyant for his tastes too, and so he's cherry-picked his penchant for clues but jettisoned the rest. We'll know more after the long-awaited trailer materialises tomorrow. As much as I enjoyed the first of the series and am eagerly anticipating the second, I think Nolan's films are far from perfect. Despite his attempt to rationalise every aspect of every character, he's missed a few tricks. To cite just one example, and like Burton and Schumaker before him, he tells a story about a man with a definitive and pathological aversion to hand guns who nevertheless makes liberal use of explosives and ballistic weapons. Check out the "Bat-pod" for example. What the hell are those on the front? Rolls of architect's drawings for the new Bat-cave?

Hellboy II: The Golden Army brings up the rear in August. Guillermo Del Toro is hot to trot right now, critically lauded on an international scale for Pan's Labyrinth, hand-picked to succeed Peter Jackson as the director of the prequels to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Again, I've harped on before about the questionable albeit author-approved tinkering that went on the first Hellboy film, especially turning the character from perennially middle-aged to an over-grown adolescent and the recasting of the FBI-like Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence to a sub-MIBs secret organisation. However the trailer looks like it will all but dispense with the BPRD and instead fling the main characters into a mash up of the European folklore that has entirely captured Mike Mignola's imagination recently, the kind of non sequitur weirdness that made seventies vintage Star Wars such a joy and the fever-dream visuals that where Pan's Labyrinth's hallmark, to whit:



Jaisus, I could barely sleep after seeing that for the first time.

I'll return to these films, and others, as I see them, but with a trip to San Diego in the offing I simply wish to declate the Summer of Ultimate Geekery officially: OPEN!

Several weeks ago, the Toon Weekly site transformed into a members-only forum, meaning the various character design challenges are now held on private threads rather than in public galleries. A shame, in my view, since having passers-by looking at the work kind of forces you to raise your game. Having said that, most participants post their entries on their own sites and blogs and I've been doing the same. This blog has been reserved for writing since I set up t'other shop, but I'm so pleased with what I did for this week's assignment (redesign a classic live-action sitcom cast for animation) that I decided to post it here too:



Yes, before you say it, I know Vyvyan had four stars; the point of the exercise is not a facsimile of the costumes, nor a caricature of the actors for that matter, but an an adaptation of the characters. It's interesting to see what you can eliminate, what you have to keep and what you can tweak whilst still evoking the spirit of the thing. I couldn't decide which member of the Balowski family to include, regrettable since our Alexei was arguably the funniest bloke in the group.

As part of their excellent Comics Season, BBC 4 are screening the notorious nineteen-sixties William Dozier Batman tv series.
Like most comicbook types, my opinion of the show has followed a curve starting with childhood enjoyment, going to adolescent disgust back to- in adulthood- a kind of rueful ambivalence. The show itself is an artefact of its time, and harmless enough in its own way. However its legacy of campery dominated the layman's view of comics- and Batman in particular- for long, too long, after the show itself had died and faded from memory. Four decades after a show that lasted barely two years, journalists remain compelled, as if by some unwritten law, to preface any article about comics with "Biff! Pow! Zap!" It could be argued that the inevitable back-lash (Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns comics and Tim Burton's movies in the eighties) took the character too far in the other direction, but that "grim and gritty" version is more in keeping with Bob Kane's original vision than the pop art, Dutch Tilt-addled world of King Tut and Egghead. The murder of Bruce Wayne's parents- the defining incident that precipitates everything in Batman's world- is mentioned a couple of times in the first episode and then excised from the rest of all three seasons. Hardly a faithful adaptation.

So, because it's my party and I'm in the mood, here's my top three arguments for and against the show.

AGAINST!

3)The assertion that Robin is named after a garden bird.
Pish. Robin takes his name from Robin Hood, as is obvious if you just look at the design of his friggin' costume, or better yet the lettering on the cover of the first comic he appeared in. However the tv show repeated this connection so often (along with old "flying rodent" saw) that it's now taken as read that the nocturnal adventurer styled himself after a diminutive thrush. Even today's comics writers have given up trying to fight this misnomer, and today's Robin is as ornithologically-themed as you like (in the recent Teen Titans kids' cartoon, the character throws "Bird-a-rangs".

2)Campery.
Doctor Frederick Wertham's theory, as expressed in his 1953 book Seduction of the Innocent, that Batman, Robin and Alfred's household was a homosexual idyll was hardly dispelled by the tone of the sixties tv show. Never mind that Wertham had willfully mis-read the comics to suit his preconceived ideas (In practical terms Robin is someone for Batman to talk to and therefore a useful storytelling device; beyond that he's a reader-surrogate, just like all the young sidekicks that flourished in comicbooks at the time. Therefore young readers where getting a taste of a paternal relationship that- perhaps- they were denied in real life, not instructions on pederasty.); his anti-comics crusade had led to publishers tying themselves in knots to avoid accusations of leading the youth of America astray. This meant no sex (or suggestion of sex), no violence, nothing but wholesome fun. On Batman, desperate writers were forced to introduce new characters to balance the gender mix (Alfred was out, Aunt Harriet was in, as where a whole Bat-family of Bat-Woman, Girl, Hound and Mite)and villains ceased to be credible criminals, prefering clownish pranks and elaborate, non-sequitier mischief to staright-forward larceny, idnap or murder. It was these increasingly lunatic story-lines that informed Dozier's programme (it's notebale that important but horrific villains such as Two-Face or Scarecrow are absent from the tv show's millieu), combined with the older Batman movie-serials from the forties (hence the booming voiceover and end-of-episode cliff-hangers). Enshrined by the tv show, DC were compelled to emulate this camp tone in the comics for fear of confusing new readers who cam expecting more of the same. Hence it wasn't until well in to the mid-seventies before anyone dared suggest that Batman might be better served by stories wherein he operated at night, faced genuine threats or stopped actual crimes from happening. Meanwhile countless shitty stand-up comedians where given license to make lewd observations about the goings-on at "stately Wayne manor".

1) Joel Schumacher and Akiva Goldsman's Batman movies.
For all his claims to have been inspired by Tim Burton and Bruce Timm's Batmen, his assertion that the word "comic" in comic books is important, and that Warner Brothers pushed him to make films "for children", Schumacher's greasy, unpleasant, nonsensical love letters to fetish wear- Batman Forever and Batman & Robin- are,irrefutably, big-screen versions of the Dozier show. Certainly the dramatis personae differ, the scale is bigger, and double entendre is dropped in favour of staright-forward butt and nipple shots, but the latter in particular has precisely the same tone as a Dozier show. Goldsman has Mr. Freeze, a character who is supposedly incapable of emotion, pause to crack lines like "Ice to see you". Need further proof? Check out Pat Hingle's performance as Commissioner Gordon... He spends all his screen time in a Chief O'Hara costume.

FOR!

3) Neil Hefti's music.
Hefti's minimalist, insanely memorable theme tune is a master stroke, and remains one of the most enduring and recognisable compositions ever broadcast. In conjunction with the animated opening titles, and the twirling, looming bat symbol that linked scenes, an audio visual grammar was established that's still in use by today's programme makers.

2) Adam West's performance.
Once you come to the realisation that the show was intended as a lark, so ironic it hurts your teeth, and- as outlined above- if Batman's here at all it's the neutered, post-Wertham and Comics Code Authority-approved Batman, then there's enjoyment to be had in the comedy touches. Nowhere more so than in West's performance as Bruce Wayne, having been cast on the basis of a chocolate dronk commercial in which he spoofed James Bond. His restless, fidgety body language may be due more to an itchy costume than any conscious decision-making, and his physique might be best described as "Shatner-like", but it's the voice and delivery that get you. Personal favourite is the "poor, deluded child" refrain that crops up whenever the totty-of-the-week comes to a sticky end.

1) (And this is the trump card)The Riddler.
Without the Dozier show, I wouldn't have my favoutite baddie. Before the tv show, the Prince of Puzzlers had made scant appearances in the comics. It was his role as "special guest villain" in the very first two-parter and inclusion as one of the "big four" antagonists in the 1966 movie that elevated a near-forgotten character to DC's A-list, and the afore-mentioned prevalence of the show in the public's consciousness and the influence it asserted over subsequent publication ensured his continued use. Clearly, had he been played by anyone other than Frank Gorshin he'd never have cut such a dash. Gorshin's Riddler- hyperactive, giggling maniac and stone-cold sociopath by turns- is a tour-de-force. Combine that with his often retina-searing wardrobe and you've got a character that's hard to beat. Never mind that he's a perennial head-ache for writers (It's they who have to come up with the riddles, after all!), what's not to love to hate about a villain who's all ego, an utter vulgarian who can no more contain his glee over being the (second)smartest guy in the room than he can stop himself from laying the foundations of his own downfall?

For bequething us Eddie Nygma, all other sins are forgiven. Even this.

This is going to be full-on geekery, so for those disturbed by such things, I suggest you go read something worthier... Hey, it's Live Earth weekend, why not support/bitch about that?

Anyway, I just took in the Fantastic Four sequel, or- as the BBFC title card had it- simply 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. As detailed at length elsewhere on this blog, I was bitterly disappointed by the previous effort. Despite the return of pretty much all the significant players I couldn't help but be jazzed by the very exciting trailer. I'm a fool to myself, I know. Comic are an abiding love, so comics adaptations always appeal at least a little, thought it has to be said my absolute favourites are no longer those about men in capes and tights. As far as superheroes go, I'm Batman to my boots. Of the various heroes in the Marvel stable, my favourites by far are the FF. The main reason, I think, is their lack of adherence to the stereotype (they're almost the anti-Bat): they rarely fight crime in any conventional sense nor do they maintain secret identities; with the exception of Ben Grimm's physical appearance there's a dearth of tragedy in their histories and no thirst for justice or vengeance; they have stable relationships, kids even; they're more adventurers in the classical literary mode- what victories that come their way are often Pyrrhic, so it's the journey that counts for them more than the outcome; and with only one exception, they have no truly great nemeses.

In their hey-day, the FF's magazine was home to Jack Kirby's wildest flights of visual fancy. Only his later work on the New Gods at rival publisher DC outdid the sheer vitality and weirdness of his run with The Four. In many respects it might be a fool's errand to attempt adapting them to cinema, and it's true that even second time around Tim Story and co. are still failing to get certain fundamentals nailed down (in this day and age, there's really no excuse for the ropeyness of some the Mr.Fantastic stretching effects seen here, surely a very simple task for modern cg animators?). But I'm getting ahead of myself...

This film is better than the last, but only just. Weirdly, most of what I both loved and hated have been diluted. Ioan Gruffund and Jessica Alba are still thoroughly miscast. Recent comics storylines have taken him to the brink of facism, but even in the beginning there was a hard, cold centre to Reed Richards. Yes, he loves his wife, feels guilty about the fate of his friend Ben and acts morally in defence of the world, but ultimately his is an abstract intellect miles beyond anyone else and that leads to irascible, impatient and often hurtful behaviour toward those around him. The too-young Gruffund plays him in an overly playful and puppydog-eyed manner. There's flashes though, and his "the geek shall inherit" moment was nice.

Alba's weird look (the ever-deepening tan you'd expect from someone with her ethnicity jarring with the Boys From Brazil cobalt contacts and terrible bleach job make her an even less convincing WASP than last time, and thrown into even starker relief when we're reminded she's supposed to be the sibling of the pasty-hued Chris Evans) and overt sexuality still don't gel in my mind with the saintly, maternal Sue Storm. "Relax", she tells her husband-to-be, meeshing her breasts against the back of his head... Uh-huh. At least there was only one "Invisible Girl loses her clothes" gag this time, and that in itself was (I think) by way of acknowledging how over-done it was before. Ditto the product placement that rankled so, although it still doesn’t quite sit right with the characters; by all means use the venal, spotlight-hogging Johnny Storm to make a comment on corporate sponsorship, but Reed building the Fantasticar with Dodge parts? No.

On the plus side, Michael Chiklis still makes a good Ben Grimm (and his Thing costume has much improved). Sadly, after forming the heroic centre of the first instalment he's given much less to do this time. His interaction with Chris Evans, tender and prickly by turns, feels the most truly successful adaptation of the comics' spirit. I was very impressed by Evans' performance in Dannny Boyle's Sunshine, playing a character that bears comparison to Johnny Storm. Once again he's the best thing in this movie; in the original comicbook 'Surfer storyline, the Torch is charged with a Herculean task that drives him nearly insane. Nothing quite as intense here, but his character has the most well-defined and interesting arc.

As for the top-billing new comer... It's a mixed bag. The Silver Surfer does pretty much what it says on the tin. Silver? Yep, gloss or matt, depending on what's happening. Surfing? You bet. Good. And that's it. Truth is, he's a bit of a non-character to begin with; a thin Christ metaphor wrapped up in a lot of slightly Sixties cosmic bong smoke. Doug Jones' physical performance provides the requisite grace, Larry Fishburne's voice the necessary earnest portents. There's some nice riffing on what the board actually is and what it can do. Shame they blew the character's, and the film's, best set piece in the afore-mentioned trailer. I also could have lived without the "Teletubby" moment. What I was most curious to see was how, and indeed if, the film-makers would handle the not-so-small matter of his boss.

Galactus is arguably the Kirbyest of all Jack Kirby's visual creations: he looks great, but in a very immediate, graphic way. Try as you might, it's pretty hard to rationalise that hat of his. Cometh the hour, the film-makers bottle it. Their Galactus is a voiceless force of nature and not a palpable entity. Weirdly, that might be closer to the cartoonist's intent; Kirby wanted the original "Galactus trilogy" to be- literally- the FF versus God. It's strange also that this film should pop up at the same time as the return of the TransFormers; last time they were in cinemas they were facing the peril of a world-eater* too.
*Perennial trivia favourite: the voice of Unicron, the planet-sized robot, was Orson Welles' final screen credit. He told a biographer at the time "I play a toy who does unspeakable things to other toys."
Part of me knew that they'd be no attempt to straight-facedly "do" Galactus on screen. But I found myself really hoping, as the climax neared and the Surfer turned on his master, that huge purple helmet (no sniggering, you at the back) might hove into view. Was there the merest suggestion of a silhouette among the debris and fumes? Couldn't say.

So overall I’d say it's a three star effort, with the previous film ranking two. Tim Story's direction is workmanlike, the cast are 50/50. The effects are better than last time but still not quite where they should be. This script (by Don Payne and Mark Frost) is markedly superior to the first (Frost with Michael France), if guilty of the occasional wild inconsistency: their grasp of world geography is way off (Exactly how close is the Great Wall to Shanghai? How many grizzly bears in Germany?); while in a de-powered state, Ben Grimm appears to manage a feat of super-human speed. The tone remains lighter than what I'd like, though for what is ostensibly a kids' film there's a couple of quite salty jokes. But I can't begrudge them that... "Invisible kick to the nuts" made me laugh. And there are some nice nods for hard-core geeks (Roberta the Robot Receptionist, Frankie Raye, a side-long allusion to the Super Skrull, a highly specific Stan Lee cameo).

So what's keeping me from making a ringing endorsement? Can you guess? Could it be... maybe... the same fucking thing as last time, only (I can't believe it's possible) even more so?!

Grrrr! Must... kill... Julian McMahon!!!

The baffling mis-handling of Doctor Doom continues. I'll go over the main points again, briefly.
In the comics, Doom is a brilliant scientist and mystic, monarch of a small Eastern European nation, motivated by his family's brutal mistreatment at the hands of others and the loss of his mother's soul to the Devil himself. He wears a mask because his face was scarred during an accident for which he blames (wrongly) his only intellectual rival, Reed Richards. A monomaniacal tyrant, he seeks to control the entire world and wreak personal vengeance on Richards, his family and allies.
In the films, Doom is a sort of... business guy who shoots electricity from his hands. He wears a mask because... he had a mask on his mantle. He hates Reed Richards because... Reed didn't let him kill everyone in the last film. In the last film he wanted to kill everyone because... he lost his money. Hmm.

As I pointed out before, this crappy Donald Trump simulacrum the film makers chose to go with might have worked if they'd abandoned all the other trappings of Doom's persona. Yet they shoehorned in a reference to Latveria, his European fiefdom. As this new film opens, we find Doom's corpse back in his own land; in a chateaux no less. Incidental detail reveals this to be an ancestral home. Returning to life, Doom appears to have instant access to staff, computers, satellites, helicopters. All this costs money. Yet we were told he lost his assets in the last film, and in the intervening time he's been inanimate in a box. So he must have money. Lots of money. Old money. So his previous actions were meaningless! Great.

I hoped this might at least herald a more faithful take on the character, back to his roots. And when he walked into a meeting at the UN, my heart soared. Yes! Diplomatic immunity! One of the defining points of any Doom plot! But no. No raving. No grand design. Just smarm and sarcasm. Doctor Doom does NOT make with the funny!

Having botched why and how he is, these guys can't even settle on what he is. In their first film we saw him slowly turning into a man of metal. Distressed by his appearance, he donned a mask. Of metal. (I've compared this to an unctuous teenager putting on a giant zit helmet.) Then, in a battle that saw him exposed to extremes of heat and cold, that mask was fused to his face. This time, he has the mask forcibly removed, only to reveal a ravaged face far worse than before. Distressed, he dons a mask. Of cloth. Then, during an encounter with the Silver Surfer, his flesh is repaired and his face restored. Delighted, he swans about for a bit before putting on another fucking metal mask!
Note to Hollywood: if your actors are too vain to portray a masked character, or you can't credit your audience with the ability to empathise with a masked character, don't film stories involving masked characters. (cf: Judge Dredd, Spider-Man I-III).

I look forward to the next logical step, a threequel in which Doom’s face is removed, Nicholas Cage’s is grafted on, it explodes into Ghost Rider flame and so must be obfuscated by a Skeletor mask.

This made me very happy.

In my younger years I was into Iron Man, big time. Then as now, if I had to read superhero comics then the less powerful they were the better. Flawed, troubled, weakened, limited heroes make for better stories. And they don't come much more FTWL than Tony Stark.

When we first encounter him he's fiscally secure but morally bankrupt, selling weapons to fuel the American war in SE Asia (in the forth-coming movie that'll be the Middle East). A shrapnel wound necessitates an improvised mobile life-support system (as pictured), which in time becomes the more finessed suit of armour that serves as his heroic alias.

Iron Man is perhaps the least healthy superhero ever conceived. Following his initial injury, Stark fell victim to depression, developed full-blown alcoholism, succumbed to a heart attack and after recovering was shot by a disgruntled ex-girlfriend, shattering his spine and leaving him in a wheelchair. Like the original invention that saved his shredded torso, he invented a spinal replacement that gave him the use of his legs back but left him vulnerable to a degenerative nerve disease that eventually left him pretty much dead from the brain down.

On top of this, the multi-millionaire industrialist has enjoyed all the excesses that lifestyle entails, most especially serial womanising (see above). His moral complexity also marks him out as almost unique in comics. Neither a brooding anti-hero nor a paragon of virtue, Stark is probably best described as believing in the law more than in justice. In his time he's been made US secretary of defence and director of a counter-espionage agency, and currently (under the auspices of writer Brian Michael Bendis) he's been revealed as one of a small group of "Illuminati" who pretty much run the world. His hard-line adherence to government policy has seen him spearhead an initiative to create a registered police force of superheroes.

But all that went over my head as a kid. I just liked the dashing moustachioed guy in the red and gold tin suit, and all the gimmicks... The "uni-beam" in his chest, the "repulsor rays" in his gauntlets ("The further they go, the harder they hit!").

The affair began in the pages of the UK TransFormers comic. Although markedly better than its US counterpart, with more mature writing and often quite painterly artwork, the magazine was still a glorified toy catalogue. It was always a two-hander, however, and the "B" strip was generally reprints of Amercian Marvel strips with a robot/scifi motif: Steve Ditko's Machine Man; Mike Mignola's Rocket Raccoon; the woeful Spitfire and the Troubleshooters; and of course Iron Man. I can still vividly remember Barry Windsor Smith's work in the surreal, maudlin Iron Man of 2020 and an absolutely gorgeous story Ken Steacy illustrated that had Tony facing a gaggle of traditionally Spider-Man villains. I can still picture a sequence in which a stool pigeon is shaken down by Iron Man in an el-train. After he flies off, the weasel, breathless, collapses against a pole, not realising it's one of Doctor Octopus' mechanical tentacles. Cut to the exterior of the train as it rattles off into the night, and the stoolie's screams...

Having described this shambling, whisky-soaked, depressive yet charismatic wreck of a hero, the casting of Robert Downey Jr. in the title role in the movie seems a master stroke. Can't wait!