As any of you long time fans already know, I love comic books, I collect them, and I take a yearly trip to Chicago to the Annual Comicon. I'm just a big fuckin geek. Now before we get into the upcoming movies themselves, a quick history on the companies that make these comic books.

DC, Marvel, and Image are the three biggest publishers. DC owns characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Marvel's titles include Spiderman, The Hulk, The X-men, Ironman, etc. And then you have Image who's most notable character that most of you would recognize is Spawn.

The only thing to note is that up until a few years ago most of the big budget comic book movies were DC properties, (Batman, Superman ) who is owned by parent company Warner Brothers. Now most of the comic movies coming out are all owned by Marvel. (Daredevil, Spiderman, The X-men, The Punisher, Ghostrider) And while I always hated Marvel comics when I was growing up, they are definitely the better company in terms of movies right now.

Anyway, with the massive amount of comic book inspired movies either out now, or on their way out, I thought I would explain some things for those non comic people, and maybe even get a few of you to pick up one of these funny books.

First up of course is, X-men 2; The X-men commeth or whatever the hell they've added on to the title in the last month. I've got to tell you I cannot wait for this movie to come out. The first one was good, but it could have been done a bit better, and maybe a bit longer, I think this movie is going to fill the gaps that the first one missed. Early reviews coming in are that it's totally awesome. And apparently the opening sequence with Night Crawler is not to be missed. If you are really into the X-men, I suggest you pick up a comic book called Ultimate X-men, you wanna see these characters written really well, pick up this book.

The Matrix Reloaded & Revolutions, sure this isn't a comic book inspired movie per say. However, the Washowski brothers are totally influenced by comic books, it's pretty obvious when you watch the first one. But come on, by now most of you have seen this trailer, how fuckin cool does this movie look? Those twins guys alone look like they are fuckin stellar. And for those of you who don't know, while the first sequel comes out in a few weeks, the final in the trilogy comes out in November. So it won't be too long of a wait. Oh and just so you are aware, apparently Reloaded ends on quite the cliffhanger.

The Hulk. OK, if you haven't seen this new trailer yet go to apple.com right now and check it out, I fuckin mean it. This fuckin movie looks awesome. My friends when they first heard some of the plot lines and stuff thought this movie was going to suck, but I've always thought an Ang Lee directed Hulk would be cool. Another thing is The Hulk himself, how fuckin cool does this guy look? I mean sure when we were growing up we had Lou Ferrigno, but this CG Hulk looks like he's supposed to. He looks like a monster, who fuckin picks up a tank and chucks it, THIS is a comic book movie, THIS has a totally new creature, a man effected by GAMMA rays, into a new lifeform, a fuckin HULK. I cannot wait for this movie. If you're looking for Hulk comics, just make sure anything you pick up is written by Peter David.

LXG, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Admittedly I've never read this comic, and I don't know much about it. However I did happen to catch the trailer and it looks pretty cool. I fear this movie may get lost in the summer blockbusters, sure it stars Sean Connery but come on that guy has been in some stinkers. I suggest each of you go to the website, and read the character profiles, this movie just sounds so cool. With characters like The Invisible Man, Dr Jekyl, A Vampire and Tom Sawyer this just sounds like a cool concept. Once I read the characters bio's and then watched the trailer again I was instantly hooked.

Let's face it, there are going to be shitty comic book movies, every studio is racing in to cash in on the super hero "celluloid"-age. (As apposed to the silver and golden ages) But with so many cool comics set to come out, The Preacher, Hellblazer, Ghostrider, Hellboy, The Punsher, Elecktra (The Daredevil spin-off) and a new Batman movie. I mean it's just cool to see these things come alive from the comic book and be on the big screen, we're finally in a time when the most outrageous idea that up until the past few years couldn't be accomplished, can now come to life before our very eyes. It's just so cool to be a comic fan at this point in history. Sure in a few years the trend will end, Hollywood will have beaten the genre to death, squeezed every penny possible from the blood soaked spandex of super heroes like batman, and superman, but maybe, just maybe we'll have some really great movies to pop into the DVD player and take us away to far away lands, where good usually triumphs over evil, bad deeds go punished, and there are heroes to protect the weak.

DOWNS

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