Counting Superheroes

Dan Drezner suggested a new way to figure one's age:

In the future people will state their age not in calendar years but in how many incarnations of the Batman they have lived through.

“How old is Dan?”

“Older than you think. He’s at least seven Batmans old.” https://t.co/1sbMrXTMkh

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) August 23, 2020

I'd rather count my age in Spidey's as the Spider-man franchise is more fun, less dark, and, dare I say it, better.  Sure, Dark Knight was a great Heath Ledger performance, but the plots of most Batman movies are dumb, the character development is mostly not that interesting, and, of course, there is not Bat-verse.

Looking back, the 1960's Batman movie was delightful.  Michael Keaton was a great Batman, but after he left, that era of Batman was meh at best. 

Spidey?  The first two Sam Raimi movies are still among the best super-hero movies.  Doc Ock was fantastic in the second, and both had great NY'ers in the action, giving resonance, that is entirely lacking in any and all DC movies.  When have you ever cared about the bystanders?  Even the random kid in the third Raimi movie at the end, who confronts the Rhino, is pretty damned special.  Nothing like that in DC except maybe Wonder Woman.  The first Andrew Garfield Spidey was a good movie.  The second?  Not so much.  The Tom Holland Spidey's are fantastic in part thanks to ... Michael Keaton as one of the best bad guys and best bad guy performances in any of the superhero movies.  And then there is the Spidey-verse.  This really makes coding Spider-folk hard (Dan is already at work figuring out which Batmen count) since we have so many in this movie including Milo, two versions of Peter, Spider-Man Noir, Peni Parker, Spider-Gwen, and, yes, Spider-Ham. 

For my count, I am not including animated series because then things get even more complicated even if the first one spawned some great memes.

So, I will just say that I am ten Spidey's old (pigs count!): Tobey, Andrew, Tom, and seven from Spider-Verse.

Into the Spider-verse? Yes, Please

I just came back from seeing the new Spidey movie for the second time, first time in 3D and second time in 2D.  The funny thing is that I stopped collecting comic books because Marvel decided that each story had to be told in multiple comic books, so one would have to buy five different series to follow one character.  This spider-verse thing was part of that disease--how do you follow Spidey?  Buy 3-7 books a month.  Yuck. 

But now? Here's the spoiler-free review: it may be the best Spidey movie yet.  Yeah, I liked the original 2 movies by Sam Raimi with Tobey Maguire, and I loved Tom Holland's Homecoming, but, well, damn.

X-(Wo)Men

Yep, Marvel is going with a version of the X-Men that has only female leads.  This would be swell and interesting if not for a few things:

1. I hate re-launches.  If the writers wrote themselves into a corner, then write themselves out of it.  If nothing is ever at stake because everything is re-launched again and again, well, who cares who lives/dies/romances/whatever.
2. Seems like an excuse to have just another X-book per month so that sales go up.  I stopped collecting 17 years ago precisely because I didn't want to pay a heap of dollars every month to follow one group (X) or hero (Spidey) if the tales required six books per month to tell.  
3. If they were handing over the comic to a female creator, that would be kind of cool.  But not, just a male with female characters.  The drawing of the cover makes me feel a bit more optimistic since it is a bit less boob-a-licious than many comic book covers that feature female body parts more than female stories.

But that might change once they start fighting.  To be clear, I was quite the Kitty Pryde fan, and Like Rogue and Storm (depending on how they are characterized), so this would be cool if done well.  I am just suspicious and pessimistic.

Ah well, someone buy these and let me know how it turns out.