The Dark Knight. Superheros. And Me

Yeah, I loved it. Of course I loved it.

And yes, of course I saw it at midnight on opening, um, morning. And pretty much all I've wanted to do since is see it again.

When I got home, at 3:00 am, I spent hours online reading every review, story, and interview about it. And most of them were really good, although one of my favorite reviewers really hated it. The one who most closely hit the marks I would hit is my hometown reviewer, Frank Gabrenya. But Peter Travers nails it too, though he's crazy thinking that Aaron Eckhart stole the show. This one belongs to the Heath Ledger's Joker.

See? See what a huge superhero geek I am?

Let me tell you what a geek I am. After buying tickets to the midnight screening, I felt like I used to feel when I was a little kid the night before going to Cedar Point. I was so excited, even I knew what a dork I was being.

Okay, yes. This is great movie, comic book hero or not. But the truth is, I just love comic book hero movies, even the bad ones. I'm the guy who liked Fantastic Four and X-Men: The Last Stand. I enjoyed Ghost Rider and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I even had a blast at the films that are so bad that they had to reboot the franchise to recover, namely Batman and Robin and Hulk (sans "Incredible.")

In fact, I own them all on DVD. Worse, I watch them. Watched Daredevil just now with the kids.

I know I go a bit too far with this. Not TOO too far. I always feel a little sad for the guys who dress in costume at movies. I have my limits, some pointless: I avoid wearing my Superman watch when wearing a superhero t-shirt. I don't have any kind of superhero bumper stickers, but I do have a super-s on this laptop, and Superman floor mats in my car.

Just before the final Harry Potter book came out - yeah, I love them, but I'm off topic for a minute - a friend who really loves them expressed his crazy enthusiasm by shyly asking "Do you sometimes feel lucky to be alive during the time that Harry Potter is being written?" And I knew what he meant. No other generation will get to read those books first, like no one will ever be able to see Hamlet without knowing the ending. And I caught myself wondering the same thing: Do I feel lucky being around for the great superhero renaissance of the early 21st century?

Nope. I don't feel lucky.

It's not luck, because it's not a coincidence. We, the folks my age, had been targeted as kids by TV shows like The Incredible Hulk and Shazam! and Spider-man and even those Captain America TV movies that made no sense (a silent motorcycle? Why?) I remember watching every single one of them, and loving them all.

Okay. So we hit college, had disposable income of our own, and the market granted our wish. Suddenly, comics were huge: lots of mainstream coverage, and comic book shops on every corner. Frank Miller and Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman came along and wrote well enough to give comics actual credibility (though the new word "graphic novel" always seemed like to desperate an attempt to be taken seriously.)

So now we're all in our thirties and forties, and a lot of us have money to spend on movies, and others of us are the decision makers in Hollywood, and here we are. It's bonanza time for superhero geeks, especially this summer.

In college I was on the bandwagon, spending embarrassing amounts of money on comics under the justification, widely held at the time, that I was investing. Yeah. Talk about escapism.

Back then, when I was reading a comic - or the stack of comics they held for me at Central City Comics every week - I disappeared. I completely forgot everything else that was going on. It was a similar feeling - not quite the same, but similar - to the feeling I would get as a kid, when me and other neighborhood nerds would pretend to be superheros in the back yard. There is a word for the vividness that children experience when imagining - I read about it recently, but I can't remember the term. There is much less a boundary between the real word and young kid's imagination. When children are in an imaginary world, they are really there in a way that we old farts can't, well, imagine. I can still vividly picture some of the adventures I had as a superhero. I was usually Spider-man, but one mission still stands out as if I was really there. I was Iron Man, and I gripped the top of a small picnic table that was in fact a small electric car like the ones in The Incredibles. Mine was speeding through tunnels toward the villain's underground lair while I held on for dear life.

Iron Man? Really?

Anyway, the brain grows, or, actually, shrinks, or at least culls, and the distinction between imagination and reality becomes clearer and clearer as we age, which is a drag. But in college, I could still get a taste of the loss of time and distraction when reading comic books. Now I re-live that with the movies, even the bad ones. But especially the good ones.

So, according to me, what are the good ones? I think a recent story in The Dispatch gets the top ten about right, though it went to press before The Dark Knight came out. I would put Iron Man at number one (two, now, post Dark Knight). The panel includes the animated Mask of the Phantasm, which isn't real memorable to me, and Spider-man 2 deserves a higher spot. I was pleased they included The Incredibles; it was on my unofficial top ten too. But if they are going to include superheros created just for the movies (not just those originating in comic books) then they should include The Matrix as well. Yes, it is a superhero story, damn it. You've got super powers, secret identities, saving the world, all the major tropes.

See? Geek!

One of the these days I'll post my list of favorite comic books here, as requested by a reader and friend who is looking to read the good ones. But I'm pretty clear on what my number one comic book will be, though Dark Knight Returns and Sandman will in the running.

So what happens when one of my all time favorite comics becomes a big-budget film? A hint at the answer arrived in the theater just minutes before Dark Knight.

I'll tell you what happens. Dorkgasm. It's geek-topia: