With Josie and the Pussycats now in theatres, I was thinking again about live action movie adaptations of comic strips and with the help of IMDB, came up with a list of ones that I’ve either seen, or have read the original comic. Forthwith:

• Batman: the first two were good, the rest were just evil.
• Blade: never saw the comic book, but I liked the movie. Then again, I just like vampires.
• Captain America: I liked Cap as a kid. I don’t know why though, because I now realize any dude who dresses in a flag must have serious, serious issues. Apparently the movie is abysmal.
• Dick Tracy: I think I liked the movie. I can’t remember much about it.
• Flash Gordon: I saw this when I was 7 or so, during summer school. I’m pretty sure I liked it then. Nowadays the entire cultural significance of Flash, including nerdacious references to the Planet Mongo, is completely lost on me.
• Judge Dredd: I utterly loathe Sylvester. ‘Nuff said.
• Punisher: I liked the comic book. And Dolph just RULES. (Yes, I did see Masters of the Universe. What’s your point?) I still want to see this one no matter how much it might suck.
• Spawn: Okay, I did like this movie. Your derision, and that of my fellow coworkers who sneer at bad CGI effects, is duly noted.
• Superman: I only remember details of the first (I’m sure I’ve seen 2 and 3) and I guess I’m rather ambivalent. Supes was never a favorite character - the strip always reeked of jingoism, and I never did understand why the country (Americans! C’mon!) was so complacent with the entire alien-among-us thing. Despite this I guess some parts of the movie were tolerable (those without Margot Kidder).
• Supergirl: I sat through half of this and gave up. Despite Helen Slater’s legs.
• Steel: Ok, the fact that I used to have a comic book with this guy in it (for the curious: he came along after Superman “died” [yes, I bought into that hype, if only to see whether Superman would stay buried]) brands me a total geek. I won’t watch the movie though.
• Swamp Thing: See previous sentiment. I had 8 pages of one comic book - “Marvel Comics Presents #1″ - devoted to Swamp Thing. I still have no idea who or what he was, except that he was one ugly fella.
• Tank Girl: After six years I still haven’t forgiven Manh Ha for this. Ice-T in a kangaroo suit? OMIGOD.
• X-Men: I liked this one, although I think their staffing of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants was kinda weak. And where the hell was Beast?

I don’t have any intention of seeing Josie (nope, I won’t ever admit to opening an Archie Comic). However, tantalizing bits of the upcoming Spiderman movie did cross my desk a few months ago. Given the mixed track record above, I can only hope this movie turns out well. Marvel, before X-Men, has fared far worse than DC with movie adaptations, and I find this unfortunate. As a kid, Marvel was always my preferred choice. DC was too refined for my tastes, plus the aforementioned disliking of Superman factored heavily.

Next Month - Stay Tuned As We Breathlessly Examine Movies Based On Video Games: Can Tomb Raider Make The Cut?! Until Then - Make Mine Marvel!

God, did I really just type that?