SUPER HEROES ,SUPER POWERS, SUPER SWINGERS AND SPANDEX UNDIES OUTSIDE THEIR TROUSERS????

 

I'm now sadly a middle aged ol' fart and my reading matter these days is reading comics on disc....I'm ploughing through decades of DC and MARVEL comics ,THE AVENGERS to AQUAMAN; SPIDERMAN TO SUPERMAN and THE X-MEN and the list goes on!....Sad and tragic?..Yes i know i've been told many times, butit keeps me happy ,so all you mature ,know it all friends and family.."Shut yer gob!"

The American idea that the world begins and ends at the borders of Manhatten and is filled to the gunnells with all kinds of super heroes ,good and diabollically evil, monsters ,alien races ,etc knocking 7 bells outta each other is fascinating. 

New York is the home of the skyscraper and is known as 'THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS!' Which is reasonable enough if you imagine yourself trying to sleep as THE INCREDIBLE HULK and GODZILLA are flattening skyscrapers ,THE X-MEN or THE AVENGERS are fighting mystic alien hordes at the bottom of your street most nights of the week.

The two main creators of our beloved SUPERHEROES are MARVEL and D.C. comics. Marvel tend to stick to 'Noo-YOIK!' while DC tend to have their 'heroes' in their home cities....BATMAN/GOTHAM ;   SUPERMAN/ METROPOLIS; THE GREEN ARROW/CENTRAL CITY; FLASH/STAR CITY. But the main thing is they are all based on 'THE BIG APPLE', the artists don't have to be too geographically or architecturally accurate, whereas Marvels may be able to take liberties, but only sometimes.

It amazes me how old some of these characters are ,most of the existed popular ones sold even today ,came about in the early 60's SPIDERMAN,THE X-MEN,FANTASTIC 4, etc and many DC guys n' super gals. But the biggies SUPERMAN, BATMAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA ,jeez!..They came out in the 30'-40's

DC were a bit more traditional and BATMANwas a masked detective ,but their superheroes tended to be from outer space. Whereas those whizz bang futuristic new boys at Marvel went for the exposure to radiation angle . In the MIGHTY MARVEL UNIVERSE if you were exposed to cosmic or gamma rays ,they always seemed to be the favourite forms of radiation at Marvel....Whereas you or me would be irradiated and suffer agonising illnesses and certain death they would be endowed with super powers.....Force beams from your eyes;Super strength ; Turn into the biggest ,greenest man in ripped trousers; Given the proportionate strength ,speed n' reflexes of a spider; Even fly; Turn into an elasticated stretchy man ,etc,etc.....

When i was a kid there was a few heroes without super powers ,to which i would groan with bored disgust. But one of the all-time classic comic characters is BATMAN and he's a self trained super detective, and his history of stories and villians are known to all even those who dont read comics. So i bite my middle aged tongue and say some of these athletic non super heroes are great. They were often trained for years in lost temples in the himalayas or by lone masters living in the middle of nowhere....Theres nobody like that or mystic temples in Warrington so i don't s'pose i'll be a hero around here!

BATMAN is an interesting character and has been around with his trusty sidekick ROBIN since he was a small minor character in DETECTIVE COMICS no:27 then there was no looking back. He was made into a few American black n' white telly serials and on the radio. In the 1960's a television version starring ADAM WEST hit the tellys of our green n' pleasant land. Everybody of a certain age can still hum the dynamic theme tune and had a toy BATMOBILE as a kid! It was on over two nights ,always with a cliffhangar and a fight with the baddies along with graphic comic sound effects on screen like ...POW!..SOCK!...KERSMACK!...ZINGO!....

It was played totally camp with tongue firmly in cheek and it was wonderful. All kinds of celebrities wanted to appear as baddies or to make appearences in the legendary Batman and Robin walking with the aid of the BATARANG and BATROPE up the side of a skyscraper, celebrities would hang out of the window holding conversations with the 'DYNAMIC DUO!'...Great stuff!...The silliness and campness may have damaged the comics ,etc, but later the character became very grim and dark indeed in comic and in film beating the shit out of the nasty underworld of GOTHAM CITY swooping out of the darkness from his grapling hook and line the trusty batarang!


Various heroes can fly ,but the other mode beloved of those sad one who can't is 'swinging!....These swingers have a variety of shooting lines between skyscrapers and swooping between them or grabbing a flagpole as every skyscraper in the US has a handy flagpole. BATMAN has his Batarang and ropes all tucked up in his UTILITY BELT. The GREEN ARROW fires his bow n' arrow firing an arrow into a building wall and using them as a zip line. DAREDEVIL who was blinded by radioactive chemicals which enhanced his senses and gave him a form of radar sense he has what the yanks call a 'BILLY CLUB' but it has a line for all those flagpoles.

SPIDERMAN'S alter-ego was a scientific genius PETER PARKER who created this incredibly strong elasticated web fluid and web shooters to fire them at skyscrapers up the Avenue. I wondered did they ever shoot a bit too far so when they swang did they ever swing down too far and scrape their spandex drawers on the road tarmac or smack into a truck or a car!

The real daddy of the heroes is SUPERMAN, he is so powerful he can push planets out of orbit and fly into the core of the sun just to light a ciggie ,if ,god forbid he had bad habits like smoking. He could fire heat beams ,x rays ,telescopic rays from his eyes . He could freeze deserts with his breath , he was totally invulnerable . I wonder how he controlled that almost infinite strength ,if he shook your hand would you ever play the piano again? If him and his lady, LOIS LANE ever 'got to it!' how would she survive? I believe in the later comics Superman and WONDER WOMAN got together ,i'd imagine she could handle our man from KRYPTON.

SUPERMAN is the one who created all the od superhero cliches, the changing in the phonebox, the tearing the shirt oen to reveal his costume. Mobile phones have got rid of phoneboxes ,so our heroes have nowhere for the quick change to save the world ...So if the world isn't saved it's your fault for having a mobile texting all day n' night, while diabolical evil geniuses and super villians overun the planet.

Maybe public toilets can take the phone booth's place , but maybe  all those strange fellahs arrested in public toilets are superheroes trying to save the world....Maybe George Michael is a superhero and thats why he got arrested in so many!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAA*********************@S!!!!!

As i go out into the dense freezing mist to take the dog for a walk i pass a smashed bus stop with a bunch of scallie lads clad in track suits even in this freezing weather and to compound the fitness theme of their attire are lounging about scratching themselves and puffing on an endless supply of ciggies....Their girlfriends are off to the side keeping quiet and not interfering in their mans talk or 'the 'effin' n' blindin' that passes for manly conversation. The girls are texting away to who knows who ,possibly the girlfriend of one of the other lads whose standing in her place to the side or behind her man only yards away .I wonder looking at the relationship between these boy n' girl scallies wether they are converts to Islam ,or something.

 

I hate the scalliffication of the world, it is on the increase and i hate it!.....I hate the way it has affected peoples accents ,instead of the reigional mild accents ,as in Liverpool from years by ,now its mutated into this terrible gutteral street talk, as has accents all over the land , the language of the streets, my arse ,making you cringe when scallies of all ages spout their uninformed crap about whats wrong with the world and why they've just burnt the town centre don ,etc. all with their hoodie uniforms and scallie vicious dogs ,etc

 

I hate how 'a look' becomes popular and everybody on the planet has to copy it, cloths ,facial hair ,whatever ....I hate the celebrities ,talentless shitheads who are famous for being famous , at the moment i hold a special place in my spleen for that pain ,Cheryl Cole. Every day theres something about her being wonderful and a national treasure???.....I hate the deluge of stand up comedians all with razor sharp observations on the world  on every night and in between on those endless panel shows.

 

I hate people at concerts who have to stand and dance ,ok we have to sit at concerts these days ,its a fact of life then one knobhead will stand and 400 people behind him have to then.....I hate those stupid bitches who have to sit on their boyfriends shoulders blocking everything of to all the people for 200 yards behind them. I hate everybody compounding it all having to film with telephones ,which was a nuisance ,but is worse as people hold up bloody I_Pads....

 

I hate people who have to wear sunglasses on their head all the time...I hate those jeans with the crotch by the knees and those hats which are furry ,but with the long dangly bits at the side. Ah theres plenty more, but i've vented my spleen to an extent and am going to put the kettle on......We're out of milk ,Gawd i hate that!

3 DUUUHHHH!!

                                            A few weeks ago me n' the LEATHERBARROW rabble went to the pictures for the first time in a long time. It was to see THE AVENGERS ASSEMBLE......IN 3D...... we paid our exorbitant fees for the tickets then for the sweeties and popcorn to crunch and annoy the people sitting around us as much as their crunching and paper rustling was  annoy us.   best defence against irritation is to annoy them first .....Attack always the best form of defence. We then  had to splash out on a pair of crappy plastic sunglasses as the epic we were about to watch was in 3D.

We sat in our comfy seats down at the front ,if your going to watch the big screen you may as well watch it as big as you can.  back seats were ok for a snog with a bit o' stuff in younger days ,but when with the missus and daughter you may as well focus all your attention on the  screen and god forbid.. ....The film, things haven't half changed. I slipped my cheap scratched scuffed sunglasses on. Although the screen was about 30 feet in front of me i could hardly see it even if it was in 3D and bursting out at me across that 30 feet. When the MARVEL COMICS epic started the best bits of 3D imagery were the various 40-odd production company corporate image logo's. When the film started there was wonderful scenes of people stood in front of each other or cops in front of fire hydrants. These are the moments you go 'Oh a bit of 3D he looks like hes in front of the screen. For the next few minutes things look quite normal, i slipped my glasses off as i find them annoying and was amazed at how bright and colourful the film is without them until the suprisingly clear picture goes slightly blurry again as ,apparently a little 3D 'trick' is occurring on the screen ,so ,slipping my specs back on to see a taxi cab driving out of the screen the dusky gloom of the dark cinema exagerated by wearing sun glasses in such a room.

As the action rips off and IRON MAN and THE MIGHTY THOR, Lest we forget THE INCREDIBLE HULK as these are the guys who do a bit more flying in and out of the screen. CAPTAIN AMERICA doesn't do as much ,but his sheild flies around a lot . The CGI SPECIAL EFFECTS which are a bloody curse as everything is done so fast and frenetic and is compounded  by 3D.

Real life is 3D. Up ,down; side to side;Foreward and back.....2D as on film, etc seems to be 3D as the action is all over the place and is easy to follow . 3D is nearly 1D ,basically in and out of the screen. The last few times i've been to the 'Flicks' its been good ol'2D and i have to say i've preferred it  each time the pictures better the action easier to follow.

The prospect of the family sitting on the couch with our 3D sunglasses in front of our 3D telly ....Well, can you imagine 'EMBARESSING BODIES !!!!!!.... and allthe other telly goodies we're inflicted with night after night coming out of the screen at us ....Hmmmmmm?.....2D ,a t least keeps them within the screen where they're better off!