Worst comic book movie

[duggie walker]

It's a crowded field.

Got to say, for me - having been a big fan of the original, adult, satirical comic - HOWARD THE DUCK was devastatingly bad. It was also the first time we realised that all was not right with George Lucas, who - up till then - could do no wrong. I guess if you didn't read the comics, or saw it when you were young, you might like it just for its bizarreness but I'm afraid I can't see it like that.

All those early Marvel TV movies were terrible too but at the time it seemed like all us Marvel fans would ever get, so they have some nostalgia value.

SUPERMAN 3 and 4 were massive let-downs, given how great the first two were.

BATMAN AND ROBIN, of course, is execrable, but so was BATMAN FOREVER. Even the first BATMAN was pretty disappointing.

That said, I don't get why everyone's so down on IRON MAN 2. I thought it was quite brave to go deeper into the characters and I think I'd watch that again before I watched the first one.

I also didn't mind SPIDER-MAN 3, though maybe if I was more familiar with Venom I'd feel differently. I bailed on Spider-Man before he turned up. The emo stuff and the dance interlude is terrible but for some reason it doesn't bother me that much.

I quite liked Ang Lee's HULK, didn't mind X-MEN 3 (though it was a disappointment after the brilliant X2) and even thought DAREDEVIL was passable (the Director's Cut is better than the theatrical).

And LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN is quite fun if you banish all thought of the brilliant source material.

But this is quite a negative thread. I don't know if you whippersnappers know how lucky you are. All I had as a kid was that 70s SPIDER-MAN series, chopped into a full-length feature. I was 11 when SUPERMAN came out and it was the first really good comic-book movie I'd seen, and - sequel excepted - we had to wait a long time for another one.

Last year, I got to see THE AVENGERS done right, and in 3-D to boot! That's still quite surreal for me. I loved it at 45 but I think if I'd seen that when I was really into Marvel comics - 8,9 years old - I might actually have just died of excitement.