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Like everyone else, I went to see Spider-Man 3 this weekend. Any regular readers of my blog know I’m a big comic fan and have really gotten back into comics in the last 6 month. I loved Spider-Man 1 and even more so Spider-Man 2. This was also the first Spider-man I’ve seen in the theater.

I’ll get right to it and say I’m not sure if I liked it. I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it either. The two things that ruined it for me were the campy parts and Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane. This felt like more of Sam Raimi doing a Spider-Man movie than a Spider-Man movie directed by Sam Raimi. Anyone who has seen a Sam Raimi movie knows what I’m talking about.

The Good
I loved the Sandman in this. Thomas Haden Church did a brilliant job as the Sandman. He did a great job of bringing emotion to the character. The CGI effects that brought the Sandman to life were mind blowing. These were some of the best effects I’ve ever seen in a movie before.

Eric Forman as Venom?! That was my first reaction but I got to give it to him, he nailed it. I loved Topher Grace as Eddie Brock, tho it was weird hearing him speak as Venom.

Bruce Campbell. Nuff’ Said.

I loved Gwen Stacy in this movie. I one of those people that think Peter Parker would be better off in a world with Gwen Stacy than Mary Jane. My feelings are just amplified in Spider-Man 3. They should have killed off Mary Jane in the beginning and had Peter hook up with Gwen. Much better movie by 10 fold if that happened for me.

The Bad
I hated Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane in this. Didn’t care for her in the first one, was much better in the 2nd and I downright want her dead in 3. I could not see why they would be together in this movie. She cheats on him, she lies to him, doesn’t trust him, is jealous of him. Why they were in a relationship at all is a mystery. The Gwen Stacy scenes were so must better and would have loved to see a lot more Gwen and a hell of a lot less Mary Jane. I really hope shes off the next movie.

This movie is really weird in its comedic aspect. It was a lot of cheese and not a lot of wit. Spider-Man is all about the witty, smart-ass one liners and those are devoid in the movie. Instead we get a campy look at Spider-Man via Sam Raimi. Its one redeeming quality is that the campiness is felt throughout the movie and doesn’t veer from the path. I have to say Spider-Man 3 is what it is. For me in a movie with the emotional look at the Sandman and a terrifying look at revenge and hatred in Venom, the campy backdrop just feels out of place.

Unfortunately it seems that Marvel falls apart at number 3 with their franchises. First with X-Men 3 and now with Spider-Man 3. I don’t think either are bad movies, just missed potential. I think Spider-Man just fell into doing a lot of things OK instead of doing one thing good.

They killed Captain America! You Bastards!

Back in the early 90’s I was big into comics like most kids my age. But as I got older and entered high school and all the gimmicks started with Marvel, I pretty much walked away.

And thats how it stayed until about 2002 when I found out Kevin Smith was writing comics such as Green Arrow and Daredevil. This made me start looking at comics again and started getting weekly issues. At this time, I still owned my own business and really didn’t have time to go back and catch up on story lines and actually read weekly comics. But I still kept a pull list for about 3 years. The comics started to add up week after week and I never got around to reading any really. I did a small run of Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Spider-man and tried to pick up X-treme X-men but that was really it. In 2005, I finally canceled my box at my local comic store as I was planning on moving in the next few weeks and was tying up loose ends.

2006 came and I was starting to get back into podcasts thanks to diggnation and Revision3. I happen to catch the Kevin Smith interview on Geekdrome but didn’t really start watching Geekdrome until about episode 39 and feel in love with it. This started me back on a comics somewhat but not until Geekscape and iFanboy recently started did I actually start reading comics.

My “in” was Marvel Civil War. Comics are a little hard to just jump right in but Civil War was a crossover throughout the entire Marvel Universe. I could start at the beginning of a story arc that covered a lot of books so it was a good starting point no matter which title I wanted to read. I spend the last few weeks reading Civil War from the start and all the tie-in books. This was about 80 books altogether and I finally finished last night. Since I was caught up mostly, I started going back a few episodes of iFanboy and posting on there forum. From this I started making notes of what other books are good and I should check out.

Right after watching the first vidcast of iFanboy, I went and ordered Watchmen: Absolute Edition and 300 from Amazon. A few days later I was looking at the Comic Book Finder and found a comic shop in my area called Legends of Superheroes. I tossed the address in my GPS and off I went. I liked the store and they seemed to have a good selection of Trades which my old shop didn’t. I talked to the owner some and I was pretty much hooked again. I picked up The Dark Knight Returns and the first two volumes of The Preacher TPB. As a comic book fan, its embarrassing to admit I have never read any of these but hey, you got to start somewhere.

This Wednesday I went down to Legends, picked up this weeks comics I wanted and started a box. So I’m officially back and can’t wait for next Wednesday!

Watched V for Vendetta over the weekend. Wow, favorite movie this year so far. Its about time an Allan Moore work has been done some justice after the disgrace of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the uneventful From Hell. DC has been on fire lately with last year’s Batman Begins and now V for Vendetta. If you could get past the fact Ted �Theodore� Logan played John Constantine, Constantine wasn’t too bad either. Then again I’m a sucker for Heaven vs Hell stuff. If this is any taste of whats to come, Superman Returns is going to be great.

Now Marvel should have a blockbuster with both the upcoming X-men 3 and next year’s Spider-man 3. I just wish Marvel would put as much work into their lesser films as they would with X-men and Spider-man. Hulk, Fantastic Four, Punisher, Daredevil, Elektra. All ok but nothing great.

The difference between the DC films and Marvel films is that DC seems to make movies from good stories where Marvel tries to ride popularity of the titles. While I do like Spider-man and X-men, so far my favorite comic book movies are Sin City and V for Vendetta, both lesser know comics but great works. Now with the right writer and director, a popular title can and will make a great movie also. Spider-man, X-men and Batman Begins fall into this category. So I don’t see why Marvel can’t stop rushing out films just to get them out and rather take there time with each franchise. Comic book movies can generate a lot of money for the company if done right. Sequels are pretty much a given. I’ll tell you right now I’ll see X-men 3 opening night but I wouldn’t even give Elektra 2 a second thought.

‘Nuff Said