Spring Comic Book Movie Fun Time! Dork Preview

After a winter so cold that even Jack Frost started tweeting complaints about the inconvenience, some might think the main appeal of spring 2010 would be the potential for sunshine. But we dorks all know that the real reason to anticipate the turning of the season is the arrival of not one but three comic book movies which could be genuinely quite good.

This can lead only to a rush to the cinema, sudden bursts of unplanned adrenaline and probably quite a lot of articles in broadsheet newspapers with headlines like “BAM! POW! ZAP! Comics aren’t just for kids any more!”

This sentiment will be particularly prevalent after the April release of Kick-Ass, based on the recent eight-issue comic series by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. One of the most successful US comics in years without a big name superhero attached, Kick-Ass poses the question: what would happen if a normal kid pulled on a costume and tried to become a superhero, without the benefit of super-powers?

Well, he’d probably get beaten up a lot. Which is portrayed realistically, and at length. Fans of extreme violence may want to check out the red band trailer, but the normal one is actually cooler…

Back in more conventional superheroics, Iron Man returns in May with the imaginatively named Iron Man 2. The first film was a masterpiece of lightweight bloodrush-cinema, positioning Tony Stark where he belongs: as the ultimate wish-fulfilment billionaire. The note-perfect casting of Robert Downey Jr helped.

Hopefully the second one will give us everything we liked about the first one, only more so. It worked for the Spider-Man, X-Men and Batman sequels, after all.

Finally, and leaving tights aside entirely at last, The Losers debuts in April. A classic revenge-heist story about a group of CIA operatives betrayed by the agency. The original comic by Andy Diggle and Jock (yes, just “Jock”) truly felt like an action movie on paper, so hopefully the film can’t go far wrong.

And it would be hard not to mention the incredibly geek-friendly casting, including Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Comedian), Idris Elba (Stringer Bell, The Wire), Chris Evans (The Human Torch) and Zoe Saldana (Uhura). If this isn’t great fun, it won’t be for lack of trying.

And it does feel wrong to finish this without mentioning the upcoming Scott Pilgrim movie, even if it isn’t out until summer, and all we have to go on so far is a few photos. Still. There it is.

Nick Bryan

Nick learned to read and write at an early age. This has developed into an unhealthy need to either write stories or consume them for later dissection. He reviews film and TV on Dork Adore and The Digital Fix, lives in London and enjoys a nice white beer.