Go outside! Also, World's Finest.

I thought I'd step away from video games tonight and talk about something different. I don't know where you are located right now, but if you're near the Cincinnati area like I am, the weather has been fantastic lately! I'm talking mid-70s during the day, mid- to low-60s at night, and just enough cloud cover to keep the sun out of your eyes. For late July in the Ohio River valley, this is unseasonably cool, but I don't think anyone's complaining. So I urge you all to find something to do outside. If you follow me on Twitter, you've seen me tweet about it a few times this week. It's given me a great opportunity to get my lawn mowed without dying of heat stroke. And just a few minutes ago I was sitting out in my driveway, enjoying the last of the daylight as I read a book.

I used to do outdoor things more often, when all my friends still lived nearby. We used to do bonfires and outdoor parties on a pretty regular basis. You know how it goes, though. As you get older and your group all spreads apart with families of their own, it gets harder and harder to do that sort of thing. So it's been nice finding a reason to go outside this week and just enjoy it. I even spent a good part of the afternoon a few days ago walking around my town.

So go outside and do something while the weather's nice. Take a handheld system if you must. There are a ton of great games on 3DS right now, and the Vita's starting to get more and more all the time. But I'm guessing you want to hear more than just me talking about how nice the weather is. Okay. Let's talk a bit about the recently announced Batman/Superman movie.

I've been waiting for this to happen for a long time. It's been brought up before, more than once, I believe. Remember the Will Smith version of I Am Legend? Yep, a movie theater sign showed a World's-Finest-style Batman/Superman logo in that movie. So you know Warner Bros. has been wanting to try this for some time. And the thought that this could lead into a Justice League movie would be very exciting, except for one thing: I hated Man of Steel! You may have read my post on this a while ago. The movie was so heartless! I didn't care for any of those characters one single bit, and frankly was just waiting for the movie to be over. The only redeeming quality, in my opinion, was the action. The fight scenes were done well. Other than that, I was thoroughly unimpressed. So to hear that Zack Snyder is going to direct this new movie, along with David Goyer writing and Henry Cavill playing Superman, was disappointing to say the least.

Now, let me be clear. I loved 300, and Watchmen was decent, so I know Snyder can make good movies (didn't like Sucker Punch, though). As for Goyer, he did The Dark Knight. I don't need to say much more than that. It was one of the best Batman stories ever told. Unfortunately, he also did The Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel, two movies that I really didn't care for much. The Dark Knight Rises was well written, it just didn't live up to its predecessor for me, nor did it feel much like Batman. Cavill I only know from Man of Steel, but I've been told he was good in other movies.

So I'm not ragging on these guys exactly, I just know from my experience that I don't always like the way they handle superheroes. They, and DC/Warner Bros. in general, seem to go for too much realism in their movies. With Batman that can work. With the other heroes, not so much. I much, much prefer Marvel's way of doing their movies. The Avengers was a comic book come to life on screen! That's what I want out of my superhero movies! I read comics because I like comics! I watch superhero movies because I like comics! The Dark Knight was great, and it's fine to do one like that now and again, especially with a hero like Batman who's very grounded in reality compared to most superheroes, but I hate to see DC fall into the trap of trying to make their movies some kind of high cinematic art. Comic's are a compelling medium already. Let your movies be comics on the screen, like Marvel does. Stop trying to turn them into a product that's very different from their source material just to please critics. In doing so, you run the risk of turning away your pre-existing fans.

That's it for tonight! Thanks for reading, be sure to tell your friends and follow me on Twitter @RevLink_GI! Now I'm going to go back outside and enjoy the night.

My history: Comics

As a young kid, I was too busy with Star Wars and video games to give much thought to comic books. I was aware of them in only a very basic way. I pretty much only knew about Superman because of the Christopher Reeves movies, and I knew about Batman because of the old Adam West show. I was a fan of both of these things, but I never gave a thought to the actual comics. On the Marvel side of things, I was aware of the Hulk because of the Lou Ferrigno show, and aware of Spider-Man and Captain America just because of how big they were. But still, I had no interest in their comics. I didn't have any friends who read comics, and, like I said, with video games dominating most of my time comics just never entered into my mind.

It wasn't until the eighth grade that I started making some friends who read comics. And then Fox started airing the X-Men cartoon. The Batman cartoon was great, but because of the Adam West show and the Tim Burton movie I saw Batman as something separate from comics. The X-Men cartoon was my first exposure to something that came purely from the world of comic books. I knew who Wolverine was, mainly from seeing him in a few video games, but other than that the X-Men were a mystery to me. But the show captivated me from the very first episode, and I started learning everything I could form my comic reading friends about the X-Men.

One day a friend came over to my place after just picking up some comics from the gas station across the street from me (remember when you could buy comics at a gas station?). He asked if he could leave them at my place, because his mom didn't like him buying comics. I said, "Ok.", so he left them with me, and I read them and enjoyed them a lot. It wasn't long after that that I bought my first comic, X-Men #30, the wedding of Cyclops and Jean Grey.

After that I started going to the comic book shop every Wednesday for new comics. I stayed with the X-Men books all through the Age of Apocalypse storyline (still my favorite arc ever) and a little beyond, and even started reading Spider-Man for a bit before I had to stop. It was at that time that we moved out to Indiana, and the comic shop was now just too far a drive to get my dad to make every week. Since I didn't have my license yet, that meant no more comics for me. It wasn't until years later, when a friend started buying mass quantities of comics on eBay, that I started seriously collecting.

He bought so many comics that he didn't have anywhere to put them all. He knew I liked comics too, so he asked if I would help him store some for a while. He gave me like four or six longboxes full of comics to look through, all '80s era Marvel titles. While looking through his X-Men books, I noticed a really large amount of doubles, enough to make up a full run of Uncanny X-Men from '83 to '94! I asked him if I could buy them off of him, but he just gave them to me as payment for helping him store his books. Thus I had an instant collection.

I've been working on it, slowly, ever since. I mainly only collect X-Men comics, but I also have a good handful of Spider-Man titles. Lately I've been considering Batman and Superman as well. I'm also receiving current issues of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. I have four full longboxes, as well as a shortbox I use to hold my Age of Apocalypse titles. I currently own 999 comic books. I plan on getting a copy of Gambit vol. 3 #1 for my thousandth book. He's always been my favorite X-Man.

Just like with my video game collection, I use Collectorz.com's Comic Collector software to keep track of my comics. I plan on writing a review of Collectorz.com's stuff eventually. I like it, it does the job quite well.