Iron Man - John C. Kirk

11:57 pm - Iron Man

Tonight I went off to the cinema to watch Iron Man; for reasons that aren't entirely clear, I wound up with a free ticket, which was nice. As for the film itself, I thought it was excellent: a good story, with a strong cast. The special effects are excellent, so it really benefits from being shown on the big screen. They made a few changes from the comics, but in each case I thought that the film version was at least as good as the original, so I'm not going to complain about them "getting it wrong". The villain's motivation seemed a bit hazy towards the end, but I can live with that; the only thing I'd have added is the theme tune from the 1990s animated series (terrible cartoon, but good music). The credits are quite long (almost 10 minutes), but it's definitely worth sitting through them for the short extra scene at the end.

Now that I've watched that, it's motivated me to re-read some of my "Iron Man" comics, particularly from his pre-"Iron Bastard" days (i.e. prior to the "Civil War" event). I haven't read them consistently over the years, but I did like the issues that Kurt Busiek wrote; sadly, they haven't been reprinted in paperback/hardback (yet). If you liked the film, I'd also recommend the Acclaim issues of "X-O Manowar". More specifically, the start of the series and the end of the series were excellent, with a few dire issues in the middle; once I've re-read them, I'll update this post with more specifics.