If Osama bin Laden is so hot on the idea of suicide bombings, I wonder why he doesn’t offer to lead the way. Y’know, show how it’s done. Otherwise it’s like being one of those people standing safely on the ground, shouting to the guy on the ledge ten stories up “Jump! Jump!”

PAD

Imagine my surprise, given the recent somewhat antagonistic atmosphere, to have received an invite to a preview screening of “Daredevil.” Now I gotta say, every pro I know came out of the advance screenings during the Creation Con with absolutely nothing positive to say about it. So I went in preparing to be underwhelmed.

Guys: It’s a good film. Darker, more disturbing than Spider-Man. Certainly edgier. Overall, I thought it was great. Action, a brooding Matt Murdock (only finding relief when sleeping in a sensory deprivation tank), cool radar sense effects, plus snappy performances from Farrell as Bullseye and Duncan as the Kingpin (who looked just like the Kingpin except black), and enough comic book in-jokes for me to say, “See! See! I’m not the only one who does it!”

Minuses are that Elektra is underutilized, existing mostly to be Matt Murdock’s girlfriend with not much identity beyond that. And I could have done without the voice over. General rule of thumb: Unless a VO narrative is done by Bogart, leave it out. The CGI has the same “weightless” feel as Spider-Man, and one wishes the producers hadn’t felt they needed to compete, since one can buy it more easily when dealing with the superhuman Spidey. Here it looks even more fake.

The big area of dispute, I can already tell you, is going to be that Daredevil kills/allows bad guys to die. At least to start. I fully understand why. They wanted him to have a character arc. Think about his arc in the Miller stories: He begins as a pure crusader who doesn’t kill, and ends up allowing Bullseye to fall…to his death, for all DD cares. Does that *really* sound like a character arc for a superhero movie? Writer Johnson chooses to go the other direction: DD starts out hard, cold, soulless. Will he find redemption? *That’s* a movie character arc. Anyone who goes in and can’t separate comic book requirements from movie necessities is going to have problems. Anyone who can judge a movie on its own will, overall, have a good time.

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You know, every year when I think the Academy can’t suck anymore than it does by blowing off a great performance, they transcend themselves the following year.

How in the HÊLL can Richard Gere be bypassed for “Chicago” while John C. Reilly was nominated in the same category. Reilly was very moving in his portrayal, yes, but Gere was outstanding. And when a film gets thirteen nominations and Gere is ignored, that’s a slap in the face. For that matter, when Christopher Walken is nominated for his perfectly good, but not outstanding, work in “Catch Me If You Can” instead of Gere, it’s a kick in the crotch besides.

It was bad enough when the Academy ignored Jim Carrey in “The Truman Show” and then “Man in the Moon,” but this is truly bending over backwards.

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While I was out in LA, Harlan and Susan Ellison decided to have a party and invite a whole bunch of folks, ostensibly so it would take care of everyone who wanted to visit for the next six months. Quite an assortment of folks there, ranging from comic book luminaries such as Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Colleen Doran and Jim Valentino, to Walter Koenig and a guy who looked a lot like Ed Asner probably because he actually was Ed Asner. It was a gloriously wild time, particularly when Ellison and Asner were trading barbs with delirious ferocity. I actually spent about fifteen minutes chatting with Asner. A short time later, I confessed to several other comic folks that I was fanboy enough to keep thinking, “I’m at a party with Ed Asner! How cool is that?” And immediately their heads bobbed in unison; they were thinking the same thing. So I felt slightly less geeky.

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Well, I seem to be all over the place in the current “Wizard” magazine (which makes sense, since I’m kind of all over the place in real life as well.) In addition to being back on the top 10 writer’s list, they have a brief focus on the history of “Captain Marvel,” a sidebar piece with me discussing “U-Decide”, an inclusion of “Supergirl #75” in their top ten hot comics (#76 should be even hotter, I think, considering retailers stunningly dropped their orders by about 1800 copies from #75 to #76 while interest and demand went up) and even–of all things–a mention in their “Comics by the numbers” section in which they cite “194” as my bowling average at last year’s Pro-Am. The average is correct enough for my three game set, but a correction: They also said it was televised on ESPN. No. The Pro-Am was part of a series of functions at the lanes in Syosset, LI, which culminated in the Sunday ESPN-broadcast of a pro tournament that I did attend. But only as an audience member. A Pro bowler I most definitely am not.

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While I was out in LA, Bill Mumy showed me a director’s cut of “It’s Still A Good Life,” scheduled to air February 19 on “The Twilight Zone.” Despite the fact that it was a preliminary edit, the music was a temp track, and the FX weren’t done, it was still incredible viewing. They have an opening shot of Bill from the original episode, poised on a fence, and then they dissolve to modern day and it’s his daughter, Liliana, in approximately the same position and, of course, with the same face. And it just gets better from there. It’s truly can’t-miss viewing.

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To see if the actual spoiler system works, highlight the following phrase: Darth Vader is really Luke’s mother. Luke’s father was really the sled. If this were an actual spoiler, many of you would be very confused right about now.

So we all can post spoilers with a little more impunity, please surrond your spoilers with <font color=”#bdc4df”> and </font>.

Put down your pencils and pass your papers forward, this was only a test.

UPDATE: The problem of the color in spoilers has been fixed– except for yours, Saddam. Bad enough we have an orange alert… do you know how many oranges we’ve had to squeeze today?