You have offended my honor, sirs / madams!

I have no opinion on the worth (or lack thereof) of comic books/graphic novels/whatever you want to call them. However, my husband, a Marvel fan, dragged me to this movie a couple of nights ago, and the final ruling is ... it sucks.

Now, I'm no movie snob - I can enjoy a big-budget blockbuster, *provided that* there is actually some attention paid to plot and character. However, "Silver Surfer" is an incoherent, poorly-acted mess of a flick about a bunch of people/"heroes" about whom one couldn't care less. Save your $ and see ... well, I don't know. Everything this summer had pretty much stunk.

As flat out awful. Bad writing and directing an overall weak and pathetic cruise control effort from Horridwood.

You're very impressed with yourself, I think we all get that, but your arguments are not very convincing. You simply dismiss one side of the discussion as being nothing but the childish assertion of "fanboys." And simply deny even the possibility that subtext or deeper meanings of any kind can be found in comics. Wow, that was easy. Clap the dust off your hands. Over, over done! Here's my counter:

You are a moron.

Phew, that was easy! And to think all I had to do to prove my case was to assert it.

Really, Rob? I agree all the intellectualizing can get out of hand, but you can't see how the X-Men might be even a small metaphor for our innate sense of fear of the outsider? You can't see how The Hulk embodies the concept of the id? You don't find it interesting that even as the Hulk mindlessly rampages, more good seems to come from it than bad? Could it be, perhaps, that even in his mindless rage he still holds some concept of right and wrong. Are humans at their core descended from noble savages? Maybe that's ridiculous to you, but you can't deny that the subtext is there.

Have you ever read any of Alan Moore's work? His issues of "Swamp Thing" were poetry. I also remember the Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams "Green Lantern Green Arrow" series of the early '70s which critically examined the soul of a troubled nation. If nothing else, reading comics as a kid, at the very least I learned that "good" was worth fighting for, but it wasn't always easy. There's value in that, don't you think? Or is that just shit for brains thinking on my then 10 year old part?

And in these same comics you find... Nothing? Zero content? Not a solitary shred of any substance in ANY of it? How do you explain its enduring resonance over decades? Oh, that's right, we're all just a bunch of shit for brain fanboys who are too stupid to realize that it all adds up to nothing. We only think we found some value in it.

Look, here I am defending comics; I pretty much stopped reading and collecting back in the mid '80s when the industry started moving toward all these self-serious reinventions. Somewhere during that time, they stopped remembering how to be fun as well.

But to say there's nothing to them - nothing at all - is ridiculous. I'm not saying Stan Lee is Herman Melville, but he did know how to tell good stories and he was definitely drawing on something deep in his brain. It may not be Melville, but then with your same dismissive wave of a hand "Moby Dick" becomes nothing but a fishing yarn about the one that got away.

The first Fantastic Four movie made more that $150 million. So, don't look for "Howard The Duck II." Perhaps you can use the extra time you'll save by not looking forward to that sequel to bone up a little on box office tallies. Maybe then you can contribute a more informed post on this board. There are plenty of bad comic books, yet there are many good ones. Don't forget that comic books are a blend of story and art. To evaluate their merit without considering both elements is pretty dumb. Shit for shit for brains? If you are going to be a snob, at least know what you are talking about.

What's up with all the hating on graphic novels?...(and yes, I am referring to them as graphic novels.)

I thought it was pretty well established that the genre has reached new heights of depth and sophistication, and it's achieved the respect and acclaim of many critics and scholars. After all, Time magazine declared Alan Moore's Watchmen as one of the 100 greatest books of the twentieth century. I haven't heard anyone deny that it's a masterpiece.

(By the way, this isn't a defense of the movie Fantanstic Four. I pretty much hated it.)

Over half a century ago a certain Dr. Frederic Wertham actually gained the attention of the US Congress over the pressing issue of the contribution of comic books to juvenile delinquency. He very much believed comic books were a direct factor, and many congresspeople seemed more than willing to believe him. From that imbroglio emerged The Comics Code Authority and the destruction of comics books as a mass medium in the US.

The numbers don't lie. Back in the mid-40s a publisher could move 500,000 copies or more of an average comic book title without half trying. Today sales figures of one-tenth that would be cause for dancing in the streets.

Do the movies made these days based on comic book characters help sales of actual comics books? In the main, not really. And what sales blips they do cause are almost always just that, blips that come and go without any lasting effect.

So no one really needs to worry, least of all those who view the matter as did the late Dr. Wertham. What few brains are being polluted by comic books today are a piss in the ocean compared to the numbers surely being rendered into excrement by TV, movies, video games, all the wonderful diversions available on the Internet.